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THE SCIENTIST
EO Wilson: A Life in Nature
by Richard Rhodes
The scientist and naturalist EO Wilson has always reminded me of Alexander von Humboldt, the great 19th-century German scholar and explorer: both are great synthesizers, obsessed with empirical observation and detailed fieldwork. They have the ability to focus on the tiniest detail (a fire ant’s tiny gland, as in the case of Wilson), but also zoom out to study comparative patterns between species and global environments. Their minds are simultaneously microscopic and telescopic. His scientific books have been extensively and extensively researched, but they also reveal their deep love for the natural world. And both are driven by what Wilson calls “amphetamines of ambition.”
Wilson did not have a happy childhood. He was born in 1929 in Birmingham, Ala. His parents divorced when he was 7 years old and later lived a traveling life with his alcoholic father. Over the course of nine years, Wilson attended 14 different schools. He found comfort in nature because “animals and plants I could trust”, he later explained, “human relationships were more difficult.” Wilson spent as much time as possible at Rock Creek Park in Washington DC.
He was a tall youth who crawled across the forest floors in search of the fascinating “dead world” of ants. A childhood fishing accident partially blinded him, so he turned his healthy eye to the little things that could be collected and zoomed in for study. At age 13, Wilson decided to search a vacant lot next to his parents’ home and find every nest and ant species there. In his own words, he made “the find of his life” when he discovered an ant he had never seen before: an invasive red fire ant from Argentina. When he spotted it in 1942, no one had yet reported the existence of the invasive species in America. He also became a special member of the Scouts, an organization that brings together his favorite pastimes: outdoor living and natural history.
Many of these childhood depictions are based on Wilson’s own memoir, “Naturalist,” which Richard Rhodes quotes almost exclusively in his extensive and almost exclusively new biography, “Scientist.” It is through these quotations that the reader is closest to Wilson as a person. Although Rhodes met and interviewed Wilson, it contains little about Wilson’s later private life. We meet the naturalist, the scientist, and then the activist, but not the husband, father, and friend.
Wilson knew in his youth that he wanted to be a field biologist. He enrolled at the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa in 1946 and continued his studies at Harvard University in 1951, later completing his doctorate. Rhodes recounts how a series of mentors took the young man under their wing. Alongside the story of Wilson’s professional career, Rhodes provides broader scientific context, such as the succinct explanation of Darwin’s theories (a term Wilson himself coined in 1958), which he offered when describing Wilson’s immersion in evolutionary biology. Similarly, Rhodes writes about the discovery of the double helix structure of DNA as he chronicles how Wilson met James Watson, who discovered it.
The conflict between two young biologists, who began teaching at Harvard in 1956 at the same time, is a poignant reminder of the splits in biology in the mid-20th century—the “molecular wars” as Wilson called it. Buoyed by his success, Watson believed that biology should be moved to laboratories to apply the principles of physics and chemistry. He looked down on field biologists like Wilson, or “stamp collectors,” as he cynically called them. While Wilson was excited about new developments, he believed there was more to biology than molecules—he was interested in relationships within and between species. Watson recalls in his Wilson memoirs that he was “the most unpleasant person I have ever met.” The discontent was mutual. When Wilson took a job at Harvard, Watson burst into the halls of the Biology Labs shouting a series of swear words. Wilson retaliated by calling Watson “the Caligula of biology.”
Rhodes continues his story of Wilson’s professional life by describing the scientist’s experiments on ant communication and island ecologies, as well as the publication and acceptance of some of his most famous books in 1971, such as the famous “Insect Societies” and the controversial “Sociobiology.” : New Synthesis” in 1975 and “Biophilia”, a love letter to nature in 1984. This is all interesting enough, but the narration is sometimes a bit flat. For example, Rhodes, in his analysis of Wilson’s books, relies heavily on long quotations from those publications, which makes the text clumsy. Given that EO Wilson himself is such a great writer, it feels somehow wrong not to tell his life in all its kaleidoscopic and colorful nuances.
Wilson is a scientist who celebrates the wonders of nature. He popularized the term “biophilia” by describing it as a love of the natural world and “the rich, natural pleasure that comes from being surrounded by living organisms.” He eventually became an activist, one of the few scientists who dared to leave the comfort and safety of the ivory tower. Rhodes explains that the trigger was a report released in the late 1970s by the U.S. National Research Council that stated that the world was losing one species per day rather than one species per year, as most biologists had previously believed. Rhodes describes how Wilson fulfilled his duty to raise public awareness of this mass extinction and loss of biodiversity. Wilson brought together scholars, wrote articles and books, gave lectures, and tried to persuade others to his cause. He also underlined the importance of field biology. How can we save species from extinction, Wilson asked, if we don’t know them?
Wilson is the author of more than 30 books and nearly 500 scientific papers. As Rhodes summarizes in the last chapter of “The Scientist,” he founded a new field of scientific research, received more than 45 honors, became a member of more than 35 scientific organizations and societies, and won dozens of awards – yet he has achieved much more. My guess is that Wilson has inspired many young men and women to replace their lab coats with muddy boots and get back on the field. Like Alexander von Humboldt, Wilson is a master of science communications.
In the past, Wilson has used great storytelling to convey his arguments. I have read many books about nature, climate change and the loss of biodiversity, but I will never forget a short passage I came across in Wilson’s Half-Earth book five years ago. In one of the first chapters, he writes about the decline of freshwater mollusks (very important for filtering and cleaning water) in American rivers. He concludes by simply listing the names of all the river mussels engulfed in extinction in the Mobile and Tennessee River basins so we can know what they’ve lost: coosa elktoe, sugar spoon, angled mussel shell, Ohio riffleshell, Tennessee riffleshell, leaf shell, yellow flower, narrow catpaw, forshell, and 10 other species. . It’s a succinct obituary, but realistically deeply touching. They are lost. All. Forever. It is also a passage that shows how Wilson combines small detail with the big picture, scientific observation with emotional emotion. Very little of this passion is seen in “Scientist”. Rhodes openly admires Wilson, but unfortunately, this brief biography only scratches the surface of a remarkable life.
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