Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
Speaker 2: name is Robert Lamb and.
Speaker 1: I am Joe McCormick.
Speaker 2: And as I mentioned in at least a couple of
Speaker 2: previous episodes of the show. Over the summer of this year,
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty five, my family traveled to Indonesia for
Speaker 2: some snorkeling, and in learning all about the local environment
Speaker 2: of Raja Ampat, the guides kept mentioning an individual by
Speaker 2: the name of Alfred Russell Wallace, as well as the
Speaker 2: faunal boundary named in his honor, the Wallace Line. In fact,
Speaker 2: I would say that Wallace was invoked, one way or
Speaker 2: another nearly as much as Darwin was invoked on my
Speaker 2: visit to the Galapagos Islands in a couple of years prior. So, yeah, Wallace,
Speaker 2: the Wallas line I mentioned a lot in terms of
Speaker 2: just describing what was happening in the natural world around
Speaker 2: us and in Indonia at large.
Speaker 1: That's a funny comparison, because, of course, if you know
Speaker 1: one thing about Alfred Russell Wallace, it is probably that
Speaker 1: he was the other guy to come up with a
Speaker 1: version of the theory of evolution by natural selection around
Speaker 1: the same time that Darwin did. Though Darwin tends to
Speaker 1: get most of the credit, and I think in many
Speaker 1: ways people understand Darwin to have articulated a more rigorous
Speaker 1: form of it. Wallace essentially had the same idea around
Speaker 1: the same time.
Speaker 2: And to be clear that they knew each other, and
Speaker 2: in fact, Alfred Russell Wallace greatly looked up to Charles
Speaker 2: Darwin and they were on friendly terms their entire life,
Speaker 2: even though they disagreed on some key issues here and there.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, actually the version of the book that I
Speaker 1: was reading, so it's Wallace's book the Malay Archipelago, or
Speaker 1: where he's writing about his travels and observations in that
Speaker 1: region of the world. The edition of that book that
Speaker 1: I was reading is actually dedicated to Charles Darwin. Charles Darwin,
Speaker 1: author of the Origin of Species. I dedicate this book
Speaker 1: not only as a token of personal esteem and friendship,
Speaker 1: but also to express my deep admiration for his genius
Speaker 1: and his works. So it's elaborate. It seems like no
Speaker 1: heart feelings.
Speaker 2: There, right, right. It's also been pointed out that you know,
Speaker 2: they knew what each other were up to around the
Speaker 2: same time, and in Wallace's work and Wallace's ideas kind
Speaker 2: of poked Darwin and got him to sort of realize, oh,
Speaker 2: I really need to push forward with on the Origin
Speaker 2: of Species and maybe not focus on other projects at
Speaker 2: this very.
Speaker 1: Moment, stop collecting beatles, write the book.
Speaker 2: Yes, so we'll be talking more about Alfred Russell Wallace
Speaker 2: here shortly. But as for the Wallace line, I'm gonna
Speaker 2: go ahead and throw out the short answer of what
Speaker 2: this is and we'll get into it more later in
Speaker 2: this episode and in the next episode. But basically, it
Speaker 2: represents the place between the Indonesian islands of Bali and
Speaker 2: Lombac where the Australian and Asian faunas separate. So it
Speaker 2: separates the Indonesian archipelago between the parts influenced by Asian
Speaker 2: fauna and the parts influenced by Australian fauna. So you know, rhinos, elephants,
Speaker 2: tigers on one side, kangaroos, monitor lizards, and koalas on
Speaker 2: the other.
Speaker 1: Yes, exactly, with some caveats that we will discuss as
Speaker 1: we move on throughout the series.
Speaker 2: So let's talk a bit about Alfred Russell Wallace here.
Speaker 2: You can look up images of the man illustrations and photographs,
Speaker 2: who is, of course a nineteenth century naturalist, explorer, traveler,
Speaker 2: academic writer, and totally look the part, you know, you know,
Speaker 2: English beardy guy who's out there in the wild exploring things,
Speaker 2: or you know, back at home in his study writing
Speaker 2: about them.
Speaker 1: I was almost going to say, if Darwin is Almond Joy,
Speaker 1: Wallace looks like Mounds. He just looks like a kind
Speaker 1: of like, I don't know, a less crunchy version of Darwin,
Speaker 1: kind of a softer, smoother text here.
Speaker 2: You get. You could definitely say that, and it holds
Speaker 2: up in many ways, but in other ways, as we'll discuss,
Speaker 2: Alfred Russell Wallace was kind of the Almond Joy to
Speaker 2: Darwin's Mounds. Okay, so yeah he let. Alfred Russell Wallace
Speaker 2: lived eighteen twenty three through nineteen thirteen, so long lived
Speaker 2: and fascinating individual. Multiple books have come out in recent
Speaker 2: years about him, but the one that I was mainly
Speaker 2: looking at is Radical by Nature, The Revolutionary Life of
Speaker 2: Alfred Russell Wallace, and this is by James T. Costa,
Speaker 2: came out in twenty twenty three, and as the author
Speaker 2: points out, yeah he was like a lot of people,
Speaker 2: he was a complicated individual, and there were certainly some
Speaker 2: seeming contradictions in the way he made sense of the world,
Speaker 2: the natural world, humanity's place in the cosmos, and so forth.
Speaker 2: So I'm going to break into a little bit of
Speaker 2: his biography here. I'm not going to go in to
Speaker 2: super detail, but I'm going to try and hit some
Speaker 2: of I think maybe the key points to getting like
Speaker 2: an overall understanding of who this guy was and some
Speaker 2: of the more interesting aspects of his life, and certainly
Speaker 2: those contradictions. So he was born to a middle class
Speaker 2: Scotch English family. A family on his father's side claimed
Speaker 2: to have an an ancestral connection to thirteenth century noted
Speaker 2: individual William Wallace, the Brave Heart guy for those of
Speaker 2: you relying on cinema for your history.
Speaker 1: For fans of accurate history.
Speaker 2: But yes, it claimed to be descended from William Wallace.
Speaker 2: Whether that's true or not, who knows. But he initially
Speaker 2: worked as a surveyor, but remained vitally interested in many
Speaker 2: aspects of the world. So he was luckily was interested
Speaker 2: in botany. He had all these other natural history pursuits
Speaker 2: that he was leaning into and at the same time
Speaker 2: he was also attending talks about socialism, about spiritualism. He
Speaker 2: was also interested by mesmerism.
Speaker 1: The practices of Franz Mesmer, also known as the theory
Speaker 1: of animal magnetism, not given any credit today.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, definitely, but also gets into the sort of
Speaker 2: the whole hypnosis sphere of things for sure. On top
Speaker 2: of this, he taught, he lectured, and of course he read.
Speaker 2: He was familiar with the writings of the time of
Speaker 2: Alexander von Humboldt, of Charles Darwin and many others, and
Speaker 2: in part due to their inspiration, he decided that he
Speaker 2: too would go out and see the world as a
Speaker 2: naturalist explorer.
Speaker 1: That's right, because, of course Darwin became famous for his
Speaker 1: writings about the Voyage of the be Goal, long before
Speaker 1: he actually published on the origin of species, before he
Speaker 1: had a theory of evolution, he just had his travelogue
Speaker 1: of observations or going around the world on a ship
Speaker 1: called the Beagle.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so that seems very much be the blueprint that
Speaker 2: Wallace has selected for his own life as well. And
Speaker 2: so he departs on a journey to South America, particularly
Speaker 2: focused on the Amazon, and he and his team they're
Speaker 2: studying the peoples of these areas the natural history of
Speaker 2: this region, and then on the return trip, their boat
Speaker 2: catches fire and they're stuck in a life raft for
Speaker 2: I believe ten days, and then eventually rescued. So he
Speaker 2: apparently lost all of his notes in a misadventure, this
Speaker 2: part of the adventure anyway, but he was still able
Speaker 2: to write multiple papers about about it when he got
Speaker 2: back to England. Also, I believe that a number of
Speaker 2: specimens that he'd collected had been shipped back ahead of time,
Speaker 2: so not everything was lost, but a lot was lost.
Speaker 1: On that ship.
Speaker 2: But he wasn't quite done with traveling and exploring, which
Speaker 2: may come as a shock because I don't know. I
Speaker 2: think a lot of us might think that once your
Speaker 2: ship has burned and you've wound up in the lifeboat
Speaker 2: for ten days, you might have had enough. But not
Speaker 2: so for Wallace.
Speaker 1: I'm going to read later in this episode from a
Speaker 1: chapter in the Malay Archipelago where he's talking about his
Speaker 1: experiences in Bali and Lombach. But he is not above
Speaker 1: complaining about the hardships he faces on his journeys and
Speaker 1: the difficulties he has in doing his work. But it
Speaker 1: is still admirable about that he can just like face
Speaker 1: that kind of thing and move right on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and in a way admirable that you can still
Speaker 2: be irritated by the little stuff later on, you know,
Speaker 2: after having wound up in the lifeboat for ten days,
Speaker 2: to still be able to say, ah, this desk is
Speaker 2: the worst.
Speaker 1: We're gonna get some epic complaints about it's hard to
Speaker 1: do science when everything is covered in ants.
Speaker 3: Oh, good goodness, I bet that is true.
Speaker 2: So anyway, he was not done traveling, and after he'd
Speaker 2: gotten back, and you know, he published a bit about
Speaker 2: his travels. He soon became fascinated with the Malay Archipelago
Speaker 2: or the Indo Australian Archapelago, consisting of what is now
Speaker 2: Indonesia and neighboring nations also known as the East Indies
Speaker 2: at the time. His subsequent travels in this region lasted
Speaker 2: from eighteen fifty four to eighteen sixty two, so eight years.
Speaker 2: And during this time he and his hired team collected
Speaker 2: thousands upon thousands of specimens to return home and go
Speaker 2: to various museums and institutions. I read a BBC article
Speaker 2: pointed out that the number here was something like one
Speaker 2: hundred and twenty five six hundred and sixty natural history specimens,
Speaker 2: including more than eighty three thousand beatles.
Speaker 1: So the majority of it was beatles. Yeah, it's just
Speaker 1: a lot of beetles, well over half. I mean.
Speaker 2: Also, it seems like the beatles would be relatively easy
Speaker 2: to send back. It's a lot easier to send back
Speaker 2: a beatle as opposed to say, a Komodo drag.
Speaker 1: That's true, And once again we're going to revisit why
Speaker 1: it was so hard sometimes to send things back.
Speaker 2: And of course he wrote about his travels as well,
Speaker 2: and this is when he wrote the eighteen sixty nine
Speaker 2: book The Malay Archipelago. This is the book you were
Speaker 2: talking about earlier, a book that would go on to
Speaker 2: become an international bestseller, describing all the islands he visited,
Speaker 2: the sorts of natural and human elements on each, a
Speaker 2: little bit of griping about the ants and the desks.
Speaker 2: But this is a book that resonated with people, you know,
Speaker 2: within his profession and within academia, but also outside of
Speaker 2: those boundaries. It was just a book that a lot
Speaker 2: of people read and it kind of made him a celebrity.
Speaker 2: Like it cemented his status and also ensured that he
Speaker 2: was able to keep going and keep writing later on,
Speaker 2: certainly after a few economic setbacks that he encountered.
Speaker 1: I found it captivating. There was while we were preparing
Speaker 1: to record this episode, I started reading a couple of
Speaker 1: chapters from this book, mainly because I was looking for
Speaker 1: Wallace to describe a scientific theory that we're going to
Speaker 1: get into, and I ended up not finding really any
Speaker 1: sycinct place where he does describe this theory. But I
Speaker 1: was just sucked into the writing because it's so interesting
Speaker 1: and so good and in many ways reminds me of
Speaker 1: his contemporary Darwin in that regard, who also I think,
Speaker 1: and this of course doesn't diminish from the validity of
Speaker 1: his theory. But also just like Darwin's books are a
Speaker 1: great read, they're like, they're very well written, and I
Speaker 1: would say Wallace is are.
Speaker 2: Two yeah, yeah, yeah. The Malay Archipelago of Volumes one
Speaker 2: and two, the subtitle here being The Land of the
Speaker 2: Orangutan and the Bird of Paradise, a narrative of travel
Speaker 2: with sketches of men and nature.
Speaker 1: Oh well, Rob, since he mentions the orangutan in the title,
Speaker 1: you should scroll down in the outline, because I included
Speaker 1: a screen capture of the page opposite the title page
Speaker 1: in the eighteen ninety edition I was reading, which has
Speaker 1: an illustration of a brutal orangutan attack where the orangutan
Speaker 1: is jumping on a guy and biting a chunk out
Speaker 1: of his arm. Skeptical this happens that much in nature?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's generally not the reputation they have today. It's
Speaker 2: so weird that this was the second time today I've
Speaker 2: had to think about the possibility of a killer orangutan. Because,
Speaker 2: as many of you are aware, the actor Terrence Stamp died,
Speaker 2: I believe over the weekend recently passed, and so there
Speaker 2: was some some chatter here and there about his past movies,
Speaker 2: and I was looking around and I realized he was
Speaker 2: in a nineteen eighty six film called Link that is
Speaker 2: about a super intelligent, malicious chimpanzee, but the chimpanzee is
Speaker 2: played by an orangutan.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, I thought you were going in a totally
Speaker 1: different direction. I saw the headline that Terence Stamp had died,
Speaker 1: which you know Neil before.
Speaker 2: So odd.
Speaker 1: And I don't mean any disrespect here, but I truly
Speaker 1: thought you were going to say he died in an
Speaker 1: orangutan attack.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, but yeah, this this illustration from the
Speaker 2: book definitely made me think of that. But it also
Speaker 2: has a rather sweet image of an orangutan here, So.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's both. Yeah. But from what I understand
Speaker 1: to Ragatan, it's not that they can't attack humans. I
Speaker 1: think they're known generally to only do this when like
Speaker 1: really threatened in some way. They're generally aggressive.
Speaker 2: One thing we know from the interaction between humans and
Speaker 2: animals is that if the animals can be provoked into
Speaker 2: attacking humans, we will have done it at some point
Speaker 2: or another.
Speaker 1: Yeah. But though, of course, some animals are much easier
Speaker 1: to provoke than others, and orangutans are not usually thought
Speaker 1: to be on the super high end of provokability. However,
Speaker 1: this illustration is sick.
Speaker 2: I mean, yeah, bite some right in the arm. But yeah.
Speaker 2: In this book, though, this is where he does get
Speaker 2: in a bit into the idea of the Wallace line.
Speaker 2: Now he didn't call it the Wallas line. I believe
Speaker 2: Darwin's bulldog Thomas Henry Huxley called it that in his honor,
Speaker 2: but he does get into the concept a little bit.
Speaker 1: Huxley also proposed some modifications to Wallace's original placement of
Speaker 1: the line.
Speaker 2: Now we get into the details in a bit, but
Speaker 2: basically the way that Costa describes it in his book
Speaker 2: is it was the realization that there was there was
Speaker 2: a growing realization quote, a growing awareness among naturalists that
Speaker 2: anomalist patterns of distribution might provide unique insights into the
Speaker 2: history of the planet geologically and climatologically. So so again,
Speaker 2: this was this was happening with Wallace, but this was
Speaker 2: happening in other parts of the world, with naturalists looking
Speaker 2: at at distribution data and saying, well, this is interesting,
Speaker 2: we have we have X going on here? Why going
Speaker 2: on here? What does this tell us about how the
Speaker 2: world works, About how species have moved around or been
Speaker 2: moved around, about some of the barriers and potential barriers
Speaker 2: to their movement and so forth.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and about the abiotic history of the planet, like
Speaker 1: the fact that the distribution of animals as you find
Speaker 1: them today can tell you things about the history of
Speaker 1: climate change on the planet, about ice ages and sea levels,
Speaker 1: and even about underlying geologic activity such as plate tectonics,
Speaker 1: which would not be you know, fully accepted as a
Speaker 1: theory I think until nineteen sixties or so much much later.
Speaker 2: So we mentioned the fact that he independently came up
Speaker 2: with the concept of evolution by natural selection around the
Speaker 2: same time as Darwin, and then Darwin kind of pushes
Speaker 2: ahead and gets on the origin of species out in
Speaker 2: some ways. Wallace was also an early environmentalist and his
Speaker 2: voice concern over humanity's impact on the planet, and he
Speaker 2: also engaged in a number of social activism causes during
Speaker 2: his life, including women's suffrage, land nationalization, and various sort
Speaker 2: of pacifist and anti militarism causes. But in an area
Speaker 2: that might seem rather contradictory to all of these scientific pursuits,
Speaker 2: he was also a spiritualist, and not just one in
Speaker 2: his non academic life, not just like okay, academic scientific academic,
Speaker 2: a naturalist by day and a spiritualist by night. No,
Speaker 2: he actively wrote on it and attempted to defend it
Speaker 2: in academic writings.
Speaker 1: Now, to clarify, in the context of these nineteenth century movements,
Speaker 1: when we say a spiritualist, that doesn't mean the same
Speaker 1: thing as like somebody who would say, oh I'm spiritual today,
Speaker 1: that would this means something more specific about like beliefs
Speaker 1: that you could contact the dead, or that you could
Speaker 1: that living persons could have communication with spirits or other
Speaker 1: beings other than living humans.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're talking about specifically here. We're talking about the
Speaker 2: sort of spiritualists that you would go to and there'd
Speaker 2: be a seance or there would you know, offer generally
Speaker 2: for money to help you connect with the spirits of
Speaker 2: the dead. The kind of people that Houdini did not like,
Speaker 2: the kind of people. If you watch The Gilded Age
Speaker 2: on television, the most recent season has included this element
Speaker 2: in its plot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's come up on the show before that. Actually,
Speaker 1: a surprising number of people from history in nineteenth century
Speaker 1: you're in America, people who are in many ways kind
Speaker 1: of admirable for their time, really got into spiritualism, really
Speaker 1: thought you could talk to the dead.
Speaker 2: Or other Conan Doyle is a prime example of this.
Speaker 2: I really got into it late in life. So you know,
Speaker 2: it's it's one of those one of those things where
Speaker 2: there are multiple pieces to it. As I think we've
Speaker 2: probably discussed on the past. On one level, you do
Speaker 2: have people actively selling you this stuff, and on the
Speaker 2: other you have a genuine desire on the part of
Speaker 2: the bereave to connect with the people they miss, and
Speaker 2: you know, there's in a perfect world, there's probably a
Speaker 2: balance there between the two where no one's exploited and
Speaker 2: everyone's life is made a little easier. But we don't
Speaker 2: live in such a world, and so things will often
Speaker 2: lean in the wrong direction there. But again, not just
Speaker 2: a naturalist by day and a spiritualist by night, Like
Speaker 2: I say, he wrote papers where he defended spiritualism and
Speaker 2: so forth.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Now, on the other hand, he opposed flat earth pseudoscience
Speaker 2: of the day and wrote against that, and then going
Speaker 2: back to the other side of things, he did involve
Speaker 2: himself in anti vaccination efforts of the day. This would
Speaker 2: have been, I believe measles the vaccine that he was
Speaker 2: opposed to. But in his opposition seems to have been
Speaker 2: a mix of like sort of personal choice, like I
Speaker 2: don't want to take it that. You know, we see
Speaker 2: similar attitudes today. But also it seemed to factor into
Speaker 2: his view that like nature was perfectly balanced already and
Speaker 2: therefore there was no reason to tip the scales as
Speaker 2: far as diseases go. I don't know. I would say
Speaker 2: that the counter argument to that is that as far
Speaker 2: as diseases and humanity go, that everything is already out
Speaker 2: of balance, and therefore you need the vaccines in place.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, I mean a lot of the times people
Speaker 1: prefer one course of action over another because it's more natural.
Speaker 1: It just kind of reflects a vague and not very
Speaker 1: well thought out understanding of what the concept natural really means.
Speaker 1: I mean, there are a lot of things that just
Speaker 1: kind of seem natural to you, but then you investigate
Speaker 1: them and realize they're actually very much the product of
Speaker 1: human intervention in some way.
Speaker 2: Well, his distinction is natural. It doesn't mean I want
Speaker 2: for myself.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is natural to just like all get disease
Speaker 1: and die. Sure, I mean is that good?
Speaker 2: So yeah, he was. He was an interesting guy in this.
Speaker 2: His spiritualism especially did put him in odds with many
Speaker 2: of his fellow scientists, and even when it came to
Speaker 2: evolution binatural selection, he argued for a kind of evolution
Speaker 2: driven by the divine, essentially that animals evolved via natural
Speaker 2: selection and humans did to a point, and then some
Speaker 2: other force takes over something, something divine. He didn't actually
Speaker 2: call it a creator, because interestingly enough, he himself was
Speaker 2: a religious skeptic, so he at different times self identified
Speaker 2: as agnostic or just a non religious person, and so
Speaker 2: he referred to this as an overruling intelligence.
Speaker 1: It's interesting how if you go back just to you know,
Speaker 1: one hundred years or so, you get a lot of
Speaker 1: fine distinctions in religious beliefs that where the distinctions don't
Speaker 1: make a lot of sense to people today, but they
Speaker 1: you know, they made sense to people at the time.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, he was a firm believer that he thought
Speaker 2: without this overruling intelligence becoming involved, there's no way that
Speaker 2: the human brain, or human speech organs, or even our
Speaker 2: hands or our bipedal posture could have possibly evolved. Like
Speaker 2: there had to be some other force, you know, like
Speaker 2: a monolith getting involved in our advancement. Yeah, and you
Speaker 2: know that's kind of a sticky idea. That's why we
Speaker 2: see it all over our science fiction, right Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know it's still a common idea. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is formally argued by creationists today, but I mean
Speaker 1: it's still it's naturally appealing to look at something very
Speaker 1: complex and think, well, that couldn't have just happened. Of course,
Speaker 1: I think that the leap that you're not able to
Speaker 1: make is that it happened gradually and by degrees.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, And you know, I often think about this.
Speaker 2: I think that, okay, you know, a much softened version
Speaker 2: of this is is maybe quite reasonable, in a quite
Speaker 2: reasonable way to balance science and religious faith. You know, say, well, okay,
Speaker 2: evolution by natural selection is the method by which the
Speaker 2: divine creates life? And why not because it seems like
Speaker 2: the very sort of elaborate, long term method that an
Speaker 2: eternal and all powerful entity unconstrained by time might very
Speaker 2: well employ.
Speaker 1: Sure, I mean, I think that's what millions of people
Speaker 1: believe today. Yeah, nothing wrong with that.
Speaker 2: Yeah. On the other hand, it is worth stressing that
Speaker 2: when you get into the particulars of this sort of stance,
Speaker 2: saying well, okay, everything evolves, but then humans evolve differently,
Speaker 2: human brains are different because of some divine force, you
Speaker 2: can get into some really nasty and even racist views
Speaker 2: on human evolution by deciding just where and how you
Speaker 2: want to deploy this theory.
Speaker 1: Ah, yeah, okay, So appealing to supernatural force is to
Speaker 1: inject a certain specialness into you know, certain you know,
Speaker 1: animals on Earth, and certainly there's nothing that prevents somebody
Speaker 1: from thinking that some humans are more special than others.
Speaker 2: Right, right, So I'm not saying that was Wallace's whole deal,
Speaker 2: but those are kind of those are the waters you
Speaker 2: can easily creep into by pursuing this line of thinking. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 2: with Wallace, it certainly put him in odds with many
Speaker 2: of his fellow scientists, including Charles Darwin himself, who who
Speaker 2: worried that Wallace was hurting their cause by adding this
Speaker 2: caveat to his own take on natural selection, and according
Speaker 2: to Tacosta, even wrote to him and said, quote, I
Speaker 2: hope you have not murdered too completely your own and
Speaker 2: my child, referring to the theory of natural selection. Again, these
Speaker 2: two were friends, and Wallace, you know, continued to respect
Speaker 2: Darwin the rest of his life. But yeah, Darwin rather
Speaker 2: bluntly saying I really wish you hadn't put it like that,
Speaker 2: you know, trying to get this theory of natural selection
Speaker 2: out the door and accepted at this point, and you're
Speaker 2: perhaps muddying the waters by coming in with this, you know,
Speaker 2: your unique spiritualist take on everything.
Speaker 1: Yeah, though, I guess one thing that's supposed to be
Speaker 1: good about being friends is that you can be frank
Speaker 1: with each other.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, but yeah, Wall this seems to have
Speaker 2: been a guy who you know, had, as I think
Speaker 2: Costa puts it, at one point, he had a lot
Speaker 2: of adventures and a lot of opinions in his life.
Speaker 2: He was real quick to weigh in on things, and
Speaker 2: well into his eighties he was still doing this, you know, still,
Speaker 2: I mean, I think until the end of his life
Speaker 2: pretty much, you know, constantly writing letters, writing his own
Speaker 2: take on different topics, and in fact, in nineteen oh
Speaker 2: four he put out the book Man's Place in the Universe,
Speaker 2: and in that he takes his own serious look at
Speaker 2: the idea of life on other planets, especially Mars, because this,
Speaker 2: of course is the time when we have the whole
Speaker 2: Canals of Mars idea out there in everyone's minds, you know,
Speaker 2: the idea that we've seen things on Mars and what
Speaker 2: of their canals, and we get this built up idea
Speaker 2: of their people of some sort on Mars and they're
Speaker 2: a dying race and they're having to build these canals
Speaker 2: and so forth. It really captivated everyone's imagination.
Speaker 1: We've talked about that at some length on episodes in
Speaker 1: the past, and now I don't remember which ones did
Speaker 1: that possibly come up in our discussion of the ashen
Speaker 1: light of Venus. It might have, Yes, that's my best guess.
Speaker 1: So this was a nineteen oh four book and I
Speaker 1: have not read it, But Costa gives his own breakdown
Speaker 1: of it and points out that, okay, he's basically opposing
Speaker 1: the idea of life on Mars on two levels. On
Speaker 1: one level, he is making a very logic based counter argument.
Speaker 1: He himself was an astronomer and pointing out things about
Speaker 1: what was known.
Speaker 2: About Mars versus Earth at the time. He just did
Speaker 2: not think it was likely that this was true, and
Speaker 2: of course, as we would find out very shortly thereafter,
Speaker 2: it was and true. But as Costa points out, it
Speaker 2: also ran opposite to his belief that humans had a
Speaker 2: privileged place in the cosmos, that we were the end
Speaker 2: result of not only earthly processes but also cosmic processes
Speaker 2: as well. This getting into the whole idea of humans
Speaker 2: were special because some sort of force beyond us had
Speaker 2: pushed us into these like upper levels of evolution that
Speaker 2: were denied to you know, or other organic life forms
Speaker 2: on Earth.
Speaker 1: So the overruling intelligence of Wallace's view of the universe
Speaker 1: would not have allowed life on Mars.
Speaker 2: Right, right, The whole idea is that we're alone and
Speaker 2: we're special. If the if, if we've got life next
Speaker 2: door as well, then that just destroys the whole argument.
Speaker 2: So that seems like it might have also been there,
Speaker 2: you know, pushing his his criticism of this idea. Though
Speaker 2: to be clear, this book, he's also apparently very polite
Speaker 2: in his takedown of the Martian canal hypotheses because he
Speaker 2: you know, he's ultimately you know, friends or at least
Speaker 2: correspondence with everyone that's talking about it at the time.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm sorry if I misunderstood. Did he also have
Speaker 1: like observation based or empirical reasons for doubting canals on
Speaker 1: Mars or.
Speaker 2: It wasn't just based in his worldview, But no doubt
Speaker 2: that worldview was also pushing him to make all of
Speaker 2: these arguments. You know.
Speaker 1: Okay, so he was right, but for some of the
Speaker 1: right and some of the wrong reasons.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that seems to be the take on it. But again,
Speaker 2: I haven't actually read the book in question, So again
Speaker 2: that's just a brief overview of the of the the
Speaker 2: man here. I think it highlights some of the inherent
Speaker 2: contradictions that are present there, that ultimately are going to
Speaker 2: be present in anybody. But maybe you're a little more
Speaker 2: expressed in the biography of Alfred Russell Wallace.
Speaker 1: Yeah, very interesting character. And so I guess now should
Speaker 1: we move on to talking a bit about the Wallace
Speaker 1: line at least what the concept is, and then I
Speaker 1: think maybe in part two we'll get into some more
Speaker 1: depth about it, nuances that have been added to it
Speaker 1: since the time of Wallace. Yeah, all right, So we
Speaker 1: alluded to this earlier, but to recenter us here. In
Speaker 1: addition to independently discovering a version of the theory of
Speaker 1: evolution by natural selection again around the same time Darwin did,
Speaker 1: Alfred Russell Wallace is also widely considered the founder of
Speaker 1: a field now known as biogeography, the study of how
Speaker 1: life is distributed over the surface of the Earth. Another
Speaker 1: way to put it is what lives where and why.
Speaker 1: By the way, you mentioned him earlier, but another important
Speaker 1: contributor to the early study of biogeography was the pre
Speaker 1: Darwinian German naturalist Alexander von Humboldt. Very interesting figure who
Speaker 1: we've talked about a good bit on the show before.
Speaker 1: I think one of the main contexts was a summer
Speaker 1: reading episode we did years ago where I was talking
Speaker 1: about a great biography of him by Andrea Wolfe called
Speaker 1: The Invention of Nature. Von Humboldt was important in helping
Speaker 1: to move the burgeoning natural sciences of the nineteenth century
Speaker 1: away from this long held Western view of nature as
Speaker 1: a fixed order of discrete entities with eternal roles defined
Speaker 1: by providence, and to replace that with a view of
Speaker 1: nature as a complex and changeable web of relationships, these
Speaker 1: interdependencies that are constantly in flux. Though unlike Darwin and Wallace,
Speaker 1: von Humboldt himself never fully embraced the idea that species
Speaker 1: themselves could evolve. His idea of change was more based
Speaker 1: on the environment and relationships between species. So Darwin and
Speaker 1: Wallace ended up going beyond von Humboldt. But anyway, as
Speaker 1: I said, biogeography is the study of what lives, where
Speaker 1: and why, and one of Wallace's most famous observations in
Speaker 1: biogeography is the Wallas line. The Wallas line is what's
Speaker 1: known as a biogeographical boundary line, specifically a faunal boundary.
Speaker 1: In this case, meaning a boundary with reference to animals,
Speaker 1: so it's an invisible border where you have one ecosystem
Speaker 1: of animal species on one side of the line and
Speaker 1: a very different collection of animals on the other. Animal
Speaker 1: populations are not usually divided by hard boundaries. Normally, as
Speaker 1: you wander toward the edge of an animal's population range,
Speaker 1: you will notice a gradual thinning out of the population,
Speaker 1: with the number of individuals becoming less and less dense,
Speaker 1: sometimes being replaced more and more gradually with examples of
Speaker 1: a different species in the same trophic niche meaning they
Speaker 1: compete for the same food resources, So you may be
Speaker 1: moving out of the range of one animal species and
Speaker 1: into the range of another, gradually gradually. In both cases.
Speaker 1: For the most part, the gea graphic range of an
Speaker 1: animal species does not end in a hard boundary, but
Speaker 1: in a soft and gradual one. But there are exceptions.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you kind of hit a wall where there is
Speaker 1: one set of animals over here and a pretty different
Speaker 1: set over there, and that is to a large extent
Speaker 1: what we find with Wallace's line, though, as we'll discuss,
Speaker 1: there are some exceptions to this rule and some major
Speaker 1: nuances added since Wallace first proposed this border in the
Speaker 1: eighteen sixties. In fact, basically all biogeographical boundaries are somewhat permeable.
Speaker 1: You will find exceptions to them, but they tend to
Speaker 1: denote starker divisions in biodiversity than you will find elsewhere
Speaker 1: in nature. So what's the story of the Wallas Line
Speaker 1: in particular. Well, the Wallas Line passes invisibly through the
Speaker 1: islands of the Malay Archipelago in the Strait between Borneo
Speaker 1: and Sulawesi, and then further southwest through the lesser Sunda Islands,
Speaker 1: cutting between the islands of Bali on the west and
Speaker 1: Lombach on the east.
Speaker 2: While we were in Indonesia, we were east of the
Speaker 2: Wallas Line, though we had to fly over it to
Speaker 2: get to Raja Ambat from Jakarta. I will stress though
Speaker 2: the pilot did not announce the crossing of the Wallace Line,
Speaker 2: not that they had to, but I just want to
Speaker 2: make it. And of course you can't see it.
Speaker 1: That's a plane, yeah, exactly, and there's nothing there to see.
Speaker 1: In fact, it's kind of it's remarkable how invisible it is.
Speaker 1: In a way. So I was speaking of the division
Speaker 1: between these multiple land masses Borneo and Sulawesi, and Lombock
Speaker 1: and Bali. The latter division is probably the most striking,
Speaker 1: because the Lombok Straight, which passes between Lombac and Bali,
Speaker 1: is in some places only a few dozen kilometers wide.
Speaker 1: Like if the air is clear, you can stand on
Speaker 1: the shore of one island and look across and see
Speaker 1: the other island. You see the higher elevations on the
Speaker 1: other island. So they're very close, and in terms of
Speaker 1: environmental conditions they're very similar. And yet when Alfred Russell
Speaker 1: Wallace studied the land animals and the birds of these islands,
Speaker 1: he noticed a pretty stark difference. Wallace writes about some
Speaker 1: of these observations in the book The Malay Archipelago, again
Speaker 1: first published in eighteen sixty nine. So the version of
Speaker 1: this book I was looking at is a scan of
Speaker 1: the eighteen ninety edition. That's the one with the sick
Speaker 1: illustration of the orangutan biting the guy. And Wallace writes
Speaker 1: that the islands of Bali and Lombach are most interesting
Speaker 1: actually because of two things. One of them is that
Speaker 1: he claims they're the only two islands of the whole
Speaker 1: archipelago in which the Hindu religion still maintains itself. And
Speaker 1: then he also says, quote they form the extreme points
Speaker 1: of the two great zoological divisions of the Eastern Hemisphere.
Speaker 1: For although so similar in external appearance and in all
Speaker 1: physical features, they differ greatly in their natural productions. So
Speaker 1: what's the difference in these natural productions between the two islands. Again,
Speaker 1: while there are exceptions and some nuances, will discuss later,
Speaker 1: the range of a ton of major animal groups essentially
Speaker 1: terminates at this tiny ocean gap. On the eastern side,
Speaker 1: in Lombach you will find native cockatoos and marsupials, the
Speaker 1: animals associated with Australia and New Guinea. And on the
Speaker 1: western side of the gap, in Bali and Borneo, you
Speaker 1: will not find those animals, not natively unless you know,
Speaker 1: you find some imported. Instead, you will find mostly the
Speaker 1: same animal groups that you find in the rest of Asia,
Speaker 1: including at least as of a few hundred years ago,
Speaker 1: before many of these animals were driven extinct. You would
Speaker 1: find tigers, rhinos, elephants, and bears. So you've got one
Speaker 1: on one side, one on the other, and then you've got,
Speaker 1: of course, some more trans yusitional areas we'll talk more
Speaker 1: in Part two. I think about the idea of a
Speaker 1: whole group of islands known as Wallace Sea that are
Speaker 1: thought of now as a kind of transitional island group.
Speaker 1: But on the island of Sulawesi you will also find
Speaker 1: more of a mix with some native Australian or Australasian
Speaker 1: fauna and some Asian fauna. Now, the question of why
Speaker 1: is really interesting, and that's something we're going to have
Speaker 1: to come back to. But first I just wanted to
Speaker 1: get some more color on Wallace himself and his travels
Speaker 1: in these islands, specifically his chapter in the Malay Archipelago
Speaker 1: on his visits to Bali and Lombach. He makes an
Speaker 1: interesting biographical note that his first visit to these islands
Speaker 1: in eighteen fifty six was quote somewhat involuntary. He was
Speaker 1: like trying to get a He's trying to get a
Speaker 1: ship to take him to Macassar on Sulawesi from Singapore,
Speaker 1: but he couldn't for some reason, and his journey got
Speaker 1: diverted to these islands at the east end of Java.
Speaker 1: And he writes that if he had been able to
Speaker 1: get the passage he wanted from Singapore, he probably never
Speaker 1: would have gone to them quote, and should have missed
Speaker 1: some of the most important discoveries of my whole expedition
Speaker 1: to the east.
Speaker 2: So just pure travel mishaps playing into again the most
Speaker 2: important discoveries of his career.
Speaker 1: So, Robert, are you cool if I read some passages
Speaker 1: from wallas here?
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's have it, Okay.
Speaker 1: This will give us a flavor of his writing and
Speaker 1: some of his experiences in Bali and Lombach, both those
Speaker 1: that inform the formulation of the idea of the Wallace line,
Speaker 1: and also just some interesting stuff he comes across. So,
Speaker 1: first of all, there's a passage where he's describing the
Speaker 1: terraced agriculture of Bali, where he says he says, quote,
Speaker 1: a slightly undulating plain extends from the seacoast about ten
Speaker 1: or twelve miles inland, where it is bounded by a
Speaker 1: fine range of wooded and cultivated hills. Houses and villages
Speaker 1: marked out by dense clumps of coconut palms, tamarin and
Speaker 1: other fruit trees are dotted about in every direction, while
Speaker 1: between them extend luxuriant rice grounds watered by an elaborate
Speaker 1: system of irrigation that would be the pride of the
Speaker 1: best cultivated parts of Europe. The whole surface of the
Speaker 1: country is divided into irregular patches, following the undulations of
Speaker 1: the ground, from many acres to a few perches in extent,
Speaker 1: each of which is itself perfectly level, but stands a
Speaker 1: few inches or several feet above or below those adjacent
Speaker 1: to it. Every one of those patches can be flooded
Speaker 1: or drained at will by means of a system of
Speaker 1: ditches and small channels into which are diverted the whole
Speaker 1: of streams that descend from the mountains. Every patch now
Speaker 1: bore crops in various stages of growth, some almost ready
Speaker 1: for cutting, and all in the most flourishing condition, and
Speaker 1: of the most exquisite green tints.
Speaker 2: Oh that's nice, I would say, oh succulent. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I found his writing style very vivid, like it really
Speaker 1: calls pictures to the mine way that a lot of
Speaker 1: older writing, especially you don't quite get that immediate connection
Speaker 1: to the visual imagination. Something about Wallace's style does for me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a sense of awe here as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, But anyway, from here, Wallace goes on to describe
Speaker 1: his attempts to collect a few specimens in Bali. So
Speaker 1: he says, in so well cultivated a country, it was
Speaker 1: not to be expected that I could do much in
Speaker 1: natural history. That kind of makes sense, right, Like it's
Speaker 1: harder to collect specimens from all of this well kept
Speaker 1: farm the farm, ye, yeah. And my ignorance of how
Speaker 1: important a locality this was for the elucidation of geographical
Speaker 1: distribution of animals caused me to neglect obtaining some specimens
Speaker 1: which I never met with again. One of these was
Speaker 1: a weaver bird with a bright yellow head, which built
Speaker 1: its bottle shaped nests by dozens on some trees near
Speaker 1: the beach. It was the Ploceus hypoxanthus, a native of Java,
Speaker 1: and here at the extreme limits of its range. Westerly
Speaker 1: I shot in preserved specimens of a wagtail, thrush, an oriole,
Speaker 1: and some starlings, all species found in Java, and some
Speaker 1: of them peculiar to that island. I also obtained some
Speaker 1: beautiful butterflies, richly marked with black and orange on a
Speaker 1: white ground, and which were the most abundant insects in
Speaker 1: the country Lanes. Among these was a new species which
Speaker 1: I have named Pieris tamar okay. So that's his experience
Speaker 1: in Bali. You know, he doesn't collect a lot of
Speaker 1: specimens because he doesn't know how significant this place is
Speaker 1: going to be. And he got here by accident anyway,
Speaker 1: didn't even expect to go here. Notices a few things,
Speaker 1: but it's all the western fauna. It's all the same
Speaker 1: kind of stuff you would see in Java, the same
Speaker 1: kind of stuff you would see grouped with other animal
Speaker 1: species generally in Asia. But then he moves on in
Speaker 1: his ship to Lombach, and he notes by the way
Speaker 1: that traversing the strait sometimes the weather or the chop
Speaker 1: in the strait can be pretty rough. And there's a
Speaker 1: story of him like pulling all of his things ashore
Speaker 1: and you know, being very grateful to get all of
Speaker 1: his specimens and bags and stuff on shore. And the
Speaker 1: locals tell him, oh, it's good that you did. The
Speaker 1: sea is hungry and it takes everything it can eat.
Speaker 2: Oh the South Sea Queen grabs.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So I was thinking of his loss of all
Speaker 1: his previous stuff from the other boat. But yeah. So
Speaker 1: he moves on to Lombach, and here he notes finding
Speaker 1: bird species that are not like the bird species on
Speaker 1: the other island. They are more similar to those found
Speaker 1: in Australia and New Guinea. He writes quote The country
Speaker 1: around was pretty and novel to me, consisting of abrupt
Speaker 1: volcanic hills enclosing flat valleys or open plains. The hills
Speaker 1: were covered with a dense scrubby bush of bamboos and
Speaker 1: prickly trees and shrubs. The plains were adorned with hundreds
Speaker 1: of noble palm trees, and in many places with a
Speaker 1: luxuriant shrubby vegetation. Birds were plentiful and very interesting, and
Speaker 1: I now saw for the first time many Australian forms
Speaker 1: that are quite absent from the islands westward. Small white
Speaker 1: cockatoos were abundant, and their loud screams, conspicuous white color,
Speaker 1: and pretty yellow crests rendered them a very important feature
Speaker 1: in the landscape. This is the most westerly point on
Speaker 1: the globe where any of the family are to be found.
Speaker 1: Some small honeysuckers of the genus to Lotus, and the
Speaker 1: strange mound maker Megapodius Gouldieye are also here, first met
Speaker 1: on the traveler's journey eastward. The megapodious birds, by the way,
Speaker 1: these are these You may have read about these before
Speaker 1: these mound builder birds that are native to Australia and
Speaker 1: New Guinea, where they will build mounds. All he describes
Speaker 1: actually in a passage, the locals telling him about how
Speaker 1: they build mounds out of anything they can get, garbage
Speaker 1: or whatever. And you know, the locals know what to
Speaker 1: look for in one of these mounds to know when
Speaker 1: there will be eggs in it that are good for snatching.
Speaker 1: In fact, I'll just read a passage from Wallace. He says,
Speaker 1: the mounds are to be met with here and there
Speaker 1: in dense thickets, and are great puzzles to strangers who
Speaker 1: cannot understand who can possibly have heaped together cartloads of
Speaker 1: rubbish in such out of the way places. And when
Speaker 1: they inquire of the natives, they are but little wiser,
Speaker 1: for it almost always appears to them the wildest romance
Speaker 1: to be told that it is done all by birds.
Speaker 1: Excuse me that it is all done by birds, But
Speaker 1: that does sound like the wildest romance. Now Here, I
Speaker 1: want to come to the part where Wallace describes the
Speaker 1: difficulties of the physical part of his work collecting and
Speaker 1: preserving specimens. I've alluded to this several times, but this
Speaker 1: passage really gripped me, so Wallace says quote. My collecting
Speaker 1: operations here were carried on under more than usual difficulties.
Speaker 1: One small room had to serve for eating, sleeping, and working,
Speaker 1: for storehouse and dissecting room. In it were no shelves, cupboards, chairs,
Speaker 1: or tables. Ants swarmed in nearly every part of it,
Speaker 1: and dogs, cats and fowls entered it at pleasure. Besides this,
Speaker 1: it was the parlor and reception room of my host,
Speaker 1: and I was obliged to consult his convenience and that
Speaker 1: of the numerous guests who visited us. My principal piece
Speaker 1: of furniture was a box, which served me as a
Speaker 1: dining table, a seat when skinning birds, and as the
Speaker 1: receptacle of the birds when skinned and dried. To keep
Speaker 1: them free from ants, we borrowed with some difficulty an
Speaker 1: old bench, the four legs of which, being placed in
Speaker 1: coconut shells filled with water, kept us tolerably free from
Speaker 1: these pests. The box and the bench were, however, literally
Speaker 1: the only places where anything could be put away, and
Speaker 1: they were generally well occupied by two insect boxes and
Speaker 1: about one hundred bird skins. In the process of drying
Speaker 1: it may therefore be easily conceived that when anything bulky
Speaker 1: or out of the common way was collected, the question
Speaker 1: where is it to be put? Was rather a difficult
Speaker 1: one to answer. All animal substances, moreover, require some time
Speaker 1: to dry thoroughly, emit a very disagreeable odor while doing so,
Speaker 1: and are particularly attractive to ants, flies, dogs, rats, cats,
Speaker 1: and other vermin, calling for especial cautions and constant supervision,
Speaker 1: which under the circumstances above described were impossible. Oh man,
Speaker 1: I was getting so stressed to just reading that, trying
Speaker 1: to think where to put the bird skin, where to
Speaker 1: put the dead whatever I just found? Where can it go?
Speaker 1: That it's not just going to be swarmed with ants?
Speaker 1: And the whole time you've got ants everywhere, and it's
Speaker 1: all stinking because you're skinning it and then hiding it
Speaker 1: in a box that's the only other thing in the
Speaker 1: room with you.
Speaker 2: In all manner of scavengers are coming into peek in
Speaker 2: and see what's going on with your dead animals. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it seems like quite an experience, and also Wallace quite
Speaker 2: a house guest to have a saying as well, Right.
Speaker 1: I mean, one thing he notes in at least the
Speaker 1: parts I was reading is he makes a special note
Speaker 1: of the hospitality he encounters everywhere he goes. Seems like
Speaker 1: he just keeps running into very nice, very helpful, accommodating people,
Speaker 1: and he's like, I was received very you know, with
Speaker 1: all this graciousness and all that. So I just get
Speaker 1: the feeling from reading that he's a nice guest to have.
Speaker 1: He's very appreciative, you know, very very polite. I think
Speaker 1: probably at.
Speaker 2: Least skins a lot of birds, collects a lot of beetles.
Speaker 1: But a nice guy does stink up your house really
Speaker 1: bad and they're already ants, but he probably attracts way
Speaker 1: way more. Yes, this is actually something I almost always
Speaker 1: find interesting in reading books about science history is just
Speaker 1: the practical physical annoyances and problems with trying to do
Speaker 1: the core work, the core physical work of your discipline,
Speaker 1: whether that's collecting specimens and preparing them to be preserved
Speaker 1: or doing experiments or whatever. You know, there are always
Speaker 1: little like problems like this where it's like I can't
Speaker 1: do it because this thing doesn't fit right, or I
Speaker 1: don't have the kind of table I need, or you know,
Speaker 1: or there's ants on everything. By the way, if you
Speaker 1: work in any area of research out there, and you
Speaker 1: want to write into the show about your experiences of
Speaker 1: this kind, please do contact at stuff to Blow your
Speaker 1: Mind dot com. I always find these things interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, tell us about your field work.
Speaker 1: What is your Wallace's Room full of ants?
Speaker 2: All right?
Speaker 1: Can I flag one more thing from this chapter by
Speaker 1: Wallace about a boundary of sorts, but not a funal one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I know what you're going to cover here.
Speaker 2: And this is an interesting woman I was reading about
Speaker 2: in my book as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay. So Wallace, by the way, he's about to
Speaker 1: refer to somebody named Manuel. Manuel is one of his
Speaker 1: local guides. So this is a guy he's been working
Speaker 1: with and has good relations with. But he says aborneyan
Speaker 1: Malay who had been for many years resident here, said
Speaker 1: to Manuel, one thing is strange in this country the
Speaker 1: scarcity of ghosts. Hmmm, how so asked Manuel. Why you know,
Speaker 1: said the Malay that in our countries to the westward,
Speaker 1: if a man dies or is killed, we dare not
Speaker 1: pass near the place at night, for all sorts of
Speaker 1: noises are heard which show that ghosts are about. But
Speaker 1: here there are numbers of men killed and their bodies
Speaker 1: lie unburied in the fields and by the roadside, and
Speaker 1: yet you can walk by them at night and never
Speaker 1: hear or see anything at all, which is not the
Speaker 1: case in our country, as you know very well, certainly
Speaker 1: I do, said Manuel. And so it was settled that
Speaker 1: ghosts were very scarce, if not altogether unknown, in Lombach.
Speaker 1: And then Wallace goes on to make a comment that
Speaker 1: I didn't know how to take it first, but because
Speaker 1: I initially read this as maybe some kind of dry humor.
Speaker 1: But he follows this up by saying, I would observe, however,
Speaker 1: that as the evidence is purely negative, we should be
Speaker 1: wanting in scientific caution if we accepted this fact as
Speaker 1: sufficiently well established. That sounded like a kind of humorous
Speaker 1: understatement to me. But now, Rob, now that we've talked
Speaker 1: about his interest in spiritualism, that assessment actually seems like
Speaker 1: he is interested in he is maybe actually interested in
Speaker 1: doing a scientific catalog of where ghosts exist, because he
Speaker 1: views them as quite likely a real phenomenon and something
Speaker 1: that can be scientifically documented. And he is being, you know,
Speaker 1: somewhat skeptical in his methodology here. He's like, well, we
Speaker 1: only have the negative evidence here, So we can't fully
Speaker 1: say that this is this is a rule. But here's
Speaker 1: somebody saying, you don't get ghosts in Lombac, you do
Speaker 1: get them over here.
Speaker 2: Yeah. This is a great point because, yeah, I think definitely,
Speaker 2: at this point in his life he was at the
Speaker 2: very least quite open to the idea that ghosts were real,
Speaker 2: that there were some sort of spiritual essence out there. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And the really interesting aspect of that belief, at least
Speaker 1: to me, being the assumption that you could study this
Speaker 1: phenomenon in a scientific way. I mean, I think a
Speaker 1: lot of times you would have people who might be
Speaker 1: scientists or naturalists or natural philosophers in this era who
Speaker 1: have supernatural beliefs, but they don't approach the supernatural beliefs
Speaker 1: as open to investigation the same way there are beliefs
Speaker 1: about the you know, the forces governing the natural world are.
Speaker 1: And Wallace seems to be saying like, no, yeah, we
Speaker 1: could just we could study this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think we definitely have to look at
Speaker 2: it within the context of the time too, a time
Speaker 2: during which there's so many advancements are taking place, and Wallace,
Speaker 2: along with Darwin and others are like right there on
Speaker 2: the front lines pushing this this theory of what is
Speaker 2: going to become known as the theory of evolution, the
Speaker 2: theory of natural selection. And therefore, like there's probably this
Speaker 2: spirit of we can figure it all out, and we
Speaker 2: see this elsewhere as well, where people are like, yes,
Speaker 2: we can, we can actually measure these things. We can
Speaker 2: look and try and figure out what happens to consciousness
Speaker 2: when life ends. And in Wallace's case in particular, we
Speaker 2: know that he comes to see some sort of continuation
Speaker 2: of the soul as being some special vibe, some sort
Speaker 2: of higher intelligence, as being key to how evolution is working.
Speaker 2: And therefore, you know, he just sees it as part
Speaker 2: of the works, and therefore it's something that you surely
Speaker 2: can prove out because we're proving out the other aspects
Speaker 2: of how the natural world is working, and if ghosts
Speaker 2: are part of it, if the spirit is part of it,
Speaker 2: then he should be able to prove that as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, in a way, you could look at
Speaker 1: an interest in spiritualism as a way of you know,
Speaker 1: I think that none of the underlying phenomena were actually real,
Speaker 1: but as an attempt to empirically interact with the spirit world, yeah,
Speaker 1: as opposed to just like having beliefs about it, but
Speaker 1: those beliefs being something that you know, you don't interface
Speaker 1: with or interact with.
Speaker 2: Right right now. At the same time, of course, obviously,
Speaker 2: like entering in any kind of scientific enterprise with these
Speaker 2: concepts in mind, you can end up putting blinders up
Speaker 2: for yourself, and you can end up maybe engaging in
Speaker 2: some of these questions without complete neutrality, right.
Speaker 1: And I mean, of course, I think that is what
Speaker 1: we actually see in a lot of attempts to you know,
Speaker 1: get really into the subject. But I would say that
Speaker 1: in principle, if there were spirits that made contact with
Speaker 1: the living on a regular basis, that's something that you
Speaker 1: could study. You know, it might be difficult to study
Speaker 1: because it might be more like the study of psychology
Speaker 1: or something than like the study of biology or nature,
Speaker 1: but it could be something you could look into in
Speaker 1: a systematic.
Speaker 2: Way, right, right. And even the division of ghosts as well,
Speaker 2: I mean, especially in a place like Indonesia. You know,
Speaker 2: it ultimately speaks to other questions about the flow of
Speaker 2: ideas and the flow of religious faiths, you know, in
Speaker 2: a widespread and again, as we've stressed, very large spread
Speaker 2: out country that has various cultures wound up in it,
Speaker 2: various religious faiths, So that ultimately becomes the more interesting
Speaker 2: question I think outside of Wallace's viewpoint, is well, why
Speaker 2: would there be a tradition of ghosts here and not here?
Speaker 2: What does that say about the people? Well?
Speaker 1: Right, exactly. I mean, I think that's a fully legitimate
Speaker 1: and fascinating question to look into, not the question of
Speaker 1: are there literally ghosts here and not ghosts here? But like,
Speaker 1: why do you get these different beliefs in tradition in
Speaker 1: different cultures? You know? How does history feed into the
Speaker 1: development that way?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, One thing I would note is that Wallace says that,
Speaker 1: so he recounts this conversation where this guy who comes
Speaker 1: from Borneo says, hey, yeah, we've got ghosts back home.
Speaker 1: They don't have ghosts here. Wallace does know that the
Speaker 1: people of Lombach did describe a belief to him that
Speaker 1: some men had the power to transform into crocodiles in
Speaker 1: order to eat their enemies. So that's pretty cool. Hmmm.
Speaker 1: Seems different than a ghost though.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I'm not sure how crocodile transformation would like
Speaker 2: how that ends up being interpreted by like European spiritualism
Speaker 2: of the time. But that's still fascinating.
Speaker 1: Oh, I can just imagine the kind of distinction made, like, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, our spirits are very real and legitimate. Nobody
Speaker 1: actually transforms into crocodiles. That's ridiculous.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, we're gonna go ahead and close out
Speaker 2: this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind right here,
Speaker 2: but we'll be back for a part too. On the
Speaker 2: Wallace line. We'll discuss the concept in more detail and
Speaker 2: probably get into some specific examples too.
Speaker 1: Right well, and in the next episode we'll go into
Speaker 1: more detail about why it exists to the extent that
Speaker 1: it does, as well as sort of updates to the concept,
Speaker 1: like the idea of Wallacea.
Speaker 2: Yeah. In the meantime, certainly, right in and tell us
Speaker 2: all about your adventures in this part of the world
Speaker 2: other parts of the world, and of course your your
Speaker 2: field work researchers. Right in about your field work, we
Speaker 2: would love to hear from you, as well as recommendations
Speaker 2: for future episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind. We're
Speaker 2: always we always have an ear open for good ideas.
Speaker 1: That's right, What is your equivalent of Wallace's dissecting room
Speaker 1: covered with every surface covered in ants, and what the
Speaker 1: box full of bird skins and so forth emitting odors.
Speaker 2: Yeah, maybe it's not your work, your work life even
Speaker 2: maybe it's your personal life. Yeah, right in, we'd love
Speaker 2: to hear from you, and just to remind it. Stuff
Speaker 2: to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast,
Speaker 2: with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but on Fridays
Speaker 2: we set aside most serious consers just talk about a
Speaker 2: weird film on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 1: Huge things, as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
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Speaker 1: topic for the future, or just to say hello, you
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