Professor Emeritus of UAB Libraries, University of Alabama at Birmingham
Michael A. Flannery is professor emeritus of UAB Libraries, University of Alabama at Birmingham. Much of his recent scholarship has focused on the ideas and legacy of the co-discoverer of evolution by natural selection, Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913). Flannery’s books about Wallace include Nature’s Prophet: Alfred Russel Wallace and His Evolution from Natural Selection to Natural Theology (University of Alabama Press, 2018), Alfred Russel Wallace’s Theory of Intelligent Evolution: How Wallace’s World of Life Challenged Darwinism (Erasmus Press, 2008), and Alfred Russel Wallace: A Rediscovered Life (Discovery Institute Press, 2011). Flannery’s peer-reviewed journal articles include “Alfred Russel Wallace’s Intelligent Evolution and Natural Theology” (Religions, 2020). Flannery discusses the intellectual legacy of Wallace in the documentary Darwin’s Heretic. Flannery holds degrees in library science from the University of Kentucky and history from California State University, Dominguez Hills. He has written and taught extensively on the history of medicine and science.
For years Alfred Russel Wallace was little more than an obscure adjunct to Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. Remembered only for prompting Darwin to write On the Origin of Species by sending Darwin his own letter proposing a theory of natural selection, Wallace was rightly dubbed by one biographer “the forgotten naturalist.” A decade of recent interest in Wallace has done much to bring him back from history’s crypt of forgotten figures, but there is still significant disagreement over his legacy. The provocative thesis of this new biography is that Wallace, in developing his unique brand of evolution, presaged the modern theory of intelligent design. This was Wallace’s ultimate heresy, a heresy that exposed the metaphysical underpinnings of the emerging Darwinian …
