Race, Sex and the ‘Earthly Paradise’: Wallace versus Darwin on Human Evolution and Prospects

Abstract

There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved (Darwin, Origin of Species) key differences of view that arose between these figures from the mid-1860s onwards -with the emphasis on human distinctiveness, racial and gender divisions, and the future prospects of human kind.Race, sex and the 'earthly paradise'

History of the “Human Sciences” and Wallace’s Scientific Voyage in the Amazon: Notes on Historiographical Absences

“…For this reason, they have no utility for historiographical analysis, but illustrate how the absence in Set A of inquiries into Wallace's ethnographic data may reflect on the appropriation of the historical image of this scientific journey in other works that may seek to deal with it. Brotman (2001), Lyons (2009), Benton (2010, Lowrey (2010) and Flannery (2018) also compose Set C, but amidst the tending absence referred to allow to make brief notes. Brotman (2001) has one of the few works dedicated to Wallace's connection with Victorian Anthropology, which has as material the naturalist's collected data and speculations regarding the human perceptions of sound.…”