On this day in history, June 18 1858, Alfred Russel Wallace sent Charles Darwin a research paper. That paper made it clear to Darwin that Wallace had reached essentially the same scientific conclusions about evolution and natural selection that Darwin had reached.
Darwin responded by immediately rushing his own version of the theory into publication. The rest is history.
Today we often talk about Darwinian evolution. Not just as a scientific theory, but as a metaphor for everything from business to technology to personal relationships.
But we don’t ever talk about Wallacean evolution. In fact, most people have never heard of Alfred Wallace.
In this case, cultural evolution clearly selected the more aggressive member of the species. Which I guess just goes to show that “publish or perish” is a uniquely human form of “survival of the fittest”.