I strongly second this opinion. As someone who recently read "The
Malay Archipelago" and is now making herself read "Origins" as kind
of a bicentennial pilgrimage (akin to wearing a hair shirt or
self-flagellation?), regardless of who first "discovered" evolution,
Wallace is by far the better writer. Malay Archipelago is also great
travel literature, with many of his
liberal-at-the-time-but-maybe-not-pc-now observations on colonialism
and the cultures of various tribes that he stayed with. He was
viewing human variation much as he did variation in the rest of the
fauna he encountered. In addition to labeling where his specimens
were captured (unlike Darwin), actually being able to identify what
he collected with no formal training (unlike Darwin), and his
knowledge of fossils and geologic processes, he paid attention to
indigenous knowledge of animals and actually documented the numerous
languages spoken among the Indonesian islands as another line of
evidence for tracking historical migrations of animal species.
At 11:25 AM 2/19/2009, Thomas Shannon wrote:
Oh, what the heck... might as well chime in on this thread as well :)
One of my personal favorites, partially due to my childhood spent in
Sulawesi, is a seldom read book written by "that other evolution guy". Where
natural science meets high adventure in a tale far less "stuffy" than
'Voyage of the Beagle'... 'The Malay Archipelago' by Alfred Russel Wallace.
--
Tom Shannon, Ph.D.
Web: http://macropyga.googlepages.com
Phone: 706-613-7443
Yetta Jager
Environmental Sciences Division
Oak Ridge National Laboratory
P.O. Box 2008, MS 6036
Oak Ridge, TN 37831-6036 USA
For packages, please replace "P.O. Box 2008" with "Bethel Valley Road".
OFFICE: 865/574-8143 FAX: 865/576-3989
Work email: [email protected] Home email: [email protected]
My webpage: http://www.esd.ornl.gov/~zij/
Fish and Wildlife Modelling:
http://www.esd.ornl.gov/research/ecol_management/fish_wildlife_modeling
