Tim Flannery, “Here on Earth”
Wallace beats Darwin
A Summary by Stewart Brand
The great insight of natural selection was published simultaneously by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace in 1858, Flannery pointed out, but their interpretations of the insight then diverged.
Darwin’s harsh view of “survival of the fittest” led too easily to social Darwinism, eugenics societies, neo-classical economics, and an overly reductionist focus on the “selfish gene.” Wallace, by contrast, focused on the tendency of evolution to generate…