[HN Gopher] E.O. Wilson has died
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E.O. Wilson has died
Author : harscoat
Score : 306 points
Date : 2021-12-27 09:32 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.reuters.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.reuters.com)
| akyu wrote:
| People like Wilson are a rare breed. He stuck to his guns despite
| the huge backlash around Sociobiology. From my vantage point, it
| seems everyone else is coming around to eventually admitting he
| was basically right all along, begrudgingly of course.
| melling wrote:
| Richard Rhodes released his biography of E.O. Wilson a couple of
| months ago:
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Scientist-Wilson-Life-Nature/dp/03855...
|
| Rhodes is famous for this book, that's often mentioned on HN
|
| Making of the Atomic Bomb:
| https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1451677618/
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Making of the Atomic Bomb is excellent, highly recommended.
| ImaCake wrote:
| I can vouch for the audiobook of the biography. It is a lovely
| read, although I would have liked for it to be longer and have
| more detail. Some of the technical biology explanations could
| have been done better, so that could be a barrier to those less
| well versed in biology.
| ubicomp wrote:
| Gosh. What an amazing human. I think about his work often. It has
| had great influence on how I perceive the world. Rest in Peace.
| webenliven wrote:
| dexwell wrote:
| "The real problem of humanity is the following: we have
| paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and god-like
| technology" -- E. O. Wilson, 2009
| api wrote:
| The cyberpunks were by far the most prophetic of all science
| fiction writers, and I feel like this kind of insight is what
| drove that. They put forward a future where they were
| optimistic about technology and neutral to pessimistic about
| human beings.
| LiquidSky wrote:
| "High tech, low life" as Bruce Sterling put it.
| dennis_jeeves wrote:
| agumonkey wrote:
| Quality quote.
| [deleted]
| dwt204 wrote:
| Evolutionary biologists are divided on his work. His own research
| and published works have been used by racists for example to
| readily explain the social origins of intelligence, poverty,
| crime, and violence regarding POC. He never actively fought
| against such tendencies, even though he was aware that he had
| become the darling of white nationalists, and even fascists
| globally. I believe that ALL "traits" can be explained by social
| environment rather than by biology. I respectfully refer you to
| many of Gould's work on sociobiology. We are not insects we are
| human beings.
| yucky wrote:
| >I believe that ALL "traits" can be explained by social
| environment rather than by biology.
|
| That probably "feels right" to say, but is it backed up with
| data? DNA is a real thing, not a social construct.
| drewcoo wrote:
| Social constructs are real things.
| animanoir wrote:
| Social constructs are like farts. We need oxygen, air to
| breathe, but sometimes someone farts and we breath that
| too.
| dennis_jeeves wrote:
| pdonis wrote:
| While Wilson's extreme position on nature over nurture is
| certainly open to question, Gould is not a good source to be
| referencing (and the extreme position of nurture over nature
| you describe is at least as much open to question).
| Evolutionary biologists may be "divided" about Wilson, but
| they're pretty firmly negative about Gould's work in that
| field. See, for example, here:
|
| http://cogweb.ucla.edu/Debate/CEP_Gould.html
|
| Btw, Wilson was well aware that humans are not insects. He is
| the one who said of socialism for humans, "Great idea, wrong
| species".
| sunstone wrote:
| Not surprisingly Wilson's comment of "Great idea, wrong
| species." was about communism for which it was very apt
| (communism doesn't scale for humans), not socialism.
| Socialism works well in more than a few very successful
| countries around the world.
| pdonis wrote:
| _> Not surprisingly Wilson 's comment of "Great idea, wrong
| species." was about communism for which it was very apt
| (communism doesn't scale for humans), not socialism._
|
| Wilson specifically used the term "socialism". The full
| quote is given here:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._O._Wilson#The_Ants,_1990
| sunstone wrote:
| The quote is,"Wilson said in reference to ants "Karl Marx
| was right, socialism works, it is just that he had the
| wrong species". Which seems a bit odd as Karl Marx was a
| communist and not a socialist, as far as I know. It's
| unlikely that Wilson was confused about this two terms so
| I expect it's just and honest mistake that's been
| continually repeated with out any one going back to the
| origininal sources.
| ced wrote:
| _" Karl Marx was right, socialism works, it is just that
| he had the wrong species"_
|
| It seems that what Marx called socialism is basically
| communism.
|
| _By 1888, Marxists employed socialism in place of
| communism as the latter had come to be considered an old-
| fashioned synonym for socialism. It was not until after
| the Bolshevik Revolution that socialism was appropriated
| by Vladimir Lenin to mean a stage between capitalism and
| communism._
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism
| VictorPath wrote:
| Gould said that one faction of evolutionary biologists were
| mostly wasting their time, it's not a surprise that they
| would be firmly negative about that.
|
| The letter signers you posted say they are from the center
| for evolutionary psychology, departments of anthropology and
| psychology. This is the whole problem, they have one foot (if
| not both feet) outside of science and in social science.
| pdonis wrote:
| _> Gould said that one faction of evolutionary biologists
| were mostly wasting their time_
|
| Yes, he said that, but he said it in the context of giving
| descriptions of what those evolutionary biologists were
| doing that were completely disconnected from reality.
|
| _> The letter signers you posted_
|
| Are an anthropologist and a psychologist, yes. But the
| criticisms of Gould that they describe are by no means
| limited to those fields. The names they list in footnote 2,
| for example, are a roll call of major evolutionary
| biologists of the 20th century. Those people are not
| "outside of science"; they are right in the middle of the
| scientific field that Gould portrayed himself as an expert
| on, and they all say Gould's claims are nonsense.
| User23 wrote:
| Gould himself provides good reason to believe his ideas
| are nonsense. He began with the result he wanted, and
| then unsurprisingly got it. My original
| reasons for writing The Mismeasure of Man mixed the
| personal with the professional. I confess, first of all,
| to strong feelings on this particular issue. I grew up in
| a family with a tradition of participation in campaigns
| for social justice, and I was active, as a student, in
| the civil rights movement at a time of great excitement
| and success in the early 1960s. (p. 36)
| the__alchemist wrote:
| dang wrote:
| Please don't post unsubstantive dismissals, no matter how
| wrong another comment is or you feel it is. Responding this
| way just leads to flamewars. We don't want those here because
| they dumb the forum down and then destroy it.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| sunstone wrote:
| One of the giants. "Consilience" is one of his books that's well
| worth reading. Small book, small words, short sentences and huge
| ideas.
| Simplicitas wrote:
| Can't recommend this book enough
| smcl wrote:
| RadioLab did do a very nice ~20 minute bit on E.O. Wilson, it's
| just a conversation on stage (so it's not overproduced and
| chopped up with weird sounds like RL stuff can be):
| https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/91867...
|
| Just sharing because I really liked this, he comes across as a
| really lovely man.
| harscoat wrote:
| "Thanks for the inspiration and may the ants be ever in your
| favor."
| https://twitter.com/phylogenomics/status/1475496023384465408
| harscoat wrote:
| "He was so kind & supportive of my work when I was a student--I
| kept an email he sent me as a postdoc that was v encouraging,
| it was like a pep talk I would read & re-read in tough times!"
| https://twitter.com/JessicaLWareLab/status/14754258439629578...
| cloudmike wrote:
| "March away from the sounds of the guns. Observe from a distance,
| but do not join the fray. Make a fray of your own."
|
| -- E.O. Wilson
| InDemoVeritas wrote:
| I was there for his last Harvard lecture. He ended by saying,
| "Now I can say it. Humans have instincts!"
| pbmango wrote:
| I learned as much about staying curious from reading
| "Consilience" as anything I can remember in recent years.
| Transformed my thinking.
| junon wrote:
| Never heard of E.O. Wilson before now, but his work sounds
| fascinating. Anyone have any suggestions on how to break into his
| stuff? Sounds like he has 30 or so books, is "On Human Nature" a
| good start?
| joak wrote:
| I'm just finishing Half-Earth: Our Planet's Fight for Life a
| 2016 book in which he proposes that half of the Earth's surface
| should be designated a human-free natural reserve to preserve
| biodiversity.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Half-Earth
|
| A great read, I think we should make real his proposal. I
| believe we will eventually.
| pphysch wrote:
| How would you determine which humans get displaced to make
| room for "human-free" reserves?
| nabla9 wrote:
| Ants, sosiobiology and biodiversity conservation. I have only
| read _" Sociobiology: The New Synthesis"_ (1975).
|
| Be aware that Wilson's group selection theory is not generally
| accepted by other evolutionary biologists. Read about Wilsion-
| Dawkins kin selection vs. group arguments and debates.
|
| ps. There are two Wilson's in the group selection side (David
| Sloan Wilson and E. O. Wilson) it's easy to mix them if you
| don't read carefully.
| junon wrote:
| Thank you :)
| jonjacky wrote:
| His autobiography _Naturalist_ (1994) is a very readable
| introduction to his life and work -- and to his personality. He
| writes there about the controversies in his life, including his
| disputes at Harvard with his nemesis James Watson, and the
| Sociobiology controversy in the 1970s.
| I_complete_me wrote:
| Great writer, great scientist, great human. May he Rest In Peace.
| telchar wrote:
| Such a loss. If you want to know what a hive mind really is (it's
| not how pop culture portrays it), read The Ants. Fascinating
| book.
| qntty wrote:
| "[The successful scientist] is sometimes driven, I will dare to
| suggest, by a passive-aggressive nature, and sometimes an anger
| against some part of society or problem in the world. There is
| also an introversion in the innovator that keeps him from team
| sports and social events. He dislikes authority, or at least
| being told what to do. He is not a leader in high school or
| college, nor is he likely to be pledged by social clubs. From an
| early age he is a dreamer, not a doer. His attention wanders
| easily. He likes to probe, to collect, to tinker. He is prone to
| fantasize. He is not inclined to focus. He will not be voted by
| his classmates most likely to succeed."
|
| -- E.O. Wilson
| humanistbot wrote:
| I know the man just died, but this is such a limited and
| damaging understanding of what science is and who can be a
| scientist. You don't need any of those traits to be a
| successful scientist. Science is a method. This is just feeding
| into the "jocks vs nerds" mentality.
| zeruch wrote:
| ...and the quote is likely because Wilson is of the era where
| those tropes were hardcoded into social status/cliques. Its
| an accurate perception of an era somewhat gone.
| 8note wrote:
| Hypothesis generation is key to good science, but is a
| creative process rather than a procedural one
| ravar wrote:
| And know that method by the fruits it produces, the
| replication crisis, and more broadly an overwhelming number
| of papers that are not wrong but totally pointless. I'm not
| saying the quote is totally right but there is something
| about that temperament that produces researchers who are less
| inclined to publish things that they know are
| wrong/meaningless, just to get ahead in the publish or perish
| paradigm.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Science _has_ its methods, but I think that saying "science
| _is_ a method " is too reductive.
|
| Much like visual artists need to master the brush or the
| pencil, but this technical mastery isn't enough to produce
| lasting Art, the method itself does not produce good Science.
|
| Maybe the long list given by Wilson is too long (there are
| definitely extroverted scientists out there), but at the very
| least, a good scientist needs to be _curious_.
| [deleted]
| vwcx wrote:
| This weekend we also saw the loss of Tom Lovejoy, one of the most
| important conservation biologists of the last century.
|
| https://news.mongabay.com/2021/12/tom-lovejoy-prominent-cons...
| the__alchemist wrote:
| Legend. Ants. Bees. Learning. The essence of science.
|
| He came up in casual conversation yesterday, re science and
| learning math, as well as how tough learning math can be once
| you're older. (He famously attempted to learn calculus in his
| 30s, and had a struggle, despite already being a Harvard
| professor, and world-class scientist)
| javajosh wrote:
| It is remarkable, and wholly admirable, that he tried to learn
| calc later in life; it is even more remarkable that he admitted
| his struggle! His genuine humility and curiosity came across in
| spades in his wonderful little book "Consilience", so this
| anecdote doesn't surprise me.
| wombatmobile wrote:
| "If all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate
| back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed ten thousand
| years ago. If insects were to vanish, the environment would
| collapse into chaos."
|
| -- Edward O. Wilson
| kabes wrote:
| Mankind is one species with about 7 billion specimen. Insects
| an entire class with in the million species and 10 quintillion
| specimen. Not really a fair comparison. If all mammals would
| dissapear there'd also be chaos. Even just whale poop has a big
| impact.
| wombatmobile wrote:
| And yet humans commonly think they are the most important
| thing on earth, placing themselves at the apex of some
| pyramid.
|
| E O Wilson gives us perspective by seeing the world not as a
| bauble in a real estate store, but as a canvas for all of
| biology.
| nine_k wrote:
| Humans are most important beings on Earth for themselves,
| which I find perfectly natural.
| Theizestooke wrote:
| Both scenarios would cause upheaval, and I'm not sure what he
| means by a "rich state of equilibrium".
| snowwrestler wrote:
| The living world is not currently in a state of equilibrium.
| The populations of humans and the animals and plants we keep
| are growing extremely quickly; almost every other population
| of living thing is shrinking quickly.
|
| "Rich" refers to the variety and abundance of living things.
| The total biomass of living things has declined (there's less
| overall) and what is left is concentrated into far fewer
| species than previously.
|
| Just taken as a store of information, the loss is staggering.
| But from a practical perspective we are less rich; it's far
| harder today to catch fish than it used to be, for example.
| civilized wrote:
| He means something that would be interesting for a biologist
| like him to hang out in and observe.
|
| I know some biologists, and they often wish that the world
| should be "rich" from a biologist's perspective even if the
| biologist isn't there to observe it.
|
| It's a curious perspective to me. If you don't exist, why
| would it matter whether the world is (a) green and buzzing
| with insects, or (b) reduced to grey goo or strange matter?
| Why would your aesthetic preferences be relevant in a world
| that you don't exist in? It's not like you're going to get to
| watch this universe through a viewport.
| [deleted]
| snowwrestler wrote:
| Aesthetic preferences exist in our minds independent of our
| direct experience. That's why people can have aesthetic
| opinions of things the instant they experience them.
|
| An aesthetic preference is essentially an ideal against
| which we compare our experience. Whether we expect to meet
| that ideal does not diminish its power. In fact if it was
| easily met, it would not be much of an ideal.
| ahmedalsudani wrote:
| We wouldn't survive for long without insects, and we'd
| notice the rot buildup in our environment very quickly
| without them.
|
| It's not about "biology". It's about roles in the
| ecosystem.
| civilized wrote:
| I'm not sure what you think you're responding to in my
| comment.
| ahmedalsudani wrote:
| > I'm not sure what you think you're responding to in my
| comment.
|
| A direct question would be easy to answer. As it is, I'm
| sorry to hear about your confusion :-)
| [deleted]
| wanderingmind wrote:
| A modern day equivalent of this rich state of equilibrium can
| be observed in Chernobyl. The place was decimated by nuclear
| radiation a few decades ago. Initially it was believed that
| the place never support any large life forms for many
| centuries. However wild life is currently thriving in
| Chernobyl including large mammals and birds [0].
|
| [0]
| https://cosmosmagazine.com/earth/sustainability/chernobyl-
| is...
| api wrote:
| The notion of equilibrium is something I always disagree with
| when I read environmentalists. The ecosystem is never in
| equilibrium. If it were it would be dead. If it reached a
| meta-stable state evolutionary change would halt.
|
| An icy comet circling way out beyond Neptune is an example of
| a system somewhat near equilibrium.
| SamWhited wrote:
| I was just listening to an interview with him on Vox
| Conversations yesterday, that's so sad to hear. "EO Wilson's Plan
| to Save the World" is well worth listening to. RSS:
| http://feeds.megaphone.fm/theezrakleinshow
| arto wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._O._Wilson
| martingoodson wrote:
| One of the great writers on science. This is from 'The Diversity
| of Life': "In the Amazon Basin the greatest violence sometimes
| begins as a flicker of light beyond the horizon. There in the
| perfect bowl of the night sky, untouched by light from any human
| source, a thunderstorm sends its premonitory signal and begins a
| slow journey to the observer, who thinks: the world is about to
| change."
| what_is_orcas wrote:
| This is a true loss.
| Jugurtha wrote:
| E.O. Wilson comes up when you get into the "actor model"[0],
| especially with this quote:
|
| > _"A colony of ants is more than just an aggregate of insects
| that are living together. One ant is no ant."_
|
| Many publications and articles on the topic of actors reference
| it at some point.
|
| - [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actor_model
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