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E.O. Wilson has died
- the__alchemist 5y agoLegend. Ants. Bees. Learning. The essence of science. He came up in casual conversation yesterday, re science and learning math, as well as how tough learning math can be once you're older. (He famously attempted to learn calculus in his 30s, and had a struggle, despite already being a Harvard professor, and world-class scientist)
- javajosh 5y agoIt is remarkable, and wholly admirable, that he tried to learn calc later in life; it is even more remarkable that he admitted his struggle! His genuine humility and curiosity came across in spades in his wonderful little book "Consilience", so this anecdote doesn't surprise me.
- Konohamaru 5y agoMath is a struggle for everyone. When the Egyptian ruler Ptolemy I asked whether geometry could not be made easier, Euclid is said to have replied: 'There is no royal road to geometry'.
- ubicomp 5y agoGosh. What an amazing human. I think about his work often. It has had great influence on how I perceive the world. Rest in Peace.
- dexwell 5y ago"The real problem of humanity is the following: we have paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and god-like technology" — E. O. Wilson, 2009
- agumonkey 5y agoQuality quote.
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- api 5y agoThe cyberpunks were by far the most prophetic of all science fiction writers, and I feel like this kind of insight is what drove that. They put forward a future where they were optimistic about technology and neutral to pessimistic about human beings.
- LiquidSky 5y ago"High tech, low life" as Bruce Sterling put it.
- dennis_jeeves 5y ago
- I_complete_me 5y agoGreat writer, great scientist, great human. May he Rest In Peace.
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- arto 5y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._O._Wilson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._O._Wilson
- akyu 5y agoPeople like Wilson are a rare breed. He stuck to his guns despite the huge backlash around Sociobiology. From my vantage point, it seems everyone else is coming around to eventually admitting he was basically right all along, begrudgingly of course.
- melling 5y agoRichard Rhodes released his biography of E.O. Wilson a couple of months ago: https://www.amazon.com/Scientist-Wilson-Life-Nature/dp/038554555X https://www.amazon.com/Scientist-Wilson-Life-Nature/dp/03855... Rhodes is famous for this book, that’s often mentioned on HN Making of the Atomic Bomb: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1451677618/ https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1451677618/
- ImaCake 5y agoI can vouch for the audiobook of the biography. It is a lovely read, although I would have liked for it to be longer and have more detail. Some of the technical biology explanations could have been done better, so that could be a barrier to those less well versed in biology.
- toomuchtodo 5y agoMaking of the Atomic Bomb is excellent, highly recommended.
- sunstone 5y agoOne of the giants. "Consilience" is one of his books that's well worth reading. Small book, small words, short sentences and huge ideas.
- Simplicitas 5y agoCan't recommend this book enough
- smcl 5y agoRadioLab did do a very nice ~20 minute bit on E.O. Wilson, it's just a conversation on stage (so it's not overproduced and chopped up with weird sounds like RL stuff can be): https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/91867-chasing-bugs https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/91867... Just sharing because I really liked this, he comes across as a really lovely man.
- harscoat 5y ago"He was so kind & supportive of my work when I was a student—I kept an email he sent me as a postdoc that was v encouraging, it was like a pep talk I would read & re-read in tough times!" https://twitter.com/JessicaLWareLab/status/1475425843962957825 https://twitter.com/JessicaLWareLab/status/14754258439629578...
- harscoat 5y ago"Thanks for the inspiration and may the ants be ever in your favor." https://twitter.com/phylogenomics/status/1475496023384465408 https://twitter.com/phylogenomics/status/1475496023384465408
- webenliven 5y ago
- junon 5y agoNever heard of E.O. Wilson before now, but his work sounds fascinating. Anyone have any suggestions on how to break into his stuff? Sounds like he has 30 or so books, is "On Human Nature" a good start?
- jonjacky 5y agoHis autobiography Naturalist (1994) is a very readable introduction to his life and work -- and to his personality. He writes there about the controversies in his life, including his disputes at Harvard with his nemesis James Watson, and the Sociobiology controversy in the 1970s.
- nabla9 5y agoAnts, sosiobiology and biodiversity conservation. I have only read "Sociobiology: The New Synthesis" (1975). Be aware that Wilson's group selection theory is not generally accepted by other evolutionary biologists. Read about Wilsion-Dawkins kin selection vs. group arguments and debates. ps. There are two Wilson's in the group selection side (David Sloan Wilson and E. O. Wilson) it's easy to mix them if you don't read carefully.
- junon 5y agoThank you :)
- joak 5y agoI'm just finishing Half-Earth: Our Planet's Fight for Life a 2016 book in which he proposes that half of the Earth's surface should be designated a human-free natural reserve to preserve biodiversity. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Half-Earth https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Half-Earth A great read, I think we should make real his proposal. I believe we will eventually.
- pphysch 5y agoHow would you determine which humans get displaced to make room for "human-free" reserves?
- vwcx 5y agoThis weekend we also saw the loss of Tom Lovejoy, one of the most important conservation biologists of the last century. https://news.mongabay.com/2021/12/tom-lovejoy-prominent-conservation-biologist-dead-at-80/ https://news.mongabay.com/2021/12/tom-lovejoy-prominent-cons...
- wombatmobile 5y ago"If all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed ten thousand years ago. If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos." — Edward O. Wilson
- Theizestooke 5y agoBoth scenarios would cause upheaval, and I'm not sure what he means by a "rich state of equilibrium".
- civilized 5y agoHe means something that would be interesting for a biologist like him to hang out in and observe. I know some biologists, and they often wish that the world should be "rich" from a biologist's perspective even if the biologist isn't there to observe it. It's a curious perspective to me. If you don't exist, why would it matter whether the world is (a) green and buzzing with insects, or (b) reduced to grey goo or strange matter? Why would your aesthetic preferences be relevant in a world that you don't exist in? It's not like you're going to get to watch this universe through a viewport.
- ahmedalsudani 5y agoWe wouldn't survive for long without insects, and we'd notice the rot buildup in our environment very quickly without them. It's not about "biology". It's about roles in the ecosystem.
- civilized 5y agoI'm not sure what you think you're responding to in my comment.
- ahmedalsudani 5y ago> I'm not sure what you think you're responding to in my comment. A direct question would be easy to answer. As it is, I'm sorry to hear about your confusion :-)
- SamWhited 5y agoI was just listening to an interview with him on Vox Conversations yesterday, that's so sad to hear. "EO Wilson's Plan to Save the World" is well worth listening to. RSS: http://feeds.megaphone.fm/theezrakleinshow http://feeds.megaphone.fm/theezrakleinshow
- pbmango 5y agoI learned as much about staying curious from reading "Consilience" as anything I can remember in recent years. Transformed my thinking.
- telchar 5y agoSuch a loss. If you want to know what a hive mind really is (it’s not how pop culture portrays it), read The Ants. Fascinating book.
- what_is_orcas 5y agoThis is a true loss.
- Jugurtha 5y agoE.O. Wilson comes up when you get into the "actor model"[0], especially with this quote: >“A colony of ants is more than just an aggregate of insects that are living together. One ant is no ant.” Many publications and articles on the topic of actors reference it at some point. - [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actor_model https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actor_model
- mindcrime 5y agoSee also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stigmergy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stigmergy
- reactspa 5y agoCan someone please help clarify why Sociobiology is so controversial? He was called a racist for applying it to humans.
- Barrin92 5y agobecause any sort of material, sociological or biological account of human society runs into a wall of Enlightenment-era type individualism and people don't like that. I mean in terms of people using it to advance some kind of racial politics it's actually obvious why it's offensive but one of the funnier E.O. Wilson moments I recall is a Youtube video where one commenter accused him of promoting communism by means of teaching about eusociality in ants.
- InDemoVeritas 5y agoI was there for his last Harvard lecture. He ended by saying, “Now I can say it. Humans have instincts!”
- dwt204 5y agoEvolutionary biologists are divided on his work. His own research and published works have been used by racists for example to readily explain the social origins of intelligence, poverty, crime, and violence regarding POC. He never actively fought against such tendencies, even though he was aware that he had become the darling of white nationalists, and even fascists globally. I believe that ALL "traits" can be explained by social environment rather than by biology. I respectfully refer you to many of Gould's work on sociobiology. We are not insects we are human beings.
- pdonis 5y agoWhile Wilson's extreme position on nature over nurture is certainly open to question, Gould is not a good source to be referencing (and the extreme position of nurture over nature you describe is at least as much open to question). Evolutionary biologists may be "divided" about Wilson, but they're pretty firmly negative about Gould's work in that field. See, for example, here: http://cogweb.ucla.edu/Debate/CEP_Gould.html http://cogweb.ucla.edu/Debate/CEP_Gould.html Btw, Wilson was well aware that humans are not insects. He is the one who said of socialism for humans, "Great idea, wrong species".
- VictorPath 5y agoGould said that one faction of evolutionary biologists were mostly wasting their time, it's not a surprise that they would be firmly negative about that. The letter signers you posted say they are from the center for evolutionary psychology, departments of anthropology and psychology. This is the whole problem, they have one foot (if not both feet) outside of science and in social science.
- pdonis 5y ago> Gould said that one faction of evolutionary biologists were mostly wasting their time Yes, he said that, but he said it in the context of giving descriptions of what those evolutionary biologists were doing that were completely disconnected from reality. > The letter signers you posted Are an anthropologist and a psychologist, yes. But the criticisms of Gould that they describe are by no means limited to those fields. The names they list in footnote 2, for example, are a roll call of major evolutionary biologists of the 20th century. Those people are not "outside of science"; they are right in the middle of the scientific field that Gould portrayed himself as an expert on, and they all say Gould's claims are nonsense.
- cloudmike 5y ago"March away from the sounds of the guns. Observe from a distance, but do not join the fray. Make a fray of your own." — E.O. Wilson
- martingoodson 5y agoOne of the great writers on science. This is from ‘The Diversity of Life’: “In the Amazon Basin the greatest violence sometimes begins as a flicker of light beyond the horizon. There in the perfect bowl of the night sky, untouched by light from any human source, a thunderstorm sends its premonitory signal and begins a slow journey to the observer, who thinks: the world is about to change.”
- qntty 5y ago"[The successful scientist] is sometimes driven, I will dare to suggest, by a passive-aggressive nature, and sometimes an anger against some part of society or problem in the world. There is also an introversion in the innovator that keeps him from team sports and social events. He dislikes authority, or at least being told what to do. He is not a leader in high school or college, nor is he likely to be pledged by social clubs. From an early age he is a dreamer, not a doer. His attention wanders easily. He likes to probe, to collect, to tinker. He is prone to fantasize. He is not inclined to focus. He will not be voted by his classmates most likely to succeed." -- E.O. Wilson
- humanistbot 5y agoI know the man just died, but this is such a limited and damaging understanding of what science is and who can be a scientist. You don't need any of those traits to be a successful scientist. Science is a method. This is just feeding into the "jocks vs nerds" mentality.
- ravar 5y agoAnd know that method by the fruits it produces, the replication crisis, and more broadly an overwhelming number of papers that are not wrong but totally pointless. I'm not saying the quote is totally right but there is something about that temperament that produces researchers who are less inclined to publish things that they know are wrong/meaningless, just to get ahead in the publish or perish paradigm.
- inglor_cz 5y agoScience has its methods, but I think that saying "science is a method" is too reductive. Much like visual artists need to master the brush or the pencil, but this technical mastery isn't enough to produce lasting Art, the method itself does not produce good Science. Maybe the long list given by Wilson is too long (there are definitely extroverted scientists out there), but at the very least, a good scientist needs to be curious.
- 8note 5y agoHypothesis generation is key to good science, but is a creative process rather than a procedural one