Edward Osborne Wilson
1929-
American Biologist
Edward O. Wilson is a specialist in ant biology at Harvard University. He first gained renown among biologists for his discovery of ants' ability to communicate using chemicals called pheromones. He gained even greater fame as one of the key figures in the founding of sociobiology (also known today as evolutionary psychology). His book, Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (1975) stirred up considerable controversy. Wilson's sociobiology is the attempt to explain animal societies—including humans—as the product of evolutionary development.
As a boy growing up in the southeastern United States, Wilson was enthralled with nature and began collecting insects and carefully observing animals in their habitat. By high school he had decided to pursue the vocation of biology and had even settled on a specialization—ants. He attended the University of Alabama in the late 1940s, where he enthusiastically embraced the neo-Darwinian synthesis by reading Ernst Mayr's (1904- ) Systematics and the Origin of Species. From that time on, evolutionary theory was a central theme not only for his biology, but for his whole world view. Though he had previously embraced Christianity as a teenager, thereafter he usually called himself a scientific materialist, explaining religion and ethics as the product of material processes, especially biological evolution.
After beginning doctoral studies at the University of Tennessee, he transferred to Harvard University in 1951, where he received his Ph.D. In 1956 he was appointed professor at Harvard, and soon thereafter he began studying ant communication. He was the first to discover that animals can communicate through their sense of smell by using chemical signals called pheromones. For example, an ant in distress can emit a certain chemical to alert other ants in its colony to come to its aid.
Wilson's interest in sociobiology was stimulated partly through his research on ants as social insects, but also through his encounters with Konrad Lorenz (1903-1989) and Nikolaus Tinbergen (1907-1988), both of whom contributed to the founding of ethology, the study of animal behavior. Another important influence on the development of Wilson's sociobiology was W. D. Hamilton's idea of kin selection, advanced in a 1964 paper that Wilson read the following year. Hamilton's notion of kin selection tried to explain the puzzle of altruistic (selfless) behavior within a Darwinian framework. Hamilton argued that altruism could benefit the kin of the altruistic individual, and since the kin shared many of the same genes, altruism could thus promote survival of one's genes.
Wilson adopted Hamilton's idea and applied it first to ant societies and later to other social animals. By applying sociobiology to humans, he aroused a storm of controversy in the mid-1970s. Other prominent scientists and especially social scientists began protesting his view that many human behaviors and ethical systems are determined by or at least heavily influenced by genetic predispositions. Wilson did not claim that all specific behaviors or specific moral standards are genetically determined, but he did believe that many tendencies, such as division of labor between sexes, altruism toward kin, tribalism, male dominance, and territorial aggression, were biological instincts produced through evolution. Critics claimed that Wilson was politically motivated, justifying racism and sexism, but Wilson claimed this was a misunderstanding.
Despite the opposition, Wilson won many influential followers, some of whom preferred the term evolutionary psychology. In 1977 Time magazine carried a cover story on sociobiology, and that same year Wilson won the National Medal of Science for his work in sociobiology. The following year he published his Pulitzer Prize-winning On Human Nature, providing greater detail on human sociobiology. Responding to widespread criticisms of sociobiology as genetic determinism, Wilson worked out his views on the interaction of heredity and culture, a view he called "gene-culture coevolution."
In the 1980s Wilson became an environmental activist because of his concern about the extinction of many species. He lamented the rapid decline in biodiversity, which he considered the product of eons of evolutionary development. He also began warning about human overpopulation.
Wilson's entire world view is laid out in Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge (1998). He considers the empirical scientific method the only valid method for attaining knowledge about anything, and thus wants to infuse the humanities and social sciences with the scientific method. This is because he considers all of nature, including every aspect of humans, the product of mindless evolutionary development. According to Wilson, ethics and religion are merely genetic predispositions that helped our ancestors survive, but only science can impart real truth. Wilson's sociobiology and his philosophy of consilience are still highly controversial.
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