Edward Wilson’s radical paper on how insect and human societies employment had the likes of Richard Dawkins lining up to shoot him down. Here he defends his extended careerIt’s not every day, or much every hardly any decades, that a scientist tears up the dominant interpretation of Darwin’s theory of evolution, however two years ago that’s what the eminent biologist Edward Wilson and two of his Harvard colleagues did. In a controversial paper that made the cover of the journal Nature, they dismissed the widely accepted, half-century-ancient theory of “kin selection” and proposed a different explanation of the advanced social behaviour of insects to capture its place – a revamped version of something that had extended ago been dismissed by most biologists. (We’ll gaze at the details of both theories in a moment.)The result was uproar. Nearly 150 other scientists signed letters rejecting their findings and calling on others to do the same. Wilson refused to back down, and a hardly any weeks ago published a textbook-length version of his argument, The Social Conquest of Earth.The fuse of his opponents was lit once again. This age it was Richard Dawkins who exploded. In a review in Prospect magazine titled The Descent of Edward Wilson, Dawkins accused Wilson of “wanton arrogance” and recommended potential readers to throw the textbook aside “with fantastic energy”.Was Dawkins fair? Is Wilson a once-fantastic researcher who has taken a incorrect turn? Has his deep concern for the environment, and desperation for a solution, made him susceptible to the thought that human co-operation is the key to our domination of the planet – which is what his theory proposes – and unable to recognise us for the selfish competitors we truly are?In a extended conversation from his office at Harvard, where he is emeritus professor at the Museum of Comparative Zoology, Wilson, though clearly annoyed and more than pleased to hit back at his detractors, sounds as though he is enjoying himself.”I’m immediately also ancient to be dragged down by fake modesty,” he says with the hint of a southern drawl. “Are we going to win the day? Of direction. The mathematics in our paper has not been seriously challenged, and that’s what the fuss is about. It has thrown defenders of kin selection into disarray. It also has to do with human beings very naturally defending the territories they have established to teach and do research on.”I inquiry whether the dispute has upset him. Immediately 83, Wilson must surely feel he is in the final phase of a extended career. Would he not have preferred to bow outside to the sound of cheers?He says not. “I am invigorated since I reckon this debate moves the study of social behaviour into the same league as alike controversies in the rest of science. There have been fantastic disputes in every field. Remember string theory? Remember the early days of DNA?”"Would you like to talk about Dawkins?” he continues – and when I affirm yes, he laughs. “I hesitate to do this since he’s such a well loved guy, however Dawkins is not a scientist. He’s a writer on science and he hasn’t participated in research directly or published in peer-reviewed journals for a extended age. In other words, there is no Wilson-versus-Dawkins controversy: it’s Wilson versus … well, I could give you a goodly list of other scientists doing peer-reviewed research.”That Dawkins is not engaged in research does not, of direction, constitute him incorrect about evolution. However I choose to call Andrew Bourke, a professor of evolutionary biology at the University of East Anglia, to get another view. Bourke offers a robust defence of kin selection, or inclusive fitness, and questions whether humans are a “eusocial” species (the technical term for showing altruistic behaviour) like ants and termites at all.I end the conversation firmly convinced that, as far as his peers are concerned, Wilson is a very extended path from winning the day.Before he made the leap to what he called “sociobiology” in his breakthrough textbook of 1975, and started writing about human beings, Wilson was an insect scientist. An only minor who grew up in rural Alabama and whose parents separated when he was in primary college, he avoided loneliness by taking a close interest in the natural earth. He says he “wandered off” from the Baptist faith he was brought up in, much as Darwin gave up his Christian faith, however with far less angst, and started reading about evolution as a teenager.Although his reputation today is based on his writings about human evolution and biodiversity, which he first championed 20 years ago, it was in the field of entomology that he made arguably his greatest discovery: pheromones, immediately talked about in women’s magazines as the secret of sexual attraction, however then utterly unknown.It was in a Harvard lab in the early 1960s that the young biologist had his epiphany surrounded by a captive colony of fire ants. Wilson thought they were communicating via chemicals, while others thought their messages were mechanical, more like simple taps. So he started dissecting them, looking for the source of the odour trail in miniature glands.”I tried one after another and nothing, nothing, and finally I came to a tiny gland called Dufour, named after the guy that learned it,” he clarifies. “It was sitting there like a pituitary or something and I teased it outside and laid the trail and hey! A large part of the colony came pouring outside, all excited, and they went wherever I led them.”I found I could talk to these ants. I could inscribe my designation on a sheet of paper following to the nest and they would follow it, so I did that just for fun. I said, ‘This is really something! Maybe ants do have a chemical code and maybe if you can get the fair one, you can do incredible things.’”So I guess that was one of my best moments. I guess that’s the only night I couldn’t sleep. I’m glad I told you that tale since it’s just a wonderful adventure and lots of fun to be a scientist.”Nearly 50 years later, and still married to the wife he met in the Harvard admissions office, Wilson continues to have lots of fun. He is already plotting another, more personal textbook, Letters to a Young Scientist, and recently returned from a field trip to Mozambique, where he is helping philanthropist Greg Carr rebuild the Gorongosa national park. There he was delivered by helicopter to a mountain rainforest that has never before been studied by entomologists, while at the edge of the park, in a series of deep gorges, is yet more untouched rainforest. “It is literally a lost earth, a thrilling familiarity.”However for all his enthusiasm for fieldwork – those who know him describe a distinctive, head-down gait, the result of decades of scanning the ground for insects – biology alone has never satisfied Wilson. Synthesis has always been his body. He worked in biogeography, invented the term sociobiology, and in 1998 wrote a textbook called Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge – which was more or less a theory of everything.This vast range has won him huge admiration, with novelist Ian McEwan among many high-profile fans. However he has also been a divisive figure, most famously in the 1970s, when he was physically attacked at Harvard after it was claimed that his thoughts echoed the racist and misogynist claims of Nazi eugenicists.His fresh textbook takes in language and the arts in its bold attempt to demonstrate that generosity, as mandated by collection selection, is humanity’s secret ingredient – and continually warring in each one of us with our more selfish instincts.”Individual selection is responsible for much of what we call sin, while collection selection is responsible for the greater part of virtue,” he writes in one of the textbook’s bluntest passages. “Together they have made the conflict between the poorer and bigger angels of our nature.”Critics have attacked this dramatically simplified version of the human condition. However the fiercest argument is about evolution itself. Place simply, the theory of kin selection developed by WD (“Bill”) Hamilton in the 1960s and championed by Wilson at the age says that insects such as ants evolved to become altruists since co-operating with their kin helped individuals promote their own genes. It doesn’t affair if you give up the opportunity to reproduce yourself, goes the theory, so extended as close relatives spread your genes instead.Wilson (and his collaborators Martin Nowak and Corina Tarnita) proposed instead a theory of “multilevel selection”, whose designation makes it sound more complicated than it is. In circumstance, there are two levels: ordinary, individual-level natural selection, whereby individuals strive to reproduce their own genes, and “collection selection”, an thought extended ago dumped by biologists however immediately brought back to lifetime.Collection selection starts when a colony of creatures develops a behaviour that gives it a competitive advantage over other groups. Initially, this could be down to a random genetic mutation. So, instead of leaving the family nest, young ants or bees stick encircling to aid. As Wilson describes it, this is the first step on the path to the highly ordered society, with its rigid division of labour, that has made the social insects, along with humans, the most successful species on earth.”The key event is building a defended nest or campsite,” he says – giving a whole fresh meaning to the communal spirit of collection camping trips, and exceptionally the ritual of cooking encircling the campfire, to which Wilson accords massive evolutionary significance. “However it’s still very uncertain and we have a huge amount of research to do in order to be completely certain. Just one mutation would prevent young individuals from leaving the nest, so genetic studies are terribly needed, and in some groups [of insects] those are immediately under path. We wait to see the results.”However Wilson was not content to wait for the data. A gifted writer and winner of a Pulitzer prize, with more than 20 books, including a memoir and best-selling novel, Anthill, under his belt (Margaret Atwood called it an “Iliad of the ants”), he has always been an ambitious communicator, as well as a scientist. In one striking passage in The Social Conquest of Earth, he describes humanity as a “Star Wars civilisation with stone-age emotions, medieval institutions and god-like technology. We thrash about. We are terribly confused by the mere circumstance of our existence, and a danger to ourselves and to the rest of lifetime.”Wilson believes his latest formulation of evolutionary theory offers us a path outside of this mess. “I reckon we have the qualities to come through and staunch the haemorrhage of species extinction,” he says. “I just reckon human beings are capable of being a abundance bigger than they have been. Why would you risk your lifetime to save the lifetime of a weirder? Why would you give up one of your kidneys? We really are a wonderful species, and I reckon if we can know who we really are, then we can reach a much bigger earth, and a much bigger arrangement than we have immediately.” And about this, we must all surely hope that Edward Wilson is fair.The Social Conquest of Earth by EO Wilson is published by WW Norton. It is available for £15.19 from guardianbookshop.co.ukEvolutionBiologyHarvard UniversityHigher educationRichard DawkinsInsectsWildlifeAnimalsResearchSusanna Rustinguardian.co.uk © 2012 Twitter News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Employ of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
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