Wallace’s early work took him across the globe in his pursuit of specimens and civilisations. His scientific theories relating to the ‘equality of intellect and moral character across human beings, past and present’ made him very unpopular in an era of class and status. The population and scientific community as a whole were not prepared to accept these statements that challenged the more favoured opinion that past civilisations were unintelligent and savage. These new theories that reminded civilisation of its roots were not welcome.
During Wallace’s era the boundaries of science were quite rigid in what was considered to be of scientific interest or merit. The success of a theory depended on how closely it related to reality. In addition to these constraints, anything deemed to be questioning religion or the nature of being were dismissed as blasphemous. Wallace sought to move these boundaries and despite being a highly regarded scientist at the time, he embarked on a quest to understand human evolution through non-divine principles. Due to the scientific and religious boundaries of the time, his work was not always well received. Wallace stated that natural selection was the basis for human evolution, and as such implied that humans were animals from a prehistoric point of view. Although Wallace approached this theory from a scientific perspective his work was not as carefully thought out and presented as Darwin’s. As a result Wallace’s reputation as a scientist was becoming increasingly damaged, allowing Darwin to take centre stage. However it was not these views that were to be Wallace’s ultimate downfall. Despite the religious connotations of his work it was still mainly received with interest and not too much opposition. Sources at the time began to reveal that Wallace had begun to get involved in one of the biggest taboo areas of his era, the spiritual and supernatural. As a result of this new ‘scientific’ interest Wallace was seen to have ‘lost cast terribly’ (Colp 1992, p.11). Within the scientific community of the day, the supernatural was regarded as a nonsense area that held no reason for study and was clearly outside the defined boundaries. Wallace was nearly ostracised for his unorthodox beliefs (white and gribbin 1995, p233) and his reputation as a scientist was again put into question. Sources reveal that the general opinion of Wallace was that he had become ‘misguided’ and was lead by the ‘nonsense’ of spiritualism.
Wallace’s new found interest was to increasingly affect his scientific principles and research. In a complete u-turn to his earlier work Wallace began to seek the origins of the mind ‘among supernatural beings’. He then went on further to argue that neither the mind nor all the human bodily features could have evolved using the principles of natural selection. His reasoning for this is that some human development happened before it was needed, i.e. not entirely through natural selection. The scientific community of the time clearly lost faith with Wallace during this period as he had extended the boundaries of science too far. His faith in the supernatural drove a permanent wedge between himself and the definition of science and placed him on an opposing platform to his old colleague Darwin.
The final blow to Wallace’s scientific reputation came when he appeared publicly at a court hearing to provide scientific backing that the séance’s he had witnessed were genuine phenomenon. Darwin was financially backing the defence that stated it was all a hoax and therefore could be scientifically explained. The séance’s were proved to be fake leaving Wallace’s scientific reputation in tatters and he resigned as chair of the anthropology department. This was a clear victory to those scientists who argued that the supernatural had no place in scientific research and the boundaries of science were restored, with Wallace on the outside. Wallace’s replacement as chair confined Wallace to the shadows by issuing a warning that if ‘anyone was to travel outside the lines of scientific evidence’ then they would be dealt with directly.
Throughout his scientific career Wallace was considered a rebel in his approach but still commanded respect within his field. However his beliefs in spiritualism and publicly opposed scientific interest in the supernatural were to be his downfall. After the court case his already fragile reputation became irreparably damaged and he became ostracised. In his pursuit of scientific discovery he moved the boundaries of his era and challenged previously taboo subjects, but ultimately went too far in his support of the supernatural. His inclusion of Selection, Spiritualism and Socialism was ahead of his time and judging him from a modern day perspective his views are a great deal less radical. It is clear that the current boundaries of science are more fluid and open to change than they were in Wallace’s era.
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