Alfred Russel Wallace

Alfred Russel Wallace foi co-autor (com Charles Darwin) da teoria do papel da selecção natural na evolução, e o seu trabalho foi determinante para espevitar Charles Darwin a anunciar e publicar o seu. A nota no blog do NYT, Wallace Should Hang - The Wild Side - Olivia Judson - Evolution - Opinion - New York Times Blog, recorda isso e dá informação sobre a sua vida. ARW, já em1863, dizia, a propósito do uso que o Homem dava do planeta:

If this [scientific investigation of tropical ecosystems] is not done,
future ages will certainly look back upon us as a people so immersed in the
pursuit of wealth as to be blind to higher considerations. They will charge us
with having culpably allowed the destruction of some of those records of
Creation which we had it in our power to preserve; and while professing to
regard every living thing as the direct handiwork and best evidence of a
Creator, yet, with a strange inconsistency, seeing many of them perish
irrecoverably from the face of the earth, uncared for and unknown.