EO Wilson still antsy after all these years

http://www.voanews.com/content/at-82-social-biologist-still-provokes-controversy/1145253.html

[quote]At age 82, Wilson remains active. He's still on the faculty of Harvard University, as professor emeritus. And he's just out with the latest of his more than 20 books. It's called "The Social Conquest of Earth," and it stitches together ideas from science and the humanities.

"So it's increasingly clear that not only will biology be connecting tightly with psychology. That's already begun. ... But also connecting with subjects like the origin of morality, the origin of aesthetics, the origin of the creative arts. All of those I explicitly address in my new book, "The Social Conquest of Earth." I show how to do it."

Wilson writes that religion and philosophy are not enough to answer the really big questions - Who are we? Where did we come from? Where are we going? Science, he says, must be a key part of the answer.

Only acclaimed biologist and naturalist E.O. Wilson could manage to use his research on ants to explain the arts and so much more about the human condition. [/quote]

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/09/books/edward-o-wilsons-new-book-social-conquest-of-earth.html?pagewanted=all

[quote] Not that his days as a controversialist are entirely behind him. “The Social Conquest of Earth,” presented by his publisher as the capstone work of his career, is written in the graceful style that has won him two Pulitzer Prizes but grounded in a view of evolution that has already prompted sharp criticism from his fellow scientists.

Specifically Dr. Wilson argues that the tendency toward cooperation and collaboration that has powered our spectacular success as a species is explained not by kin selection — in which evolution favors the genes of individuals who sacrifice themselves for the sake of relatives — but by group selection, the tendency of evolution to favor groups that work together altruistically, beyond what might be predicted by simple genetic relatedness.

If no one is quite ready to dump a pitcher of water over Dr. Wilson’s head, many colleagues are mystified and dismayed by his late-life embrace of group selection — a highly controversial notion among biologists — and rejection of the kin-selection theory that he helped popularize in “Sociobiology.” [/quote]

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Article: Group selection, a theory whose time has come...again
    ... evolution, is in theoretical disarray. ... scientists David Sloan Wilson and Edward O. Wilson usher in a new era ... explanation based on group selection had become taboo and has not ... and how altruism can be maintained in groups that happen to ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Article: Group selection, a theory whose time has come...again
    ... evolution, is in theoretical disarray. ... based on group selection had become taboo and has not recovered since. ... rallying cry that paraphrases Rabbi Hillel: "Selfishness beats altruism ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Article: Group selection, a theory whose time has come...again
    ... Sociobiology, the discipline founded on Darwin's theory of group evolution, is in theoretical disarray. ... In a landmark article for the December issue of the Quarterly Review of Biology, ... based on group selection had become taboo and has not recovered since. ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: EO Wilson still antsy after all these years
    ... Wilson writes that religion and philosophy are not enough to answer the ... won him two Pulitzer Prizes but grounded in a view of evolution that has ... group selection, the tendency of evolution to favor groups that work ... I seem to hear the research mentioned more in the fields of psychology and economics than in evolutionary biology. ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: EO Wilson still antsy after all these years
    ... "So it's increasingly clear that not only will biology be connecting ... Wilson writes that religion and philosophy are not enough to answer the ... won him two Pulitzer Prizes but grounded in a view of evolution that has ... group selection, the tendency of evolution to favor groups that work ...
    (talk.origins)