Alfred Wallace and the anthropology of sound in victorian culture

Abstract

In the years after the publication of Darwin's On the Origin of Species, Alfred Russel Wallace became a prominent critic of the argument that evolution provided a sufficient account of human origins. Unbeknownst to many historians of science, Wallace partly based his case on his belief that man's musical sense and aesthetic powers could not have evolved by natural selection. Although he witnessed a variety of musical practices during his travels abroad, Wallace, like many contemporaries in Victorian England, assumed that music uniquely belonged to the 'civilized' world he inhabited. In the late 19th century, some evolutionists would challenge this view by reconceiving the nature of music itself.