4 ms·

E.O. Wilson saw the world in a new way

97 points by dnetesn 5y ago

thenaturalist 5y ago
Sad to read, but a truly exceptional life lived. May he rest in peace. I highly recommend reading his autobiography. Even if you're not biologically inclined, it opens a window into a world when academia was very different from today and a brilliant mind that, through systematic thinking, trailblazed some areas of biology which are fields of their own today.
AlbertCory 5y ago
A great, great man. We shall not see his like again. I'm so happy I got to see him at Google. I thought [1] was the video, but since that was in NYC, it couldn't have been the one I was at. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yf_ijizSTAE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yf_ijizSTAE
visviva 5y ago
This appears to be the author's PNAS article mentioned in the story, for those who are curious: https://www.pnas.org/content/72/1/143 https://www.pnas.org/content/72/1/143
ISL 5y ago
If you're a scientist, his 'Letters to a Young Scientist' makes insightful reading. https://www.amazon.com/Letters-Young-Scientist-Edward-Wilson/dp/0871403773 https://www.amazon.com/Letters-Young-Scientist-Edward-Wilson...
wintermutestwin 5y ago
>Nearly everything distinctive about our species is a form of cooperation. Such a great quote. This idea is echoed in Sapiens' statement that cooperation is the superpower of our species. This idea undermines the oft-posited claim that greed is an intrinsic part of human nature.
- xtiansimon 5y ago
  Interesting. Does cooperation build on imitation or do they co-evolve?
- skulk 5y ago
  The article also contains the following quote that accommodates greed into the picture. Paraphrased from memory: > Selfishness beats altruism within groups, while altruistic groups beat selfish groups. Moving from the former to the latter is group evolution.
- mjburgess 5y ago
  Greed is just another dimension to cooperation. Asocial species don't have "greed", because it means nothing for one individual to "hoard" against another. Greed exists precisely because the species is social, not despite it.
  - rex_lupi 5y ago
    > Asocial species don't have "greed", because it means nothing for one individual to "hoard" against another. You mean Eusocial[1]? Individuals of an asocial species would want to maximize its 'own' chances of survival at all cost, i.e. greed. Ants, bees are eusocial species and to quote Wilson, “One ant is no ant”. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eusociality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eusociality
Outdoorsman 5y ago
You'll not waste your time reading everything you can get your hands on regarding E.O.Wilson -- to include anything he wrote, or anything written about him by those he influenced and mentored. The man was an absolute intellectual giant, who freely shared his amazing insights . . .
- kaycebasques 5y ago
  If you had to pick one book though what would it be? Only one!
  - cortesi 5y ago
    It depends on what kind of geek you are. "The Ants" is perhaps my favourite non-fiction book of all time - at the time it was written it was a fair account of the total sum of human knowledge of ants. It's beautifully written and incredibly complete, and although it's now a bit dated, it's still the best reference to ants if you're interested in them. For a broader summary of Wilson's intellectual project I recommend "Consilience" - a wonderful synthesis of almost all his ethical and scientific interests.
    - martinpw 5y ago
      Looks like The Ants is quite expensive ($200+). I see a couple of other books on ants by him, would you recommend either of these? Journey to the Ants https://shop.harvard.com/book/9780674485266 https://shop.harvard.com/book/9780674485266 Tales from the Ant World https://www.harvard.com/book/9781324091097_tales_from_the_ant_world/ https://www.harvard.com/book/9781324091097_tales_from_the_an...
  - rex_lupi 5y ago
    Consilience: The unity of knowledge
  - Outdoorsman 5y ago
    His life, the studies he undertook quietly over protracted periods of time . . . there is no "one book" . . . his mind was a burrowing mind . . . If you appreciate logic, well-reasoned arguments and objective observations --the scientific method personified -- you will savor anything related to his endeavors.
nabla9 5y ago
Be aware that Wilson's group selection theory is considered bogus by most evolutionary biologists. Richard Dawkins explains inclusive fitness (mainstream theory) and why Wilson is wrong. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrgqUC7ZCxQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrgqUC7ZCxQ (15 min)
- User23 5y ago
  For me that parses as an endorsement of Wilson's group selection theory. Dawkins has made a career out of shallow criticism of others and self-promotion. Wilson was an intellectual giant. Perhaps we'll see how it shakes out. In any event any sexually reproducing species is going to evolve under a minimum group size of two. That we've evolved a mostly monogamous mating strategy, despite the apparent advantages for powerful men to instead build a harem and deprive weaker men of mating opportunities, is suggestive.
  - nabla9 5y ago
    You are incorrect, but I understand your skepticism. You can check out by finding more about Dawkins-Wilson debates and all graduate level evolutionary biology textbooks. Wilson group selection theory does not add anything to inclusive fitness. Animal Behavior, Dustin R. Rubenstein, John Alcock, Sinauer Associates is an imprint of Oxford University Press, Year: 2018, ISBN: 1605355488,9781605355481 > Although most social evolutionary biologists use the individual selection perspective derived from kin selection theory, David Sloan Wilson and others have complained that the preference for kin selection theory stems from prejudice against the rejected Wynne-Edwardsian version of group selection (Wilson and Wilson 2007). But as Stuart West and his colleagues have pointed out, kin selection theory is widely accepted primarily because it has helped so many researchers develop testable hypotheses for puzzling social behaviors exhibited by creatures as different as termites, bacteria, amoebae, and humans (West et al. 2011). Nonetheless, other researchers have continued to attack kin selection theory. For example, Martin Nowak, Corina Tarnita, and E. O. Wilson claimed that kin selection theory should be discarded altogether in favor of an alternative mathematical approach (Nowak et al. 2011). Yet few researchers agree with this idea, for reasons spelled out by Andrew Bourke (Bourke 2011a) and a team led by David Queller (Liao et al. 2015), as well as those outlined by more than 100 behavioral biologists in a response to Nowak and his colleagues’ paper (Abbot et al. 2011). Thus, inclusive fitness theory continues to be a guiding framework for understanding cooperation, altruism, and the evolution of sociality more broadly, primarily because it produces clear, testable hypotheses, something that the concept of group selection largely fails to do.
gromitss 5y ago

97 points by dnetesn 5y ago

Sad to read, but a truly exceptional life lived. May he rest in peace. I highly recommend reading his autobiography. Even if you're not biologically inclined, it opens a window into a world when academia was very different from today and a brilliant mind that, through systematic thinking, trailblazed some areas of biology which are fields of their own today.

AlbertCory 5y ago

A great, great man. We shall not see his like again. I'm so happy I got to see him at Google. I thought [1] was the video, but since that was in NYC, it couldn't have been the one I was at. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yf_ijizSTAE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yf_ijizSTAE

visviva 5y ago

This appears to be the author's PNAS article mentioned in the story, for those who are curious: https://www.pnas.org/content/72/1/143 https://www.pnas.org/content/72/1/143

ISL 5y ago

If you're a scientist, his 'Letters to a Young Scientist' makes insightful reading. https://www.amazon.com/Letters-Young-Scientist-Edward-Wilson/dp/0871403773 https://www.amazon.com/Letters-Young-Scientist-Edward-Wilson...

wintermutestwin 5y ago

>Nearly everything distinctive about our species is a form of cooperation. Such a great quote. This idea is echoed in Sapiens' statement that cooperation is the superpower of our species. This idea undermines the oft-posited claim that greed is an intrinsic part of human nature.

xtiansimon 5y ago
Interesting. Does cooperation build on imitation or do they co-evolve?
skulk 5y ago
The article also contains the following quote that accommodates greed into the picture. Paraphrased from memory: > Selfishness beats altruism within groups, while altruistic groups beat selfish groups. Moving from the former to the latter is group evolution.
mjburgess 5y ago
Greed is just another dimension to cooperation. Asocial species don't have "greed", because it means nothing for one individual to "hoard" against another. Greed exists precisely because the species is social, not despite it.
- rex_lupi 5y ago
  > Asocial species don't have "greed", because it means nothing for one individual to "hoard" against another. You mean Eusocial[1]? Individuals of an asocial species would want to maximize its 'own' chances of survival at all cost, i.e. greed. Ants, bees are eusocial species and to quote Wilson, “One ant is no ant”. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eusociality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eusociality

Outdoorsman 5y ago

You'll not waste your time reading everything you can get your hands on regarding E.O.Wilson -- to include anything he wrote, or anything written about him by those he influenced and mentored. The man was an absolute intellectual giant, who freely shared his amazing insights . . .

kaycebasques 5y ago
If you had to pick one book though what would it be? Only one!
- cortesi 5y ago
  It depends on what kind of geek you are. "The Ants" is perhaps my favourite non-fiction book of all time - at the time it was written it was a fair account of the total sum of human knowledge of ants. It's beautifully written and incredibly complete, and although it's now a bit dated, it's still the best reference to ants if you're interested in them. For a broader summary of Wilson's intellectual project I recommend "Consilience" - a wonderful synthesis of almost all his ethical and scientific interests.
  - martinpw 5y ago
    Looks like The Ants is quite expensive ($200+). I see a couple of other books on ants by him, would you recommend either of these? Journey to the Ants https://shop.harvard.com/book/9780674485266 https://shop.harvard.com/book/9780674485266 Tales from the Ant World https://www.harvard.com/book/9781324091097_tales_from_the_ant_world/ https://www.harvard.com/book/9781324091097_tales_from_the_an...
- rex_lupi 5y ago
  Consilience: The unity of knowledge
- Outdoorsman 5y ago
  His life, the studies he undertook quietly over protracted periods of time . . . there is no "one book" . . . his mind was a burrowing mind . . . If you appreciate logic, well-reasoned arguments and objective observations --the scientific method personified -- you will savor anything related to his endeavors.

nabla9 5y ago

Be aware that Wilson's group selection theory is considered bogus by most evolutionary biologists. Richard Dawkins explains inclusive fitness (mainstream theory) and why Wilson is wrong. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrgqUC7ZCxQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrgqUC7ZCxQ (15 min)

User23 5y ago
For me that parses as an endorsement of Wilson's group selection theory. Dawkins has made a career out of shallow criticism of others and self-promotion. Wilson was an intellectual giant. Perhaps we'll see how it shakes out. In any event any sexually reproducing species is going to evolve under a minimum group size of two. That we've evolved a mostly monogamous mating strategy, despite the apparent advantages for powerful men to instead build a harem and deprive weaker men of mating opportunities, is suggestive.
- nabla9 5y ago
  You are incorrect, but I understand your skepticism. You can check out by finding more about Dawkins-Wilson debates and all graduate level evolutionary biology textbooks. Wilson group selection theory does not add anything to inclusive fitness. Animal Behavior, Dustin R. Rubenstein, John Alcock, Sinauer Associates is an imprint of Oxford University Press, Year: 2018, ISBN: 1605355488,9781605355481 > Although most social evolutionary biologists use the individual selection perspective derived from kin selection theory, David Sloan Wilson and others have complained that the preference for kin selection theory stems from prejudice against the rejected Wynne-Edwardsian version of group selection (Wilson and Wilson 2007). But as Stuart West and his colleagues have pointed out, kin selection theory is widely accepted primarily because it has helped so many researchers develop testable hypotheses for puzzling social behaviors exhibited by creatures as different as termites, bacteria, amoebae, and humans (West et al. 2011). Nonetheless, other researchers have continued to attack kin selection theory. For example, Martin Nowak, Corina Tarnita, and E. O. Wilson claimed that kin selection theory should be discarded altogether in favor of an alternative mathematical approach (Nowak et al. 2011). Yet few researchers agree with this idea, for reasons spelled out by Andrew Bourke (Bourke 2011a) and a team led by David Queller (Liao et al. 2015), as well as those outlined by more than 100 behavioral biologists in a response to Nowak and his colleagues’ paper (Abbot et al. 2011). Thus, inclusive fitness theory continues to be a guiding framework for understanding cooperation, altruism, and the evolution of sociality more broadly, primarily because it produces clear, testable hypotheses, something that the concept of group selection largely fails to do.

gromitss 5y ago