Editing Alfred Russel Wallace (section)

====Differences between Darwin and Wallace====

Historians of science have noted that, while Darwin considered the ideas in Wallace's paper to be essentially the same as his own, there were differences.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Kutschera |first=Ulrich |author-link=Ulrich Kutschera |title=A comparative analysis of the Darwin–Wallace papers and the development of the concept of natural selection |journal=Theory in Biosciences |date=19 December 2003 |doi=10.1007/s12064-003-0063-6 |volume=122 |issue=4 |pages=343–359 |s2cid=24297627 }}</ref> Darwin emphasised competition between individuals of the same species to survive and reproduce, whereas Wallace emphasised environmental pressures on varieties and species forcing them to become adapted to their local conditions, leading populations in different locations to diverge.{{sfn|Larson|2004|p=75}}{{sfn|Bowler|Morus|2005|p=149}} The historian of science [[Peter J. Bowler]] has suggested that in the paper he mailed to Darwin, Wallace might have been discussing [[group selection]].{{sfn|Bowler|2013|pp=61–63}} Against this, Malcolm Kottler showed that Wallace was indeed discussing individual variation and selection.<ref>{{cite book |last=Kottler |first=Malcolm |year=1985 |chapter=Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace: Two decades of debate over natural selection |editor-last=Kohn |editor-first=David Kohn |title=The Darwinian Heritage |publisher=[[Princeton University Press]] |pages=367–432 |isbn=978-0691083568 }}</ref>

Others have noted that Wallace appeared to have envisioned natural selection as a kind of feedback mechanism that kept species and varieties adapted to their environment (now called 'stabilizing", as opposed to 'directional' selection).<ref name="Unfinished Business"/> They point to a largely overlooked passage of Wallace's famous 1858 paper, in which he likened "this principle ... [to] the [[centrifugal governor]] of the steam engine, which checks and corrects any irregularities".<ref name="tendency"/> The [[cybernetics|cybernetician]] and anthropologist [[Gregory Bateson]] observed in the 1970s that, although writing it only as an example, Wallace had "probably said the most powerful thing that'd been said in the 19th Century".<ref>{{cite web |last=Brand |first=Stewart |title=For God's Sake, Margaret |url=http://www.oikos.org/forgod.htm |publisher=CoEvolutionary Quarterly, June 1976 |access-date=4 April 2007 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070415185352/http://www.oikos.org/forgod.htm |archive-date=15 April 2007 |url-status=dead}}</ref> Bateson revisited the topic in his 1979 book ''Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity'', and other scholars have continued to explore the connection between natural selection and [[systems theory]].<ref name="Unfinished Business">{{cite journal |last=Smith |first=Charles H. |title=Wallace's Unfinished Business |journal=Complexity |volume=10 |issue=2 |year=2004 |doi=10.1002/cplx.20062 |doi-access=free }}</ref>