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The New York Review of Books: recent articles and content from nybooks. I consent to having NYR add my email to their mailing list. Letters: Edward O. For Sociobiology. Ludvik Vaculik , translated by Barbara Day. Giovanni Agnelli Foundation. Gail Pressberg. Amnesty International. George Soros. In Wilson published a best-selling memoir, Naturalist, recalling his youthful fascination with nature and his growth as a scientist, and tracing the evolution of the scientific fields he has helped to define.
Adding to his literary accomplishments, in he published a novel, Anthill, which became a New York Times best seller. A long excerpt was published in The New Yorker recounting in fictional form the life and battles of an ant colony. Uniting the diverse strands of thought he has developed over the course of his year career, The Social Conquest of Earth reconsiders the theory of altruism to better understand how man became the dominant species on the planet. Wilson draws on his remarkable knowledge of biology and social behavior to show that group selection, not kin selection, is the primary driving force of human evolution.
In , Wilson led scientific expeditions to the wild preserve of Gorongosa National Park in Mozambique and the archipelagoes of Vanuatu and New Caledonia in the southwest Pacific.
Professor Wilson has developed a special attachment to Gorongosa, where U. He also received both of the teaching prizes voted by the students of Harvard College. Wilson lives in Lexington, Massachusetts, with his wife Irene. A daughter, Catherine, and her husband Jonathan, reside in Florida. Click to see E. Wilson - - Video Library: Inspiration from E. Wilson Video Library: Inspiration from E. You can reach Dr. Wilson directly at: Edward O. Say foolish things.
That doesn't answer all of the pertinent questions, but it does seem that the ants-only story is intended to be able to stand alone. I share your general frustration with novel excerpts being treated as stand-along stories with no indication from TNY.
It reminded me of the Ant war in Walden. I've never read anything by the author before, but I'll probably buy the book. I haven't changed my own opinion of the piece, but I salute the other readers who have gotten more out of it than I did. I don't think it goes far enough to be an allegory, but it certainly expresses a condition of decay and mortality that we can empathize with, on a different level. That is, just as the ants do not realize the gravity of their impending demise, the inevitability of the colony's dissolution once it loses its sole purpose for existence the Queen , one could find echoes of human mortality — our inability to grasp, on a visceral level, the reality of our own deaths until it is too late, and all we are left with is the choice to fight or flee.
Again, I don't think it's exactly an allegory, but there's an interesting parallel there that strikes me as an attempt to find the human condition in its natural state or something like that. OR maybe it's just a nonfiction piece about ants masquerading as a story. Who knows. Moreover, the international discourse is changing. I was excited to see at the time of the Paris meeting that a consortium of influential business leaders concluded that the world should go for net zero carbon emissions.
Towards that end, they recommended we protect the forests we have and restore the damaged ones. Do you worry that you are risking the reputation of a lifetime with such a controversial proposal?
In , when I published about sociobiology, I was attacked in many ways. There were mobs in Harvard Square when I was to give a lecture. I had to be escorted to the back of the hall by police!
I had classes interrupted. At Harvard! And then the idea won out. Do you see yourself as a naturally optimistic person? Yes, I think I am optimistic.
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