Wallace Arthur

Who is Wallace Arthur?

Wallace Arthur is a zoologist specialising in evolutionary developmental biology. He is Emeritus Professor of Zoology at the National University of Ireland, Galway. From 2004 to 2012 he was the Established Professor of Zoology at NUI Galway. Before that, he was Professor of Evolutionary Biology at the University of Sunderland, UK. He is one of the founding editors of the leading journal Evolution and Development, and has written several books on evolution, including one on the origin of animal body plans. He describes himself as "a bit of a maverick" who likes "making connections across disciplinary boundaries". Arthur cites the three best books he has read as Darwin's On the Origin of Species, D'Arcy Thompson's On Growth and Form; and Lancelot Law Whyte's Internal Factors in Evolution.

Amongst Wallace Arthur's earliest attempts at interdisciplinary conceptualisation was his 1987 book Theories of Life, in which the influence of Arthur's three favourite books, amongst others, can be seen. In his 1987 book, he attempted to unite conceptually the fields of genetics, development, and evolution. In this work, he addressed issues of relevance not only to evolutionary theory, but also to the philosophy of science, using evolutionary theory as the vehicle for this. He posed the questions of what constitutes a scientific theory, and how it is distinguished from hypotheses and laws. "One of the main distinctions between these different types of 'scientific idea', is the degree of certainty attached to it. A hypothesis is the least certain and is essentially a tentative answer to a particular question, often put forward so that it can be tested experimentally." Arthur describes the hypothesis as being at the least certain end of a spectrum of scientific certainty.