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Edward O Wilson. My Obituary Tribute to him

E.O. Wilson’s Sociobiology was published around the same time as my The Selfish Gene, and I came in for a bit of backlash from the wave of misconceived controversy that enveloped Wilson. It had been stirred up by two of his Harvard University colleagues followed by a flock of sheep-like comrades and fellow travellers. It was around that time that I first met Ed Wilson, at the 1978 Washington, D.C, meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. A broadly smiling Wilson limped up to me at coffee time on crutches (he had broken his leg) and, without introducing himself, made a friendly joke about “not wanting any of this reductionism around here”—a genial allusion to our both being accused of the heinous sin of reductionism (whatever that might mean; its critics never seem to make up their minds).

At the same conference, Wilson was on a panel together with Stephen Jay Gould, David Barash, and others. I witnessed the Marxist-inspired rabble as they rushed the platform chanting their puerile doggerel: “Wilson, Wilson, you can’t hide. We charge you with genocide.” A bearded man tipped water over Wilson, and somebody else threw a cup of water, which was parried by Barash. There was uproar, during which Gould seized the microphone and aptly quoted Lenin in condemnation of “this infantile disorder.” The session chairman took the microphone from Gould and said that, as an anthropologist and a Marxist, he wanted to “personally apologize to Professor Wilson.”

Wilson dried himself off, cleaned his glasses, and then, unruffled and with characteristic good humour, gave a brilliant lecture. In the question time, I was impressed by his magisterial command of the anthropology literature, in a field far from his primary expertise in entomology. One young woman was almost in tears as she asked her question, having apparently been misled into thinking that Wilson’s ideas, if right, would condemn her to a life of stereotyped womanhood, imprisoned in the apron of domesticity. Wilson calmly dispelled this all-too-common style of misunderstanding, and she sat down, I hope satisfied.

Equally misguided, and actually downright slander, was the chant of “We charge you with genocide.” What? Did we hear right? Genocide? It is as though these people thought that any mention of the dread word gene in the same sentence as human behavior or human psychology automatically branded the speaker a genocidal racist. What superlatives remain, one wonders, to describe genuine racism when it comes along, let alone genocide?

Four decades on, the infantile disorder had died a natural death as its perpetrators grew up. But alas, a muddled re-hash of it resurfaced after Wilson’s death in—of all places—Scientific American. No water thrown this time, just nasty, snide innuendo backed up by literally no evidence—indeed no indication that its author had read a word of Sociobiology. The editor of Scientific American went on record as finding the article “intriguing.” Have the standards of that once respected journal really sunk so low? Has it abandoned science?

Edward O. Wilson was a gentleman— a humane, humanist gentleman. He was also human, capable of being wrong, as we all are. I believe he was profoundly wrong in his latter-day disagreement with virtually everyone else in the field over kin selection and inclusive fitness (a purely scientific disagreement having no connection with the political pre-occupations of the Washington water-throwers or the wetly incoherent Scientific American author).

It would be hypocritical of me not to acknowledge the existence of my highly critical review of The Social Conquest of Earth, which explains the nature of the disagreement. I stand by it and do not regret its outspoken tone (it is reprinted in my 2021 book Books Do Furnish a Life). But I also stand by my profound admiration for Professor Wilson and his life work.

Edward O. Wilson was a biologist of immense distinction. In addition to his unmatched expertise in the fascinatingly alien world of ants, he was one of the world’s leading ecologists. Together with Robert MacArthur, he invented the modern science of island biogeography. If he didn’t invent biophilia and consilience, his name will remain linked with those noble philosophies as their most articulate advocate. He was an astonishingly prolific and hard-working author. Having finished a book as substantial as The Insect Societies, one might have expected him to take a well-earned rest. Comfortable laurels would have beckoned to a lesser man. But no: “Because … there was some momentum left from writing The Insect Societies, I decided to learn enough about vertebrates to attempt a general synthesis.” The result was Sociobiology. Some momentum! And even Sociobiology, which might be thought sufficiently magnum for any normal lifetime, is dwarfed by The Ants, his later opus written jointly with Bert Hölldobler.

Not many scientists can boast two Pulitzer Prizes. Even more distinguished, he won the Crafoord Prize of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, widely regarded as the equivalent of the Nobel Prize for disciplines “chosen so as to complement those for which the Nobel Prizes are awarded.” A great scientist and a great man.

EO Wilson Memorial

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