The oneiric capacity for successfully combining scientific ideas was evident in the story of the nineteenth-century British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace. On his two-decades-long travels around Brazil and Southeast Asia, in the middle of the nineteenth century, he established that species evolve into other species, and are constantly creating diversity. Wallace believed he had an extensive observational basis for this radical idea, which had been argued about since the days of the French naturalist Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck, almost a hundred years earlier, but was still strongly opposed in academic milieus and unsupported by any mechanisms that could explain the evolution of species. In Wallace's words, "The problem then was, not only how and why do species change, but how and why do they change into new and well-defined species."

In February 1858, on a remote Indonesian island, Wallace experienced intermittent attacks of fever, possibly caused by malaria. During this fever, he had dream visions that related the problem of the evolution of species to the theory that the abundance of surplus resources is limited by the growth of the population, as proposed at the end of the eighteenth century by the English demographer Thomas Malthus.

When he woke from his trance, Wallace realized that the reverse was also true: if resources are limited, species evolve in an environment of fierce competition, which tends to select the best-suited individuals in each generation. Everything became suddenly clear: the thing that causes the evolution in species is natural selection.

As soon as he had recovered, Wallace communicated his discovery in detail to another English naturalist with whom he came to correspond collaboratively. This was Charles Darwin, who had reached similar conclusions independently, after nearly five years' traveling and researching mostly around South America.

EDITOR'S NOTE

Most histories of science paint Wallace as impetuous, a minor figure whose main historical function was to prod Darwin into publishing. But it sounds like a dream prodded Wallace. Without it, would the idea of natural selection have languished in Darwin's journal another decade, or generation, or century?

Though if the governors of Florida and Texas have their way, Wallace's and Darwin's insight will crawl back into private journals for another century or two.

--Chris Wayan

SOURCE: Sidarta Ribeiro's The Oracle of Night: the History and Science of Dreams p. 227-8. Primary source: A.R. Wallace, My Life: a Record of Events and Opinions, 1904, p.361

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