Alfred Russel Wallace: From Natural Selection to Natural Theology

Intelligent Design the Future

Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture

Science, Philosophy, Astronomy, Society & Culture, Life Sciences

4 • 993 Ratings

🗓️ 15 September 2023

⏱️ 13 minutes

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Summary

2023 marks the bicentennial of the birth of Alfred Russel Wallace, co-founder with Charles Darwin of the theory of evolution by natural selection. Unlike Darwin, Wallace thought that biology, chemistry, and cosmology proclaimed clear evidence of intelligent design. On this episode of ID the Future out of the vault, we're celebrating the life and achievements of one of the godfathers of intelligent design. Host Michael Keas begins a conversation with historian Michael Flannery about his book Nature’s Prophet: Alfred Russel Wallace and His Evolution from Natural Selection to Natural Theology. The book traces the intellectual history of Wallace, who is credited with independently proposing the theory of evolution by natural selection. Darwin insisted on a purely materialistic version of the theory, but as Wallace studied the evidence, he grew convinced that intelligent design also played a role in the history of life, particularly in the origin of humans. Though not a religious person, he broke with the rising scientism of his day to argue that there must be some “overruling intelligence” behind nature. This is Part 1 of a 3-part interview.

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0:00.0	Welcome to ID the future, a podcast about evolution and intelligent design.
0:15.0	I'm your host Mike Keys.
0:18.0	Today we're going to speak with another Mike.
0:21.0	Mike Flannery, who is Professor E. Meredith of the University of Alabama
0:27.6	at Birmingham. He holds degrees in library science from the University of Kentucky and history from
0:34.9	Cal State University Dominguez Hills. He has published extensively in
0:40.6	medical history and bioethics winning the prestigious Edward Kramer's
0:46.3	award in 2001 from the American Institute for the History of Pharmacy. He's done a lot of work on a particular scientist, Alfred Russell Wallace.
0:58.4	Wallace was the co-discoverer alongside Darwin of the idea of natural selection, which of course was a
1:05.8	central feature of Darwin's theory of evolution. I'm really excited to engage
1:11.6	Mike in conversation today because he's just come out with a new book on Wallace with the University of Alabama Press and it's called nature's profit.
1:23.0	Alfred Russell Wallace and his evolution from natural selection to natural theology.
1:30.0	Welcome, Mike, to the show.
1:32.0	Thank you, Mike.
1:33.0	Now that's quite a title, especially the Prophet in the title.
1:37.0	A Prophet we typically think of as one who publicly reads and interprets a text.
1:43.1	But in this case, you probably have the, what,
1:46.7	sort of like the text of nature in mind?
1:49.4	Exactly.
1:50.2	If you look at the word profit, you can have a number of different meanings for it,
1:56.4	whether it's being translated from the equivalent in Hebrew, but more particularly I have mine the Greek equivalent of the word prophet, which was
2:07.8	an interpreter of text. And what I want to suggest by this title is that Wallace was reading the text of nature.
	...

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