FAQs about Funeral Home Evenings:
Q: How did you develop the character of Dr. Alfred Leopold Wallace, Kevin’s strange science teacher?
A: Dr. Wallace is smart and nerdy, isn’t he? I got the name from a real-life researcher. Alfred Russel Wallace was a counterpart of Charles Darwin. He explored the South American continent, capturing exquisite creatures and drawing sketches of them. But Wallace experienced a lot of bad luck and illness, and perhaps he lacked the “star quality” of Darwin. Darwin’s work got the spotlight. Poor old Alfred Wallace never achieved the same fame. It didn’t help matters that before Wallace published his paper on natural selection, he sent it to Darwin. Darwin, who was writing his own paper on the theory at the same time as Wallace, decided he’d better hurry up and publish his first.
Here are a couple of good links if you want to learn more about the real Alfred Russel Wallace: (The links in this entry will take you to other sites. You’ll have to use your browser’s back button to return to the blog.)
The Alfred Russel Wallace page
Wallace collection, Natural History Museum
As for the name Leopold, I just thought it was a cool name.
Q: Dr. Wallace makes a comment near the end of the book that “some study science to prove that God doesn’t exist.” Then he says he studies science “in order to know God better.” What’s up with this?
A: Carl Linneaus was the father of modern taxonomy, or the method by which all living things are named and classified into families. He believed that studying nature would reveal “the divine order of God’s creation,” and he wrote in a preface to his book Systema Naturae, that “the Earth’s creation is the glory of God.” He was ordering creation, in order to understand God’s ordering of all things. In other words, he saw his work as affirming “God’s order in the universe.”
If you want to learn more about Linneaus, here’s a link:
Carl Linneaus; UC-Berkeley page
Q: Are you a science major or something?
A: No. I find science interesting, though. And I believe much like Linneaus did, that when we study God’s creations, we learn more about him. To study science, you have to have an open mind to any and all possibilities.