Did Wallace forestall Darwin?

BeeJay:

At some universities, a short course on history of science is probably available (full-fledged degreed courses are however there for the specialists) for those students who want to take it. When I was a student, we didn’t have any such course and the teachers also didn’t provide any historical insights. It might sound strange (and it does to me now) but we considered a printed work as a piece of gospel; it cannot be wrong. When I published my first paper, I was excited because I criticized some of the previously published work and thought I had offered something better.

When I taught at the Civil Engineering Department, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Nigeria, the Faculty there was in the process of introducing such a course common to all the first year engineering students. When I went to Imperial College, I was excited to see some of the professors face to face, whose works I had read in the research journals and books.

I don’t remember of the top of my head similar (Walace-Darwin) cases. I am losing memory. I know there was intense rivalry between Newton and Leibnitz on Differential Calculus. Leibnitz had published his work earlier than Newton but the credit was given to Newton. There were reflections on Leibnitz because he had visited England before his work was published and his critics thought he had plagiarized Newton’s work. But there was no truth in such accusations. Leibnitz had used the notation of dy/dx for a differential while Newton used prime mark (‘) for it. However, Newton was way ahead of Leibnitz in as much as Integral Calculus was concerned.

Then there was a priority dispute on the Inverse Square Law, between Newton and his compatriot Hooke. Hooke contended, Newton “stole his idea from me.” Hooke admitted that he was unable to master the mathematics required to show how elliptical orbits arise from an inverse square law,” but he expected Newton to give him credit for the inverse square law.

The following saying is attributed to Newton:

“Philosophy (science) is such an impertinent litigious lady that a man had as good be engaged in law suits as have to do with her.”

Newton is also said to have boasted privately to a friend that “he has deliberately made the Principia as unreadable as possible to avoid being bated by little smatteres in mathematics.”

There was no rivalry, per se, between S.N. Bose and Einstein. Einstein helped to get Bose’s work published.

“While at Dacca University, Bose wrote a short article called Planck’s Law and the Hypothesis of Light Quanta, describing the photoelectric effect and based on a lecture he had given on the ultraviolet catastrophe. During this lecture, in which he had intended to show his students that theory predicted results not in accordance with experimental results, Bose made an embarrassing statistical error which gave a prediction that agreed with observations, a contradiction.
The error was a simple mistake that would appear obviously wrong to anyone with a basic understanding of statistics, and similar to arguing that flipping two fair coins will produce two heads one-third of the time. However, it produced correct results, and Bose realized it might not be a mistake at all.

Physics journals refused to publish Bose’s paper. It was their contention that he had presented to them a simple mistake, and Bose’s findings were ignored. Discouraged, he wrote to Albert Einstein, who immediately agreed with him. Physicists stopped laughing when Einstein sent “Zeitschrift fur Physik” his own paper to accompany Bose’s, which were published in 1924.”

This is how science is!

In the books and papers, Bose’s error is now called Einstein-Bose statistics. An elementary particle is named after Bose; it is called Boson.

Because Bose didn’t have Ph.D., he could not be promoted as a professor. He was promoted full professor at Einstein’s recommendation.

Every big scientist’s life is full of such examples and anecdotes.

You had raised some questions in your Note. My response will be too long if I tried to answer them. I will have to pass them.

Thanks for your interest in my article. Wishing you well,

Mohammad Gill

yaar ik te tussi baandraaN ne baRa tang kita hoya eh.

Check out the Wallace Line.

http://www.radford.edu/~swoodwar/CLASSES/GEOG235/zoogeog/walline.html

This article provides a fascinating insight into a lot of very intriguing events that occur behind the scene for any piece of published scientific work of some value - work which on its face would appear very “dry”, especially with passage of time. I have often wondered if science would not have much more appeal to students if historical information on how a particular concept developed and some insights into the personalities involved in that development were to be built in as part of the curriculum (or is that already taking place?) After all, the people who push the frontiers of knowledge are very human and just as much subject to all the characteristic shortcomings: cautiousness, stubbornness, humility, avarice, conceit, and so forth.

Can you think of some other parallels where individual scientists were “forced” to adopt a particular stand earlier than they would have liked?

Notes:
[…the specter of losing priority was staring in his face.]
What is the current situation regarding “priority”, i.e., how do contemporary journals handle it, now that virtually all publication is on-line and occurs almost instantaneously?

[There was no acrimony whatsoever in Wallace’s mind.]
Those were indeed different times! Acrimony aside, one will always wonder whether Wallace regretted sending his abstract to Darwin. The fact is, even though they did settle it amicably, had Wallace not done that, his work would PROBABLY had got published first. However, did this “priority” make any practical difference later?

[Darwin, the country squire, living off inherited wealth and sound investments on a small estate working leisurely in the pursuit of evolution, and Wallace, the committed socialist, saved ultimately from abject poverty by Darwin and his friends who arranged a Crown pension, laboring seemingly for ever in other’s shadow.]
Position has its privileges! That fact needs no proof or formulation!