Sad to read, but a truly exceptional life lived. May he rest in peace.
I highly recommend reading his autobiography. Even if you're not biologically inclined, it opens a window into a world when academia was very different from today and a brilliant mind that, through systematic thinking, trailblazed some areas of biology which are fields of their own today.
>Nearly everything distinctive about our species is a form of cooperation.
Such a great quote. This idea is echoed in Sapiens' statement that cooperation is the superpower of our species. This idea undermines the oft-posited claim that greed is an intrinsic part of human nature.
Greed is just another dimension to cooperation. Asocial species don't have "greed", because it means nothing for one individual to "hoard" against another.
Greed exists precisely because the species is social, not despite it.
> Asocial species don't have "greed", because it means nothing for one individual to "hoard" against another.
You mean Eusocial[1]? Individuals of an asocial species would want to maximize its 'own' chances of survival at all cost, i.e. greed.
Ants, bees are eusocial species and to quote Wilson, “One ant is no ant”.
You'll not waste your time reading everything you can get your hands on regarding E.O.Wilson -- to include anything he wrote, or anything written about him by those he influenced and mentored.
The man was an absolute intellectual giant, who freely shared his amazing insights . . .
It depends on what kind of geek you are. "The Ants" is perhaps my favourite non-fiction book of all time - at the time it was written it was a fair account of the total sum of human knowledge of ants. It's beautifully written and incredibly complete, and although it's now a bit dated, it's still the best reference to ants if you're interested in them. For a broader summary of Wilson's intellectual project I recommend "Consilience" - a wonderful synthesis of almost all his ethical and scientific interests.
His life, the studies he undertook quietly over protracted periods of time . . . there is no "one book" . . . his mind was a burrowing mind . . .
If you appreciate logic, well-reasoned arguments and objective observations --the scientific method personified -- you will savor anything related to his endeavors.
For me that parses as an endorsement of Wilson's group selection theory. Dawkins has made a career out of shallow criticism of others and self-promotion. Wilson was an intellectual giant. Perhaps we'll see how it shakes out.
In any event any sexually reproducing species is going to evolve under a minimum group size of two. That we've evolved a mostly monogamous mating strategy, despite the apparent advantages for powerful men to instead build a harem and deprive weaker men of mating opportunities, is suggestive.
You are incorrect, but I understand your skepticism.
You can check out by finding more about Dawkins-Wilson debates and all graduate level evolutionary biology textbooks. Wilson group selection theory does not add anything to inclusive fitness.
Animal Behavior, Dustin R. Rubenstein, John Alcock, Sinauer Associates is an imprint of Oxford University Press, Year: 2018, ISBN: 1605355488,9781605355481
> Although most social evolutionary biologists use the individual selection
perspective derived from kin selection theory, David Sloan Wilson and others have complained that the preference for kin selection theory stems from
prejudice against the rejected Wynne-Edwardsian version of group selection (Wilson and Wilson 2007). But as Stuart West and his colleagues have
pointed out, kin selection theory is widely accepted primarily because it has
helped so many researchers develop testable hypotheses for puzzling social
behaviors exhibited by creatures as different as termites, bacteria, amoebae,
and humans (West et al. 2011). Nonetheless, other researchers have continued to attack kin selection theory. For example, Martin Nowak, Corina Tarnita, and E. O. Wilson claimed that kin selection theory should be discarded
altogether in favor of an alternative mathematical approach (Nowak et al.
2011). Yet few researchers agree with this idea, for reasons spelled out by
Andrew Bourke (Bourke 2011a) and a team led by David Queller (Liao et al.
2015), as well as those outlined by more than 100 behavioral biologists in a
response to Nowak and his colleagues’ paper (Abbot et al. 2011). Thus, inclusive fitness theory continues to be a guiding framework for understanding
cooperation, altruism, and the evolution of sociality more broadly, primarily
because it produces clear, testable hypotheses, something that the concept
of group selection largely fails to do.
> You are incorrect, but I understand your skepticism.
I'm no expert in this area. I'm just a mathematically literate college-educated person of at least average intelligence that enjoys reading. In some ways, I imagine that makes me harder to convince, or more skeptical if you like. I also have a bit of a contrarian streak. However, I'm genuinely fascinated by the subject and quite curious. So much for my inadequacies.
> You can check out by finding more about Dawkins-Wilson debates and all graduate level evolutionary biology textbooks. Wilson group selection theory does not add anything to inclusive fitness.
My understanding is that inclusive fitness was shown to be mathematically unsound[1]. I can follow the mathematical arguments in that paper and I find them convincing. I am, I hope understandably, disinterested in spending the mental energy to achieve a layman's understanding of a theory that's been mathematically debunked. I trust math more than I do debates for judging the merits of a theory. The latter is a species of rhetoric, which is a wonderful tool for persuasion and sometimes entertainment, but not so helpful for achieving understanding. The former is dialectic, and has a pretty good track record for, if not finding truth, at least ruling out some species of falsehood.
> Wilson was an intellectual giant but wrong in some cases.
Indeed. Much scientific progress has been achieved by standing on the shoulders of past giants and proving them wrong. The domain of evolutionary biology is dizzyingly complex and I'm in no way disparaging those working in the field. Quite the opposite, I'm grateful for their work and the opportunity to learn from it.
> My understanding is that inclusive fitness was shown to be mathematically unsound
That's not what the article you reference says. Generality of inclusive fitness does not rest on of regression (correlational) analyses of social scenarios the article critiques.
Figuring out group selection vs. inclusive fitness on your own is good training for your thinking process. Mathematical, but not too difficult to follow.
24 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 58.7 ms ] threadI highly recommend reading his autobiography. Even if you're not biologically inclined, it opens a window into a world when academia was very different from today and a brilliant mind that, through systematic thinking, trailblazed some areas of biology which are fields of their own today.
I'm so happy I got to see him at Google. I thought [1] was the video, but since that was in NYC, it couldn't have been the one I was at.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yf_ijizSTAE
https://www.amazon.com/Letters-Young-Scientist-Edward-Wilson...
Such a great quote. This idea is echoed in Sapiens' statement that cooperation is the superpower of our species. This idea undermines the oft-posited claim that greed is an intrinsic part of human nature.
> Selfishness beats altruism within groups, while altruistic groups beat selfish groups.
Moving from the former to the latter is group evolution.
Greed exists precisely because the species is social, not despite it.
You mean Eusocial[1]? Individuals of an asocial species would want to maximize its 'own' chances of survival at all cost, i.e. greed. Ants, bees are eusocial species and to quote Wilson, “One ant is no ant”.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eusociality
The man was an absolute intellectual giant, who freely shared his amazing insights . . .
Journey to the Ants https://shop.harvard.com/book/9780674485266
Tales from the Ant World https://www.harvard.com/book/9781324091097_tales_from_the_an...
Richard Dawkins explains inclusive fitness (mainstream theory) and why Wilson is wrong. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrgqUC7ZCxQ (15 min)
In any event any sexually reproducing species is going to evolve under a minimum group size of two. That we've evolved a mostly monogamous mating strategy, despite the apparent advantages for powerful men to instead build a harem and deprive weaker men of mating opportunities, is suggestive.
You can check out by finding more about Dawkins-Wilson debates and all graduate level evolutionary biology textbooks. Wilson group selection theory does not add anything to inclusive fitness.
Animal Behavior, Dustin R. Rubenstein, John Alcock, Sinauer Associates is an imprint of Oxford University Press, Year: 2018, ISBN: 1605355488,9781605355481
> Although most social evolutionary biologists use the individual selection perspective derived from kin selection theory, David Sloan Wilson and others have complained that the preference for kin selection theory stems from prejudice against the rejected Wynne-Edwardsian version of group selection (Wilson and Wilson 2007). But as Stuart West and his colleagues have pointed out, kin selection theory is widely accepted primarily because it has helped so many researchers develop testable hypotheses for puzzling social behaviors exhibited by creatures as different as termites, bacteria, amoebae, and humans (West et al. 2011). Nonetheless, other researchers have continued to attack kin selection theory. For example, Martin Nowak, Corina Tarnita, and E. O. Wilson claimed that kin selection theory should be discarded altogether in favor of an alternative mathematical approach (Nowak et al. 2011). Yet few researchers agree with this idea, for reasons spelled out by Andrew Bourke (Bourke 2011a) and a team led by David Queller (Liao et al. 2015), as well as those outlined by more than 100 behavioral biologists in a response to Nowak and his colleagues’ paper (Abbot et al. 2011). Thus, inclusive fitness theory continues to be a guiding framework for understanding cooperation, altruism, and the evolution of sociality more broadly, primarily because it produces clear, testable hypotheses, something that the concept of group selection largely fails to do.
I'm no expert in this area. I'm just a mathematically literate college-educated person of at least average intelligence that enjoys reading. In some ways, I imagine that makes me harder to convince, or more skeptical if you like. I also have a bit of a contrarian streak. However, I'm genuinely fascinated by the subject and quite curious. So much for my inadequacies.
> You can check out by finding more about Dawkins-Wilson debates and all graduate level evolutionary biology textbooks. Wilson group selection theory does not add anything to inclusive fitness.
My understanding is that inclusive fitness was shown to be mathematically unsound[1]. I can follow the mathematical arguments in that paper and I find them convincing. I am, I hope understandably, disinterested in spending the mental energy to achieve a layman's understanding of a theory that's been mathematically debunked. I trust math more than I do debates for judging the merits of a theory. The latter is a species of rhetoric, which is a wonderful tool for persuasion and sometimes entertainment, but not so helpful for achieving understanding. The former is dialectic, and has a pretty good track record for, if not finding truth, at least ruling out some species of falsehood.
> Wilson was an intellectual giant but wrong in some cases.
Indeed. Much scientific progress has been achieved by standing on the shoulders of past giants and proving them wrong. The domain of evolutionary biology is dizzyingly complex and I'm in no way disparaging those working in the field. Quite the opposite, I'm grateful for their work and the opportunity to learn from it.
[1] https://www.pnas.org/content/110/50/20135
That's not what the article you reference says. Generality of inclusive fitness does not rest on of regression (correlational) analyses of social scenarios the article critiques.
Figuring out group selection vs. inclusive fitness on your own is good training for your thinking process. Mathematical, but not too difficult to follow.
https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/group-selection
The Tragedy of Group Selectionism https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/QsMJQSFj7WfoTMNgW/the-traged...
-Of dubious providence but Einstein was alleged to put it on his chalk board to the extent that that matters enough to count for anything
- David Sloan Wilson & E.O.Wilson