Ternate manuscript

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The first page of the Ternate manuscript from publication in the Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society: Zoology, August 20, 1858

As Ternate manuscript (English: "Ternate essay") is one with "Ternate, February, 1858" signed manuscript from Alfred Russel Wallace called, in which he presented his reflections on the mechanisms of evolution expounded to the emergence and preservation of species lead . The manuscript sent to Charles Darwin from the island of Ternate was to be examined by Darwin and forwarded to Charles Lyell . Wallace's ideas set out in the manuscript forced Darwin to quickly publish his own ideas on the selection and biological divergence underlying "the origin of species". Under the title On the Tendency of Varieties to depart indefinitely from the Original Type (German: About the tendency of varieties, from the original type to remove unlimited ) was Wallace's manuscript together with an extract from Darwin's hitherto unpublished manuscript Natural Selection and summary a letter from Darwin to Asa Gray read out on July 1, 1858 before the London Linnaeus Society and published in print on August 20, 1858.

plant

History of origin

A photograph by Alfred Russel Wallace, taken in Singapore in 1862, showing him shortly before his return to London

After Alfred Russel Wallace had read the anonymously published work Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (October 1844) by Robert Chambers for the first time in 1845 , he was convinced that the transmutation of species - as evolution was then called - had actually happened exist. Since then he has been looking for clues as to which mechanisms are responsible for the development of the species.

In March 1854 Wallace embarked on his second great journey, which after exploring the Amazon region from 1848 to 1852, this time led him to the islands of the Malay Archipelago and during which he collected 125,660 animals until 1862. In the region of Sarawak on Borneo Wallace in 1854 wrote an article in which he cited facts about the geographical and geological distribution of the species, pointing to a simple law which he with the words "Any kind was close spatially and temporally associated with a related kind ”. When he was forced to take a detour from Singapore via Bali and Lombok in the spring of 1856 in order to reach his next destination, Makassar on the island of Sulawesi , he observed clear differences in the fauna of the islands of Bali and Lombok, the were separated from each other only by a narrow strait nearly 25 kilometers wide (part of the Wallace Line, which is now named after him ). From January 1857 on, Wallace explored the Aru Islands for nearly six months . He realized that small populations confined to a limited geographic area developed characteristics adapted to their respective environmental conditions.

Wallace and Charles Darwin began to correspond with each other around 1853 . A letter dated October 10, 1856, in which Wallace referred to his 1855 article in the Annals and Magazine of Natural History , was received by Darwin in late April 1857. Darwin replied almost immediately; He pointed to their coinciding lines of thought: "I can clearly see that we have thought very similarly and have come to similar conclusions to a certain extent," but emphasized at the same time that he had been dealing with the subject of how species and each other had been for twenty years Differentiating varieties from one another: “This summer it was twenty years (!) Ago when I opened my first notebook about the question of how and in what way species and varieties differ from one another. - Now I am preparing my work for publication, but find the subject so extensive that, although I have written many chapters, I do not assume that it should go to press in the next two years. ”By the end of 1855, Edward Blyth and Charles Lyell Darwin referred to Wallace's paper. At the end of 1857 Darwin wrote: “I admire and honor your zeal and courage for the good cause of science; and you have my most sincere and heartfelt wishes for success of all kinds; and may all your theories be successful [...] "

The Moluccas with the small island of Ternate

At the end of January 1858, Wallace crossed from Ternate to Halmahera Island to cure himself of malaria in a simple palm-leaf hut in the Bay of Dodinga . At the end of February 1858, during one of his two to three hour bouts of fever, he had the crucial idea. He recalled his reading of Essay on the Principle of Population (1798) by Thomas Robert Malthus and his principle of "struggle for existence", with which Malthus explained why there is no excessive population growth.

He returned to his home on the Moluccan island of Ternate on March 1, 1858, and wrote his thoughts down within three days. He then wrote a letter to accompany his manuscript to Darwin, in which he asked Darwin to review his work and to forward the manuscript to the renowned geologist Charles Lyell , who had received his earlier articles benevolently. He hoped that the ideas developed in it would be just as new to Darwin as they were to him and that they would provide the missing factor to explain the origin of the species. A Dutch mail steamer, which left Ternate on March 9, carried the package with the letter and the manuscript via Batavia to Singapore. There it was taken over by a British steamer of the P&O line with the destination Suez . In Egypt it was transported by land to Alexandria and shipped across the Mediterranean on another P&O line steamer to Marseille . The parcel finally reached Darwin in Downe near London via Paris and Rotterdam between mid-May and mid-June 1858 .

publication

Charles Lyell and Joseph Dalton Hooker were responsible for the joint publication of the Ternate manuscript with excerpts from Darwin's work.

The time at which Darwin received the letter and the Ternate manuscript can no longer be precisely reconstructed, since both the letter and the original manuscript have been lost. Surprised by the contents of the manuscript, Darwin wrote to Lyell: “Never have I seen a more startling correspondence. If Wallace had my handwritten draft from 1842, he could not have made a better summary of it. Even his terms are now the headings of my chapters. ”Worried that he would be accused of dishonesty if he published his theory now, Darwin wrote again to Lyell a week later. He referred to his letter to Asa Gray in which he had set out the main features of his theory in the fall of 1857 and wrote: “I could send Wallace a copy of my letter to Asa Gray to show him that I had not stolen his doctrine . ”He also pointed out that Joseph Dalton Hooker had read his 1844 manuscript a few years earlier. Hooker and Lyell decided that the best solution would be to publish the Ternate manuscript together with extracts from Darwin's 1844 manuscript and a summary of his letter to Gray. On June 29, 1858, Darwin found himself unable to contribute anything to the solution of the conflict, as his youngest son Charles Waring (1856–1858) had died the previous evening after suffering from scarlet fever for five days .

Since the Geological Society was negative towards theoretical contributions and the Zoological Society was ruled by Richard Owen , Hooker and Lyell decided to publish it with the Linnaeus Society . Due to the death of Robert Brown , who was a member of the council of the society and whose post had to be filled, the last meeting of the Linnaeus Society within the session 1857/1858 from June 17, 1858 was postponed to July 1. The day before the meeting, Hooker and Lyell mailed the Darwin and Wallace manuscripts to be read with an accompanying letter to the Society's secretary, John Joseph Bennett (1801–1876). Their receipt was registered the following day, presumably by the librarian Richard Kippist (1812–1882).

In the absence of Wallace and Darwin, the Ternate manuscript was read by Wallace on July 1, 1858, along with an excerpt from Darwin's unpublished manuscript Natural Selection and a summary of his letter to Asa Gray before the Linnaeus Society in London . On August 20, 1858, the contributions appeared in the proceedings of the Linnaeus Society.

In early October 1858, Wallace thanked Hooker for co-publishing his manuscript with the works of Darwin: “First, allow me to thank you and Sir Charles Lyell sincerely for your kind service in this matter, and my satisfaction both with the one adopted Course as well as the positive opinion you expressed about my essay so kindly. I cannot help but see myself as the preferred side in this matter, as it has been far too much the practice to attribute all merits to the first discoverer of a new fact or theory and little or none to any other side, entirely independent of a few Years or a few hours later the same result was reached. [...] It would have caused me much pain and regret had Mr. Darwin's excess of generosity led him to publish my article unaccompanied by his own, much earlier and undoubtedly more complete views on the same subject. And I have to thank you again for the course you have adopted, which, although fair for both sides, is so beneficial to me. "

content

With the Ternate manuscript, Wallace set himself the goal of demonstrating "that there is a general principle of nature which leads to the fact that many varieties survive their parent species, and which has the consequence that successive variations diverge further and further from the original type". He examined populations of wild animals and described their lives as a “struggle for existence”: “The life of wild animals is a struggle for existence. The full exertion of all their abilities and all their energies is required for the maintenance of their own existence and their descendants. The ability to obtain food during the worst of the year and escape from the attacks of their most dangerous enemies are the basic conditions that determine the existence of individuals as well as of entire species. "

Wallace then set out his thoughts on the influence of fertility and the consequences of geometrical reproduction on the population growth of wild animals: “An animal's higher or lower fertility is often seen as one of the main causes of its superiority or inferiority, but one Weighing the facts will show us that this really has little or nothing to do with our question. Even the most sterile animal would reproduce freely, although it is evident that animal populations should be constant. […] There may be variations, but constant growth, except in limited areas, is almost impossible. For example, our own observations should convince us that birds do not reproduce in a geometric relationship every year, which they would if there were not some powerful control over their natural reproduction. ”“ A simple calculation shows that any pair of birds will reproduce within 15 Years ago would have increased to nearly 10 million. On the other hand, we have no reason to assume that the number of birds in any country will increase in 15 or 150 years. With such growth forces, the population must have reached its limits and become constant in a very few years after the emergence of each species. It is therefore evident that an immense number of birds has to pass away every year - actually as many as are born. "

He then described the principle of natural selection , but without using this term: “… large clutches are superfluous. On average, all but one are food for hawks and kites, wild cats and martens, or die of cold and hunger when winter comes. ”“ The number of those who die each year must be immense. And since the individual existence of each animal depends on itself, those who die must be the weakest - the very young, the elderly and the sick - while those who can prolong their existence can only be those with the most ideal health and vitality - those who are best able to find food regularly and avoid their numerous enemies. As we noted in the introduction, it is "a struggle for existence" in which the weakest and least fully organized must always succumb. "

He came to the conclusion that the survival of the beneficiary individuals occurs through adaptation to their living conditions: “Now it is clear that what takes place between the individuals of a species must also occur between related groups of species, namely those who are best at it are adapted to regularly find food and defend themselves against the attacks of their enemies and the vicissitudes of the seasons, must inevitably acquire and maintain a superiority within the population, while those species which, due to a lack of strength or organization, are the least capable, in order to counteract the vicissitudes with regard to feed, etc., must decrease in number and in extreme cases will die out completely. "

Wallace then turned to the biological variability of animal populations: “Most, or perhaps all, variations in the typical shape of a species must have significant, if minor, effects on the habits or performance of individuals. Even a change in color, by making it more or less noticeable, could affect your safety; a more or less strong formation of hair could change their habits. ”“ They would be better adapted in every respect to ensure their own safety and to expand their individual existence and that of their race. Such a variety could not return to its original form, since this form is an inferior one that could never compete with it for existence. "

In summary, he stated: "That is the progression and continuous deviation, derived from the general laws that regulate the existence of animals in their natural state, as well as from the undisputed fact that varieties occur frequently."

He then explained: “The essential difference in the nature of wild and domesticated animals is as follows: that in the former, their well-being and mere existence depends on the full exercise and state of health of all their senses and physical strength, whereas in the latter this only partially depends exercised and in some cases completely unused. A wild animal must seek and often struggle for food after every bite - it must use the senses of sight, hearing and smell to try to avoid danger, to find shelter from the ruthlessness of the seasons, and for its upkeep and safety to care for his descendants. "

In the further course of the article he criticized Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck and his thesis of the passing on of acquired skills, taking up Lamarck's example of the giraffe : “The giraffe did not acquire its long neck by coveting the leaves of the more towering bushes and consistently hers Neck stretched for this purpose, but since any varieties that appeared with a longer neck than usual among their antityps immediately secured the unspent pasture above the same terrain as their short-necked companions, which enabled them to survive the first food shortage. "

Wallace then compared his entire principle with the governor of a steam engine : "The principle works exactly like the governor of the steam engine, which registers and corrects any irregularities almost before they become visible."

reception

The reactions to the lecture before the Linnaeus Society were restrained. Its president, the zoologist Thomas Bell , wrote in his report on the past year published in May 1859: “The past year was not marked by one of those groundbreaking discoveries that revolutionized our field in one fell swoop.” In the magazine The Zoologist became the article from the proceedings of the Linnaeus Society was reprinted and reviewed. In 1861, in his historical introduction to The Origin of Species, rewritten for the third edition, Darwin paid tribute to Wallace's contribution to his theory.

It was not until the 1960s that historians of science dealt more intensively with Wallace's work. Barbara Beddall first pointed out the lack of some documents from 1858 in 1968 and Lewis McKinney also published about this fact in 1972. In 1980 Arnold Brackman coined the term "delicate agreement" for the agreement made in 1858.

John Brooks questioned the commonly cited June 18, 1858 receipt date for the Ternate manuscript. He reconstructed the delivery route of Wallace's parcel, but could not prove the exact time of the arrival of the parcel, but considered May 18, 1858 to be more likely. While examining the manuscript of Darwin's Natural Selection , which he had begun in 1856, in the University Library in Cambridge , Brooks discovered a 41-page insert, which was written on a different colored paper and which he believed Darwin would only after Receipt of the Ternate manuscript.

Most historians consider Brooks' allegations of plagiarism to be unfounded. Peter Bowler, Malcolm Kottler and Barbara Beddall pointed to parallels in the lives of Wallace and Darwin. Both experienced the biodiversity on their research trips. Both read Malthus' Essay on the Principle of Population and Lyell's Principles of Geology . From this reading and their own observations, both independently drew similar conclusions about how evolution worked.

In his 2003 comparative analysis, Ulrich Kutschera found six significant differences between Wallace's and Darwins' articles:

  1. Wallace emphasized the difference between domesticated and natural varieties, Darwin emphasized their similarities.
  2. Wallace only referred to animals; Darwin also included plants in his argument.
  3. Wallace emphasized the competition of animals with their environment and between separate species, Darwin the competition between members of the same species.
  4. Wallace did not believe in the passing on of acquired traits, Darwin certainly did.
  5. Wallace did not mention the time it would take for a new species to emerge; Darwin assumed it would be a very slow process.
  6. Darwin knew a second principle of selection, sexual selection .

Neither of them used the word " evolution ". In contrast to Wallace, Darwin already spoke of " natural selection ". For this, Wallace used the terms " adaptation " and " population " in the modern sense for the first time in the Ternate manuscript .

priority

Wallace's position on priority has always been clear. In a letter to Darwin in 1864 he made it clear again:

“As for the theory of“ natural selection ”, I will always maintain that it is actually yours and yours alone. They worked it out in so many details that I had never even considered, years before I saw the first ray of light fall on the subject. My essay would not have convinced anyone or would only have been registered as an ingenious speculation, while your book revolutionized natural research [...]. "

- Alfred Russel Wallace to Charles Darwin, May 29 [1864]

Among other things, he affirmed his position in 1869 in a letter to the German biologist Adolf Bernhard Meyer , in a note on the occasion of the republication of his Ternate manuscript in the essay collection Natural Selection and Tropical Nature , in the short contribution The Dawn of a Great Discovery , published in 1903 and in his 1905 autobiography My Life .

bibliography

  • Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society: Zoology . Volume 3, No. 9, pp. 53-62, London August 20, 1858; on-line
  • The Zoologist . Volume 16, No. 197, pp. 6299-6308, London December 1858
  • Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection: A Series of Essays . Pp. 26-44, Macmillan & Co., London & New York April 1870; on-line
  • Natural Selection and Tropical Nature: Essays on Descriptive and Theoretical Biology . Macmillan & Co., London & New York 1891
  • The Popular Science Monthly . Volume 60, pp. 13-21, New York City November 1901
  • The Darwin-Wallace Celebration Held on Thursday, 1st July, 1908, by the Linnean Society of London . Printed for the Linnean Society by Burlington House, Longmans, Green & Co., London February 1909, pp. 98-107
  • Adolf Bernhard Meyer: Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace. Your first publications on the "Origin of Species" along with a sketch of your life and a list of your writings . Eduard Besold, Erlangen 1870 (German translation)

proof

literature

  • Adrian Desmond, James Moore: Darwin . List Verlag, Munich Leipzig 1991, ISBN 3-471-77338-X , pp. 530-535.
  • Post by Alfred Russel Wallace . In: Eve-Marie Engels: Charles Darwin . CH Beck, 2007, ISBN 340654763X , pp. 87-91.
  • Matthias Glaubrecht : Alfred Russel Wallace and the race for the theory of evolution . In: Naturwissenschaftliche Rundschau . Volume 61, No. 7, pp. 346-353 and No. 8, pp. 403-408, 2008
  • Ulrich Kutschera : A Comparative Analysis of the Darwin-Wallace Papers and the Development of the Concept of Natural Selection . In: Theory in Biosciences . Vol. 122, 2003, pp. 343-359; PDF online
  • Adolf Bernhard Meyer: How was Wallace led to the Discovery of Natural Selection? . In: Nature . Vol. 52, No. 1348, pp. 415, 1895; bibcode : 1895Natur..52..415M , doi : 10.1038 / 052415a0
  • Michael Shermer: A Gentlemanly Arrangement . In: In Darwin's Shadow: The Life and Science of Alfred Russel Wallace: A Biographical Study on the Psychology of History . Oxford University Press, New York 2002, ISBN 0195148304 , pp. 128-150.
  • Alfred Russel Wallace: The Dawn of a Great Discovery (My Relations With Darwin in Reference to the Theory of Natural Selection) . In: Black and White . Volume 25, pp. 78-79, January 1903; on-line
  • Alfred Russel Wallace: My Life a Record of Events and Opinions . Kessinger Publishing, 2004, ISBN 0766196151 , pp. 189-195.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ross A. Slotten: The Heretic in Darwin's Court: The Life of Alfred Russel Wallace . Columbia University Press, 2004, ISBN 0231130104 , p. 31.
  2. ^ On the Law Which Has Regulated the Introduction of New Species . In: Annals and Magazine of Natural History . 2nd Series, Volume 16, pp. 184-196, London 1855; on-line
  3. ↑ On the Natural History of the Aru Islands . In: The Annals and Magazine of Natural History . 2nd Series, Supplement to Volume 20, pp. 473-485, London 1857; on-line
  4. ↑ Eve-Marie Engels p. 87
  5. ^ Charles Darwin to Alfred Russel Wallace, May 1, 1857, Letter 2086 in The Darwin Correspondence Project (accessed January 5, 2009).
  6. ↑ Charles Darwin to Alfred Russel Wallace, December 8, 1855, letter 1792 in The Darwin Correspondence Project (accessed January 6, 2009).
  7. ^ Edward Blyth to Charles Darwin, December 22, 1857, Letter 2192 in The Darwin Correspondence Project (accessed January 6, 2009).
  8. ^ Thomas Robert Malthus: An Essay on the Principle of Population, as it Affects the Future Improvement of Society with Remarks on the Speculations of Mr. Godwin, M. Condorcet, and Other Writers . London 1798; PDF online
  9. ^ Wallace, My Life , Volume 1, p. 191
  10. ↑ Faith Law, p. 351
  11. ↑ Charles Darwin to Charles Lyell, June 18, 1858, Letter 2285 in The Darwin Correspondence Project (accessed January 6, 2009).
  12. ↑ Charles Darwin to Charles Lyell, [25. June 1858], Letter 2294 in The Darwin Correspondence Project (accessed January 6, 2009).
  13. ↑ Charles Darwin to Asa Gray, September 5 [1857], Letter 2136 in The Darwin Correspondence Project (accessed January 6, 2009).
  14. ↑ Charles Darwin to Joseph Dalton Hooker, [29. June 1858], Letter 2297 in The Darwin Correspondence Project (accessed January 6, 2009).
  15. ↑ Desmond / Moore, p. 533
  16. ↑ Joseph Dalton Hooker and Charles Lyell to the Linnean Society, June 30, 1858, [httphttp: //www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/? DocId = letters / DCP-LETT-2299.xml Brief 2299] in The Darwin Correspondence Project (accessed January 6, 2009).
  17. ^ Derek Partridge: Further details concerning the Darwin-Wallace presentation to the Linnean Society in 1858, including its submission on July 1, not June 30 . In: Journal of Natural History . Volume 50, number 15-16, 2016, pp. 1035-1044 ( doi: 10.1080 / 00222933.2015.1091102 )
  18. ^ On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely From the Original Type . In: Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society: Zoology . Volume 3, No. 9, pp. 53-62, London 1858; on-line
  19. ^ Alfred Russel Wallace to Joseph Dalton Hooker, October 8, 1858, Letter 2337 in The Darwin Correspondence Project (accessed January 6, 2009).
  20. ↑ a b On the Tendency ... p. 54
  21. ↑ On the Tendency… pp. 54–55
  22. ↑ a b On the Tendency ... p. 55
  23. ↑ On the Tendency… pp. 56–57
  24. ↑ a b On the Tendency ... p. 57
  25. ↑ On the Tendency ... p. 58
  26. ↑ a b On the Tendency ... p. 59
  27. ↑ On the Tendency ... p. 61
  28. ↑ On the Tendency ... p. 62
  29. ↑ Thomas Boyd: (Review of) On the Tendency of Species to Form Varieties . In: The Zoologist . Volume 17, pp. 6357-6359, London 1859; on-line
  30. ↑ Arthur Hussey: (Review of) On the Tendency of Species to Form Varieties . In: The Zoologist . Volume 17, pp. 6474-6475, London 1859; on-line
  31. ↑ Barbara G. Beddall: Wallace. Darwin, and the Theory of Natural Selection . In: Journal of the History of Biology . Volume 1, No. 2, pp. 261-323, 1968
  32. ^ H. Lewis McKinney: Wallace and Natural Selection . Yale University Press, New Haven & London 1972
  33. ^ Arnold Brackman: A Delicate Arrangement. The Strange Case of Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace . Times Books, New York 1980
  34. ^ John Langdon Brooks: Just before the Origin. Alfred Russel Wallace's Theory of Evolution . iUniverse 1984
  35. ^ Peter J. Bowler: Alfred Russel Wallace's Concept of Variation . In: Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences . Volume 31, No. 1, pp. 17-29, 1976; on-line
  36. ↑ Malcolm J. Kottler: Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace: Two Decades of Debate over Natural Selection . In: David Kohn (Ed.): The Darwinian Heritage: Including Proceedings of the Charles Darwin Centenary Conference, Florence Center for the History and Philosophy of Science . Princeton University Press, Princeton 1985, ISBN 0691083568 .
  37. ↑ Barbara G. Beddall: Darwin and Divergence: The Wallace Connection . In: Journal of the History of Biology . Volume 21, No. 1, pp. 1-68, 1988; doi : 10.1007 / BF00125793
  38. ↑ Kutschera, pp. 350–351
  39. ^ Alfred Russel Wallace to Charles Darwin, May 29 [1864], Letter 4514 in The Darwin Correspondence Project (accessed January 6, 2009).
  40. ^ Adolf Bernhard Meyer: How was Wallace led to the Discovery of Natural Selection? . In: Nature Volume 52, p. 415, 1895; doi : 10.1038 / 052415a0
  41. ↑ Natural Selection and Tropical Nature; Essays on Descriptive and Theoretical Biology . Macmillan & Co., London & New York 1891, p. 27
  42. ^ Alfred Russel Wallace: The Dawn of a Great Discovery (My Relations With Darwin in Reference to the Theory of Natural Selection) . In: Black and White . Volume 25, p. 78, January 1903; on-line
  43. ^ Alfred Russel Wallace: My Life: A Record of Events and Opinions . Chapman & Hall, Ld., London 1905, Volume 1, p. 363

Web links

This article was added to the list of excellent articles on January 31, 2009 in this version .