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E.O. Wilson is in. Wow, the butterflies are out.

The romance of the theorist who shouts ‘Eureka!’ when he finds he is surrounded on all sides by the ‘failures’ of others.

By HOWARD W. FRENCH [The Atlantic] – [Edward O.] Wilson told me he’d worked for a decade on the ideas he presents in [Social Conquest of the Earth], drawing on the primary literature in a wide variety of fields to refine his views. These ranged, he said, from molecular genetics and ecology to anthropology and cognitive science. In the book, he proposes a theory to answer what he calls “the great unsolved problem of biology,” namely how roughly two dozen known examples in the history of life—humans, wasps, termites, platypodid ambrosia beetles, bathyergid mole rats, gall-making aphids, one type of snapping shrimp, and others—made the breakthrough to life in highly social, complex societies. Eusocial species, Wilson noted, are by far “the most successful species in the history of life.” Humankind, of course, has thoroughly transformed the environment, achieving a unique dominion. And ants, by some measures, are more successful still. (If you were to weigh all the animals on the planet, you would find that the mass of ants exceeds that of all other insects combined, and also that of all terrestrial nonhuman vertebrates.)

“Wow, the butterflies are out,” Wilson interjected mid-sentence, as a pretty, modestly sized, yellow-and-black creature floated dizzily around his chair.

Wilson announced that his new book may be his last. It is not limited to the discussion of evolutionary biology, but ranges provocatively through the humanities, as well. Summarizing parts of it for me, Wilson was particularly unsparing of organized religion, likening the Book of Revelation, for example, to the ranting of “a paranoid schizophrenic who was allowed to write down everything that came to him.” Toward philosophy, he was only slightly kinder. Generation after generation of students have suffered trying to “puzzle out” what great thinkers like Socrates, Plato, and Descartes had to say on the great questions of man’s nature, Wilson said, but this was of little use, because philosophy has been based on “failed models of the brain.”

Continued at The Atlantic |

Evolutionary biologists and their failed model of sociality.

By JEREMY DIBBELL [PhiloBiblos] – Howard French’s Atlantic article does a good job summarizing Wilson’s main theory as laid out in The Social Conquest of Earth: that sociality among animal species evolved not because of the theory generally accepted for the last half-century or so, known as “kin-selection theory” (that is, that cooperation between species members arises because of close genetic connection between group members) but rather that eusocial behaviors have (only very rarely) emerged in animal species as a result of an evolutionary process….

The process toward sociality as laid out by Wilson consists of five distinct stages, the final two of which have been reached only in certain insects like honeybees and army ants (group formation; “occurrence of a minimum and necessary combination of preadaptive traits in the groups, causing the groups to be tightly formed”; “appearance of mutations that prescribe the persistence of the group”; group-level selection by environmental forces; and changes in the life cycle based on group-level selection, sometimes leading to the development of a superorganism). A key step along the path to sociality, Wilson argues, was the creation of a defensible nest….

The human brain, Wilson writes, “had to become highly intelligent and intensely social … selfish at one time, selfless at another” (p. 17). He argues that humanity is faced with an unsolvable dilemma, rooted deeply in our evolutionary history: that because human beings are subject to both individual- and group-level impulses and urges at all times, we are literally at war with our selves. Altruism and group welfare are a part of us, but at the same time, so are selfish desires. The human species is, Wilson writes, “an evolutionary chimera, living on intelligence steered by the demands of animal instinct. This is the reason we are mindlessly destroying the biosphere and, with it, our own prospects for permanent existence” (p. 13).

Continued at PhiloBiblos | More Chronicle & Notices.

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Rick
Rick
11 years ago

So are you saying Wilson is wrong? This is such a passive-aggressive post. How about a real review?

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