or a pitcher/jug{{cite news|title=Water Poured on Harvard Professor's Head|work=[[San Francisco Chronicle]]|date= February 16, 1978|page=24|url=https://sfchronicle.newsbank.com/doc/image/v2:142051F45F422A02@NGPA-CASFC-15343D3E57695588@2443556-153293594F0FE3C3@23-153293594F0FE3C3|url-access=subscription}}{{cite book |last1=Segerstråle |first1=Ullica |author1-link=Ullica Segerstråle |title=Defenders of the Truth: The Battle for Science in the Sociobiology Debate and Beyond |date=2000 |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |isbn=0-19-850505-1 |page=23 |url=https://archive.org/details/segerstrale-defenders-of-the-truth-the-sociobiology-debate-2000/page/22/mode/2up |language=English}} was used."},"parts":[{"template":{"target":{"wt":"Efn","href":"./Template:Efn"},"params":{"1":{"wt":"While primary and eyewitness accounts agree that the phrase \"Racist Wilson you can't hide, we charge you with genocide!\" was chanted, and that water was poured on Wilson's head, they disagree on whether a cup{{Cite journal |last=Hull |first=David L. |author-link=David Hull (philosopher) |date=12 October 2000 |title=Activism, scientists and sociobiology |journal=Nature |language=en |volume=407 |issue=6805 |pages=673–674 |doi=10.1038/35037645 |bibcode=2000Natur.407..673H |s2cid=142764821 |issn=0028-0836|doi-access=free }} or a pitcher/jug{{cite news|title=Water Poured on Harvard Professor's Head|work=[[San Francisco Chronicle]]|date= February 16, 1978|page=24|url=https://sfchronicle.newsbank.com/doc/image/v2:142051F45F422A02@NGPA-CASFC-15343D3E57695588@2443556-153293594F0FE3C3@23-153293594F0FE3C3|url-access=subscription}}{{cite book |last1=Segerstråle |first1=Ullica |author1-link=Ullica Segerstråle |title=Defenders of the Truth: The Battle for Science in the Sociobiology Debate and Beyond |date=2000 |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |isbn=0-19-850505-1 |page=23 |url=https://archive.org/details/segerstrale-defenders-of-the-truth-the-sociobiology-debate-2000/page/22/mode/2up |language=English}} was used."}},"i":0}}]}"> [a] by members of the International Committee Against Racism, who accused Wilson of advocating racism and genetic determinism. Steven Jay Gould, who was present at the event, and Science for the People, which had previously protested Wilson, condemned the attack. [60] [57]
Philosopher Mary Midgley encountered Sociobiology in the process of writing Beast and Man (1979) [61] and significantly rewrote the book to offer a critique of Wilson's views. Midgley praised the book for the study of animal behavior, clarity, scholarship, and encyclopedic scope, but extensively critiqued Wilson for conceptual confusion, scientism, and anthropomorphism of genetics. [62]
Wilson wrote in his 1978 book On Human Nature , "The evolutionary epic is probably the best myth we will ever have." [63] Wilson's fame prompted use of the morphed phrase epic of evolution. [24] The book won the Pulitzer Prize in 1979. [64]
Wilson, along with Bert Hölldobler, carried out a systematic study of ants and ant behavior, [65] culminating in the 1990 encyclopedic work The Ants . Because much self-sacrificing behavior on the part of individual ants can be explained on the basis of their genetic interests in the survival of the sisters, with whom they share 75% of their genes (though the actual case is some species' queens mate with multiple males and therefore some workers in a colony would only be 25% related), Wilson argued for a sociobiological explanation for all social behavior on the model of the behavior of the social insects.
Wilson said in reference to ants that "Karl Marx was right, socialism works, it is just that he had the wrong species". [66] He asserted that individual ants and other eusocial species were able to reach higher Darwinian fitness putting the needs of the colony above their own needs as individuals because they lack reproductive independence: individual ants cannot reproduce without a queen, so they can only increase their fitness by working to enhance the fitness of the colony as a whole. Humans, however, do possess reproductive independence, and so individual humans enjoy their maximum level of Darwinian fitness by looking after their own survival and having their own offspring. [67]
In his 1998 book Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge , Wilson discussed methods that have been used to unite the sciences and might be able to unite the sciences with the humanities. He argued that knowledge is a single, unified thing, not divided between science and humanistic inquiry. [68] Wilson used the term "consilience" to describe the synthesis of knowledge from different specialized fields of human endeavor. He defined human nature as a collection of epigenetic rules, the genetic patterns of mental development. He argued that culture and rituals are products, not parts, of human nature. He said art is not part of human nature, but our appreciation of art is. He suggested that concepts such as art appreciation, fear of snakes, or the incest taboo (Westermarck effect) could be studied by scientific methods of the natural sciences and be part of interdisciplinary research. [69]
Wilson coined the phrase scientific humanism as "the only worldview compatible with science's growing knowledge of the real world and the laws of nature". [70] Wilson argued that it is best suited to improve the human condition. In 2003, he was one of the signers of the Humanist Manifesto. [71]
On the question of God, Wilson described his position as "provisional deism" [72] and explicitly denied the label of "atheist", preferring "agnostic". [73] He explained his faith as a trajectory away from traditional beliefs: "I drifted away from the church, not definitively agnostic or atheistic, just Baptist & Christian no more." [45] Wilson argued that belief in God and the rituals of religion are products of evolution. [74] He argued that they should not be rejected or dismissed, but further investigated by science to better understand their significance to human nature. In his book The Creation, Wilson wrote that scientists ought to "offer the hand of friendship" to religious leaders and build an alliance with them, stating that "Science and religion are two of the most potent forces on Earth and they should come together to save the creation." [75]
Wilson made an appeal to the religious community on the lecture circuit at Midland College, Texas, for example, and that "the appeal received a 'massive reply'", that a covenant had been written and that a "partnership will work to a substantial degree as time goes on". [76]
In a New Scientist interview published on January 21, 2015, however, Wilson said that religious faith is "dragging us down", and:
I would say that for the sake of human progress, the best thing we could possibly do would be to diminish, to the point of eliminating, religious faiths. But certainly not eliminating the natural yearnings of our species or the asking of these great questions. [77]
Wilson said that, if he could start his life over he would work in microbial ecology, when discussing the reinvigoration of his original fields of study since the 1960s. [78] He studied the mass extinctions of the 20th century and their relationship to modern society, and identifying mass extinction as the greatest threat to Earth's future. [79] In 1998 argued for an ecological approach at the Capitol:
Now when you cut a forest, an ancient forest in particular, you are not just removing a lot of big trees and a few birds fluttering around in the canopy. You are drastically imperiling a vast array of species within a few square miles of you. The number of these species may go to tens of thousands. ... Many of them are still unknown to science, and science has not yet discovered the key role undoubtedly played in the maintenance of that ecosystem, as in the case of fungi, microorganisms, and many of the insects. [80]
From the late 1970s Wilson was actively involved in the global conservation of biodiversity, contributing and promoting research. In 1984 he published Biophilia, a work that explored the evolutionary and psychological basis of humanity's attraction to the natural environment. This work introduced the word biophilia which influenced the shaping of modern conservation ethics. In 1988 Wilson edited the BioDiversity volume, based on the proceedings of the first US national conference on the subject, which also introduced the term biodiversity into the language. This work was very influential in creating the modern field of biodiversity studies. [81] In 2011, Wilson led scientific expeditions to the Gorongosa National Park in Mozambique and the archipelagos of Vanuatu and New Caledonia in the southwest Pacific. Wilson was part of the international conservation movement, as a consultant to Columbia University's Earth Institute, as a director of the American Museum of Natural History, Conservation International, The Nature Conservancy and the World Wildlife Fund. [18]
Understanding the scale of the extinction crisis led him to advocate for forest protection, [80] including the "Act to Save America's Forests", first introduced in 1998 and reintroduced in 2008, but never passed. [82] The Forests Now Declaration called for new markets-based mechanisms to protect tropical forests. [83] Wilson once said destroying a rainforest for economic gain was like burning a Renaissance painting to cook a meal. [84] In 2014, Wilson called for setting aside 50% of Earth's surface for other species to thrive in as the only possible strategy to solve the extinction crisis. The idea became the basis for his book Half-Earth (2016) and for the Half-Earth Project of the E.O. Wilson Biodiversity Foundation. [85] [86] Wilson's influence regarding ecology through popular science was discussed by Alan G. Gross in The Scientific Sublime (2018). [87]
Wilson was instrumental in launching the Encyclopedia of Life (EOL) [88] initiative with the goal of creating a global database to include information on the 1.9 million species recognized by science. Currently, it includes information on practically all known species. This open and searchable digital repository for organism traits, measurements, interactions and other data has more than 300 international partners and countless scientists providing global users' access to knowledge of life on Earth. For his part, Wilson discovered and described more than 400 species of ants. [89] [90]
In 1996, Wilson officially retired from Harvard University, where he continued to hold the positions of Professor Emeritus and Honorary Curator in Entomology. [91] He fully retired from Harvard in 2002 at age 73. After stepping down, he published more than a dozen books, including a digital biology textbook for the iPad. [12] [92]
He founded the E.O. Wilson Biodiversity Foundation, which finances the PEN/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award and is an "independent foundation" at the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University. Wilson became a special lecturer at Duke University as part of the agreement. [93]
Wilson and his wife, Irene, resided in Lexington, Massachusetts. [18] He had a daughter, Catherine. [84] He was preceded in death by his wife (on August 7, 2021) and died in nearby Burlington on December 26, 2021, at the age of 92. [12] [92]
Wilson's scientific and conservation honors include:
Ants are eusocial insects of the family Formicidae and, along with the related wasps and bees, belong to the order Hymenoptera. Ants evolved from vespoid wasp ancestors in the Cretaceous period. More than 13,800 of an estimated total of 22,000 species have been classified. They are easily identified by their geniculate (elbowed) antennae and the distinctive node-like structure that forms their slender waists.
Stephen Jay Gould was an American paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, and historian of science. He was one of the most influential and widely read authors of popular science of his generation. Gould spent most of his career teaching at Harvard University and working at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. In 1996, Gould was hired as the Vincent Astor Visiting Research Professor of Biology at New York University, after which he divided his time teaching between there and Harvard.
Sociobiology is a field of biology that aims to explain social behavior in terms of evolution. It draws from disciplines including psychology, ethology, anthropology, evolution, zoology, archaeology, and population genetics. Within the study of human societies, sociobiology is closely allied to evolutionary anthropology, human behavioral ecology, evolutionary psychology, and sociology.
The Selfish Gene is a 1976 book on evolution by ethologist Richard Dawkins that promotes the gene-centred view of evolution, as opposed to views focused on the organism and the group. The book builds upon the thesis of George C. Williams's Adaptation and Natural Selection (1966); it also popularized ideas developed during the 1960s by W. D. Hamilton and others. From the gene-centred view, it follows that the more two individuals are genetically related, the more sense it makes for them to behave cooperatively with each other.
Berthold Karl HölldoblerBVO is a German zoologist, sociobiologist and evolutionary biologist who studies evolution and social organization in ants. He is the author of several books, including The Ants, for which he and his co-author, E. O. Wilson, received the Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction writing in 1991.
William Donald Hamilton was a British evolutionary biologist, recognised as one of the most significant evolutionary theorists of the 20th century. Hamilton became known for his theoretical work expounding a rigorous genetic basis for the existence of altruism, an insight that was a key part of the development of the gene-centered view of evolution. He is considered one of the forerunners of sociobiology. Hamilton published important work on sex ratios and the evolution of sex. From 1984 to his death in 2000, he was a Royal Society Research Professor at Oxford University.
Myrmecology is a branch of entomology focusing on the study of ants. Ants continue to be a model of choice for the study of questions on the evolution of social systems because of their complex and varied forms of social organization. Their diversity and prominence in ecosystems also has made them important components in the study of biodiversity and conservation. In the 2000s, ant colonies began to be studied and modeled for their relevance in machine learning, complex interactive networks, stochasticity of encounter and interaction networks, parallel computing, and other computing fields.
Richard Charles Lewontin was an American evolutionary biologist, mathematician, geneticist, and social commentator. A leader in developing the mathematical basis of population genetics and evolutionary theory, he applied techniques from molecular biology, such as gel electrophoresis, to questions of genetic variation and evolution.
Group selection is a proposed mechanism of evolution in which natural selection acts at the level of the group, instead of at the level of the individual or gene.
The Texas leafcutter ant is a species of fungus-farming ant in the subfamily Myrmicinae. It is found in Texas, Louisiana, and north-eastern Mexico. Other common names include town ant, parasol ant, fungus ant, cut ant, and night ant. It harvests leaves from over 200 plant species, and is considered a major pest of agricultural and ornamental plants, as it can defoliate a citrus tree in less than 24 hours. Every colony has several queens and up to 2 million workers. Nests are built in well-drained, sandy or loamy soil, and may reach a depth of 6 m (20 ft), have 1000 entrance holes, and occupy 420 m2 (4,500 sq ft).
Journey to the Ants: a Story of Scientific Exploration is a 1994 book by the evolutionary biologist Bert Hölldobler and the biologist Edward O. Wilson. The book was written as a popularized account for the layman of the science earlier presented in their book The Ants (1990), which won the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction in 1991.
Sociobiology: The New Synthesis is a book by the biologist E. O. Wilson. It helped start the sociobiology debate, one of the great scientific controversies in biology of the 20th century and part of the wider debate about evolutionary psychology and the modern synthesis of evolutionary biology. Wilson popularized the term "sociobiology" as an attempt to explain the evolutionary mechanics behind social behaviour such as altruism, aggression, and the nurturing of the young. It formed a position within the long-running nature versus nurture debate. The fundamental principle guiding sociobiology is that an organism's evolutionary success is measured by the extent to which its genes are represented in the next generation.
Not in Our Genes: Biology, Ideology and Human Nature is a 1984 book by the evolutionary geneticist Richard Lewontin, the neurobiologist Steven Rose, and the psychologist Leon Kamin, in which the authors criticize sociobiology and genetic determinism and advocate a socialist society. Its themes include the relationship between biology and society, the nature versus nurture debate, and the intersection of science and ideology.
Robert Ludlow "Bob" Trivers is an American evolutionary biologist and sociobiologist. Trivers proposed the theories of reciprocal altruism (1971), parental investment (1972), facultative sex ratio determination (1973), and parent–offspring conflict (1974). He has also contributed by explaining self-deception as an adaptive evolutionary strategy and discussing intragenomic conflict.
Thomas Eisner was a German-American entomologist and ecologist, known as the "father of chemical ecology." He was a Jacob Gould Schurman Professor of Chemical Ecology at Cornell University, and director of the Cornell Institute for Research in Chemical Ecology (CIRCE). He was a world authority on animal behavior, ecology, and evolution, and, together with his Cornell colleague Jerrold Meinwald, was one of the pioneers of chemical ecology, the discipline dealing with the chemical interactions of organisms. He was author or co-author of some 400 scientific articles and seven books.
On Human Nature is a book by the biologist E. O. Wilson, in which the author attempts to explain human nature and society through sociobiology. Wilson argues that evolution has left its traces on characteristics such as generosity, self-sacrifice, worship and the use of sex for pleasure, and proposes a sociobiological explanation of homosexuality.
Walter R. Tschinkel is an American myrmecologist, entomologist and Distinguished Research Professor of Biological Science and R.O. Lawton Distinguished Professor emeritus at Florida State University. He is the author of the Pulitzer Prize nominated book The Fire Ants, the book Ant Architecture: The Wonder, Beauty, and Science of Underground Nests, and more than 150 original research papers on the natural history, ecology, nest architecture and organization of ant societies; chemical communication in beetles; and the mysterious fairy circles of the Namib desert. His casts of ant nests and botanical drawings appear in numerous museums of art and natural history, from Hong Kong to Paris.
The Sociobiology Study Group was an academic organization formed to specifically counter sociobiological explanations of human behavior, particularly those expounded by the Harvard entomologist E. O. Wilson in Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (1975). The group formed in Boston, Massachusetts and consisted of both professors and students, predominantly left-wing and Marxist.
Mark Moffett is an American tropical biologist who studies the ecology of tropical forest canopies and the social behavior of animals and humans. He is also the author of several popular science books and is noted for his macrophotography documenting ant biology.
The history of evolutionary psychology began with Charles Darwin, who said that humans have social instincts that evolved by natural selection. Darwin's work inspired later psychologists such as William James and Sigmund Freud but for most of the 20th century psychologists focused more on behaviorism and proximate explanations for human behavior. E. O. Wilson's landmark 1975 book, Sociobiology, synthesized recent theoretical advances in evolutionary theory to explain social behavior in animals, including humans. Jerome Barkow, Leda Cosmides and John Tooby popularized the term "evolutionary psychology" in their 1992 book The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and The Generation of Culture. Like sociobiology before it, evolutionary psychology has been embroiled in controversy, but evolutionary psychologists see their field as gaining increased acceptance overall.
In October 1975, a group called the Sociobiology Study Group,' composed of professors, students, researchers and others from the Boston area launched an attack on Wilson's Sociobiology, which by then had received widespread publicity and positive reviews.
Sociobiology was initially well received by most biologists, who appreciated the detailed empirical and theoretical work on animal social behaviour... However, a huge controversy throughout the 1970s and 80s, known as the sociobiology debate, soon followed.
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