Sometimes what you infer about history is totally wrong. How often? Sometimes we find out. As I’ve outlined on this blog over the course of years inferences made in historical population genetics using extant variation have often turned out to be totally wrong. How do we know? Time machines. Ancient DNA.

Yesterday I received a copy of Sewall Wright and Evolutionary Biology. I read it about 10 years ago, but I didn’t know as much about evolutionary biology back then. So I wanted to get a copy of it (unlike R. A. Fisher: The Life of a Scientist there are actually affordable copies). I decided to get straight to the section which covered the general time period of the Wright-Fisher controversies, when two of the great eminences involved in the development of the field of population genetics were hashing out somewhat different perspectives.

Rather than getting into that, what I want to recount is the passage the author, Will Provine, offers up from Sewall Wright’s personal correspondence which reproduced R. A. Fisher’s last letter to him. One interesting sidebar here is that R. A. Fisher, from all the biographical information I’ve been able to gain an impression from, was a much more flawed person than Sewall Wright. Fisher was the greater scientist (seeing that he made original contributions to statistics), but Wright was the greater human. After a period of somewhat frequent correspondence Fisher and Wright ceased their direct interaction, right at a time when their differences were being highlighted, leading to decades of ill feeling. In particular, there had been a mixed review of The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection which Wright had submitted to Genetics.

From everything Will Provine knew beforehand he was expecting a rather cold and unfriendly last letter from Fisher to Wright due to the nature of the review. His expectations were totally off base. R. A. Fisher was entirely gracious and good-natured, and seemed appreciate of the review despite its dissents. The lesson that Provine takes from this is that we don’t truly know what we don’t truly see, and we should have greater humility about the darkness outside of the bounds of our direct perception.