Edward O. Wilson has died. Carl Zimmer’s obituary at that link is a fine, fair accounting of his extraordinary life and the profound influence he had and still has on ecosystem and evolutionary biology.
Wilson was a complicated man and led a complex intellectual life. He was an exceptional field and experimental researcher, showing that in a molecular age there remained a huge amount to learn about the natural world at the level of the organism and the ecosystem. And he was a hugely important contributor to evolutionary theory, most famously responsible for developing core ideas in sociobiology. I can say this from personal knowledge: among all the brilliant investigators of nature I’ve had the ridiculously good luck to meet, he had the greatest passion for the living world, a seemingly limitless capacity for focus, fascination, and awe in the face of the biosphere.
He was, as Zimmer documents, also someone given to reasoning past his evidence, applying his ideas to human behavior, culture and society in ways that were easily turned into echoes of pernicious biological determinism. Zimmer argues, correctly, I think, that a lot of the criticism of Wilson/sociobiology as eugenics-in-modern-dress misread what Wilson wrote and thought; still, he pushed further into that argument that most remember or acknowledge especially in a now, mostly forgotten book co-written with Charles Lumsden. ISTM it’s fair to say that in his key ideas he found a hammer, and for a considerable while, nearly everything in the living world looked like a nail.
And (again, as Zimmer notes) Wilson was a ferocious academic battler–of necessity during the sociobiology wars of the late 70s and the early 80s, and by inclination before and after. Je was an ambitious man who achieved an enormous amount and screwed up in sometimes major ways along that journey.
But taken all in all he was a profoundly rich and important thinker and researcher who spent a lot of time trying to do as much good as possible in the world, especially in defense of biodiversity and a planet capable of supporting not just us but the extraordinary wealth of living things with which we share this rock.
I have just a couple of personal remembrances. Here’s the one that always makes me smile:
The first time I interviewed him was in 1983 or 4, when I was a very and unjustly confident young reporter, wanting to talk to him about his ideas about the coevolution of genes and culture (that now mostly forgotten book). He invited me to meet him for lunch in his lab–he’d bring the food. So I came up from New York and made my way to Oxford St. in Cambridge. He met me at the door and we sat down at a mostly cleared lab bench in the first of several connected rooms where he studied his beloved ants. He handed me a sandwich and we started to talk. I was three or four bites into my tuna sandwich when I focused on the tube running just below eye level between us, running from one terrarium to another at either end of the bench. There was some motion there. I focused for a second, missing what Wilson said for a sentence or two. He followed my eyes to the parade of insects marching along the tube, and told me the species (now long forgotten). I grinned in acknowledgement, and then had to choke back a laugh…
…as I realized that I was having lunch with perhaps the one person in the country who brought his own ants to a picnic.
He got the full mileage out of his four-score-and-ten. We should all do as well.
And with that: thread, open, be this can.
Image: Albert Bierstadt, Tropical landscape with fishing boats in the bay, undated, before 1902.
SiubhanDuinne
That’s a great eulogy for him!
Another Scott
I still remember when his Ants book came out. Thinking that it is the perfect example of what observational science should be – studying seemingly unimportant things (which are actually hugely important, but we just didn’t know until someone did the work) in excruciating detail.
My recollection is that one of the factoids was that the totality of ants weighs more than the totality of humans, or something like that…
A science life well lived. RIP.
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
(“Who still needs to get a copy of the book…”)
smith
I met Wilson a couple times, way back in the day (my spouse at the time was a grad student of his). I remember him as a genial, unassuming man, who even though he was already renowned by that time, was willing spend time hanging out with lowly grad students.
John H. McDonald
I saw Wilson give a talk at the annual meeting of the Society for the Study of Evolution. He said that when he gave talks to the general public, he was often asked, “You’re an expert on ants. I’ve got ants in my kitchen, what should I do?” He said he always responded, “Watch where you step.”
Chetan Murthy
I remember when that long-forgotten book came out. It seems like a different time, when the things that got discussed in learned circles were things like sociobiology, “left conservatism” (remember that?) and more generally, science seemed like the settled background for learned society.
Sigh.
M31
during college I worked in the summer in the Harvard natural history museum gift shop, where we sold pretty lumps of polished amber for jewelry, and we’d pick through it and any with ants inside we’d send upstairs to Wilson
John Revolta
-Robert Benchley
WereBear
I’d be suspicious of science or practitioners who claim to never make a mistake.
plukiy
@WereBear: The serendipitous results of “mistakes” have been a great driver of scientific advancement. See Fleming’s mold growth on improperly prepared culture plates, or the unshielded noise the revealed the existence of the cosmic microwave background.
justawriter
I earned my biology degree about the time the book came out and bought a copy. I seem to remember Wilson being more cautious than many of his supporters, especially those who saw behaviors documented in surveys of (mostly white) college undergraduates as being representative of the entire species, along with those who looked for a strictly biological (as opposed to cultural) cause for those behaviors. Strict adaptionism doesn’t work for flatworms, much less a technologically capable species.
Brachiator
A wonderful eulogy for a giant of science.
Wilson was a very elegant writer and could explain complex ideas about evolution very well.
I envy those who had a chance to interview or work with him.
kmeyerthelurker
Also RIP to Jonathan Spence, whose work on Chinese history and the Taiping Rebellion in particular blew my younger mind.
Geoduck
@John Revolta: Gary Larson did a Far Side cartoon about Navy Ants in little long boats attacking a couple in a liferaft.
BruceJ
@John Revolta:
Clearly neither had ever seen a raft of army ants during flood season!
trollhattan
Speaking of (anti) science, the pathology is reaching new red state depths.
Greg Ferguson
Very cool. I am glad he lived beyond his hammer/nail period, and the ill-informed arguments it invoked. Culture wars have gotten so much more septic and baseless since then!
R.I.P., indeed. ???
Suzanne
Thanks for this, Tom. Your remembrances are really cool.
debbie
@Another Scott:
NPR’s Here and Now reran their interview with E.O. Wilson earlier today. Ants were front and center.
Suzanne
Tom, we need another RIP post. (Too many today.) Wayne Thiebaud, the painter, died at age 101. One of my favorites of that Pop era, so much lovely brushwork and coloration.
Also, he was born in Mesa, AZ, where I lived much of my life, and he taught art at UC Davis, where Mr. Suzanne attended.
trollhattan
Good a place as any to note the passing of Sacramento’s beloved painter and teacher Wayne Thiebaud, who made it to 101 so clearly did many things right. Never met him but hung out with quite a few of his students, back in the day, and he was fundamental to their development as artists. Losing he and Joan Didion within a week has delivered quite the blow to the local psyche.
https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/obituaries/article256855612.html
Waves to Suzanne.
debbie
@Suzanne:
Seconded.
Anyway
@trollhattan:
Surprise for me is how quickly these (red) states were able to make changes in laws re unemployment benefits. Keep hearing how slowly bureaucracy moves but here are changes happening as soon as the mandates kick in. I might be comparing apples and oranges and many red states have supremajorities in the state legislature — wonder if that plays a role.
West of the Rockies
I’m not sure that new year’s resolutions work this way, but one of mine is that Tom Levenson write more at Balloon Juice!
?BillinGlendaleCA
@trollhattan: The only surprise is that Missouri hasn’t already done this.
Ohio Mom
Only a little off-topic:
A folktale from somewhere in Africa: the world was created when the ants formed themselves into a ball. The evidence is that everywhere you dig, there are ants.
raven
A friend of mine works at the Yetz lab at Yale and is area is evolutionary biology and ants. Here’s his tribute
Citizen Scientist
I was really lucky to attend a ‘talk’ (more of an interview really) in 2019ish with EO and Jane Goodall talking mostly about the power of science and data analysis to help solve problems. The subtext was dealing with climate change and science communication. I’ll never forget being able to see two smart people casually discuss weighty topics without losing the audience. What a great lesson in science communication!
marklar
@smith: I had dinner with him 20 years or so ago, and remembered him the same way. I brought a copy of his book “Consilience” and he signed it by drawing an ant!
I found his presentation of sociobiology a lot more humane and flexible than Dawkins’ works…indeed, I think at times people conflate the two, making Wilson seem more dogmatic than he actually was.
waynel140
Thank you all for the enlightenment, today. I like feeling smarter. As a Buddhist, I also liked E.O. Wilson.