Wilson, Edward O. (1929–)

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WILSON, EDWARD O.
(1929–)

Edward O. Wilson was born in Birmingham, Alabama, on June 10. His first degree was in biology from the University of Alabama. He moved north to Harvard as a graduate student, remaining there for the rest of his working life, first as a doctoral student, then as a junior fellow, and next as a member of the department of biology (later the department of organismic biology), retiring 2000 as a University Professor. Wilson is married with one child. He has received much acclaim, including the Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction (twice), the Craaford Prize of the Swedish Academy of Science, membership in the National Academy of Sciences, and fellowship in the Royal Society.

Wilson's abiding passion has been the world of ants. He has authored books on their nature, their behavior, and their classification. His magnum opus is The Ants (1990), jointly authored with Bert Holldöbler. This book won Wilson one of his Pulitzer Prizes. Another of Wilson's interests, arising from the ant studies, has been biogeography, the study of the distributions of organisms. With the late Robert MacArthur, in the 1960s, Wilson proposed an important theory of island flora and fauna, arguing that immigration and emigration and extinction eventually reach equilibrium. The ants also led naturally to an interest in chemical communication, with Wilson studying the use of pheromones for information transmission.

From here, Wilson was led into more general issues pertaining to social behavior, and a trilogy ensued. First there was The Insect Societies (1971), in which Wilson considered what we now know about the insects and their behaviors, paying special reference to the so-called social insects (especially the hymenoptera: the ants, the bees, and the wasps). Next came Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (1978), a book that popularized the term "sociobiology" (meaning the study of social behavior from an evolutionary perspective), in which Wilson extended and developed his thinking, covering the whole of the animal kingdom, including our own species. Finally there was On Human Nature (1978), written in a somewhat more popular fashion, and for which Wilson won the other of his Pulitzer Prizes. In this final book of the trilogy, Wilson turned exclusively to humankind, arguing that much that we know about the evolution of social behavior in other animals applies almost equally to humans.

Wilson's forays into human sociobiology were highly controversial. Some critics contended that in the guise of objective science, he simply defended conservative views of society, while social scientists argued that he had no feeling for the subtleties and ranges of human culture. Wilson defended and extended his thinking, pointing out that taking a biological perspective does not at once commit one to a hard-line deterministic position. It has never been his position that the genes are the sole causal factor behind human nature. It is just that biology must be accorded equal causal weight in human affairs alongside the environment and culture.

More and more, through the 1980s, Wilson turned to philosophical questions. With respect to the theory of knowledge (epistemology), Wilson stresses the interconnected nature of our understanding. He wants to show that everything can be explained in just a few basic principles. The Victorian polymath William Whewell, in his The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, spoke of the highest kind of knowledge as being that which connects together the most disparate areas of science. Whewell spoke of such connection as a "consilience of inductions," and this phrase prompted Wilson to call one of his books Consilience (1998), referring to its plea that we bind together all aspects of human knowledge.

Along with epistemology, ethics has always been an interest of Wilson's. His hero in this field is Herbert Spencer, and although Wilson would not want to associate himself with the negative connotations of attempts to link evolution and morality—especially with so-called Social Darwinism—Wilson stands right in the tradition of those who argue that morality is and must be based in human nature as created and preserved by evolution. What is of great importance to Wilson is the need to be sensitive to the environment around us. He speaks of "biophilia," the human love of nature. He believes that we need nature not just to sustain us but also because, in a totally artificial world, we humans would wither and die. Our evolution has tied us to both physical and psychological needs of other organisms. This means that the Wilsonian categorical imperative focuses on biodiversity. In a world without many species, humans are condemned. Following his own prescriptions, for the past decade Wilson has been ardently committed to the preservation of the Brazilian rain forests.

Like Spencer and all other traditional thinkers of this ilk, Wilson turns to notions of progress to link evolution and ethics. Most particularly, he denies that the evolutionary process is one of aimless meandering. Rather, Wilson interprets it as showing an upward rise, from lesser to greater, with humans at the top. Wilson's thinking on this point is part and parcel of his feelings about ultimate questions. An intensely religious man who lost his faith in Christianity in his teens, Wilson was able to replace it with a new religion: Darwinism. He sees religion as an essential part of human culture, binding the tribe together, but he argues that this religious cohesion can endure in the modern age only with the propagation of new "myths" (his word). This is the essential message of Wilson's On Human Nature (1978). This is the story of evolution with the philosophical foundation of materialism. For Wilson, science, ethics, and religion are as one. They make for the ultimate consilience.

Bibliography

The key books by Wilson include the work on biogeography coauthored with Robert MacArthur, The Theory of Island Biogeography (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1967); the trilogy The Insect Societies (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971); Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1975); On Human Nature (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978); the coauthored work with Bert Holldöbler, The Ants (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990); The Diversity of Life (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992); and Consilience (New York: Knopf, 1998). The work by William Whewell that so influenced Wilson is The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences (London, 1840; London: Cass, 1967). A more detailed overview of Wilson's work and thinking can be found in Michael Ruse, Mystery of Mysteries: Is Evolution a Social Construction? (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999). Also informative, not only about Wilson but about his various colleagues, friends, and enemies, is his autobiography Naturalist (Washington, DC: Island Press, 1994).