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Alfred Russel Wallace on the Web


Alfred Russel Wallace’s writings are now online, just as Charles Darwin’s are. See here for the BBC News story.
Those interested particularly in Wallace’s teleological views on nature, which starkly contrast with those of his materialistic colleague Darwin, should read his “New Thoughts on Evolution” which is also available in full at www.AlfredWallace.org; just click on “Biography” at the home page with the big beetle. It is reproduced too as Appendix C in my book Alfred Russel Wallace: A Rediscovered Life (Discovery Institute Press), noted on that same website. In fact, there’s a wealth of other information on Wallace at the sign of the beetle.
An interesting companion to Wallace’s “New Thoughts on Evolution” can be found in my Alfred Russel Wallace’s Theory of Intelligent Evolution (rev. ed.). In Appendix B of that book, “A Theologian/Scientist Looks at the World of Life,” you will find Rev. John Magens Mello’s detailed summary of Wallace’s 1910 book on how nature gives unmistakable evidence of “creative power, directive mind and ultimate purpose.”
Writing in 1911, Mello showed the true teleology of Wallace’s intelligent evolution (not the strained special pleadings and Darwinian apologetics promoted by Karl Giberson and Ken Miller’s brand of theistic evolution), demonstrating that Wallace was an early pioneer of modern intelligent design. This essay by Mello is important but very hard to find; the original copy is in Wallace’s personal library at the Edinburgh University Library and as far as I know my book is the only place it has ever been reproduced.