Second-guessing the future

Natural History, Sept, 1998 by Stephen Jay Gould

As the millennium approaches, evolutionary and social trends defy prediction.

From anonymous vice presidents to nameless palookas, a special kind of opprobrium seems to haunt those who come second--"close, but no cigar," in an old cliche I once met "Two Ton Tony" Galento in a bar in upstate New York, a pitiful figure as an old man, still cadging drinks in exchange for the true story of his moment of glory: when he knocked Joe Louis down before losing their fight for the heavyweight championship. And just consider the stereotype of the sidekick--old, fat, foolish, and in servitude--from Gabby Hayes and Andy Devine in the quintessential epic of our pop culture, to Leporello and Sancho Panza in the literary world. (Strong and noble sidekicks like Tonto get cast as "ethnics" to advertise their secondary rank by another route, now happily--or at least, hopefully--fading from the collective consciousness of white America.)

Second in time fares no better than second in status. I was, at first, surprised by a statement that made perfect sense once I punctured the apparent paradox. A composer friend told me that he could easily obtain funding for a premiere performance of any new work, as special grants and scholarships abound for such a noble purpose. A philanthropist who truly loved music, he told me, would endow the most unprofitable and unfashionable of all genres: second performances of new works.

I recently had the privilege of speaking with Larry Doby, one of the toughest, most courageous, and most admirable men I have ever met. But how many readers recognize his name? You all know Jackie Robinson, of course; Larry Doby was the second black player in major league baseball. We all recognize the tune when Rodolfo grasps Mimi's cold little hand in Puccini's La Boheme, first performed in 1896, but how many people know that Leoncavallo (who had scored the hit of 1892 with Pagliacci) also wrote an opera with the same title (and tale) produced in 1897?

I can think of only one second-finisher who became more famous (at least among Anglophones) than the victor--but only for special circumstances of unusual heroism in death, mingled with a dose of British patriotism: Robert Scott, who reached the South Pole on January 18, 1912, only to find that Roald Amundsen had been there a month before. Confined to a tent by a blizzard, and just eleven miles from his depot, Scott froze to death, leaving a last journal entry that has never been matched in all the annals of British understatement, and that, I confess, still brings tears to my eyes: "It seems a pity, but I do not think I can write more."

In my parish, the dubious (and admittedly somewhat contradictory) status of most famous second-place finisher goes without contest to Alfred Russel Wallace, who, in 1858, during a malarial fit on the Indonesian island of Ternate, devised virtually the same theory of natural selection that Darwin had developed (but hadn't published) in 1838. In a familiar story, Wallace sent his short paper to Darwin, a naturalist he greatly admired and who, as Wallace knew, had a strong interest in "the species question" (although Wallace had no inkling of Darwin's particular, and nearly identical, theory and probably didn't even realize that Darwin had a theory at all). Darwin, in understandable panic, turned to his best friends, Charles Lyell and Joseph Hooker, for advice. In a resolution known to later history as the "delicate arrangement," Darwin's friends made a joint presentation to the Linnean Society of London in July 1858: they read both Wallace's paper and some unpublished letters and manuscripts by Darwin, establishing his earlier authorship of the same idea.

Conspiracy theorists always stand at the ready, and several salvos have been launched for this particular episode, but to no avail or validity, in my judgment. Yes, Wallace was never asked (but he was quite incommunicado, half a world away, and the issue did press). Yes, Darwin was wealthy and well established; Wallace poor, younger, and struggling for livelihood and reputation (but why, then, grant him equal billing with Darwin for a joint presentation of unpublished results?). No, I think that, as usual (and unfortunately for the cause of a good tale), the more boring resolution of ordinary decency applies.

The "delicate arrangement" was exactly what the words imply: a fair solution to a tough problem. Darwin held legitimate priority, and he had not been shilly-shallying or resting on old claims and laurels. He had been diligently working on his evolutionary views and had already, when he received Wallace's paper, finished nearly half of a much longer book on natural selection that he then abandoned (spurred no doubt by fears of further anticipations) to write the shorter "abstract" known to the world as the Origin of Species (a pretty hefty book of 490 pages), published in 1859.

Wallace, at least, never complained and seemed to feel honored that his exercise of an evening had been so linked with Darwin's long effort. (I do not, of course, base this claim on Wallace's public pronouncements, in which his secondary status to Darwin would have precluded any overt expression of bitterness. Rather, in his truly voluminous private jottings, letters, and conversations, Wallace never expressed anything but pleasure at Darwin's willingness to share at least partial credit.)