Source of book:
I own this.
One of the
great things that the Library
of America has done in the last few years is offer collections of
non-fiction writings from science writers of the 20th Century. Often, these
books are a bit hard to find used, are often out of print, or are available
only in paperback. In some cases, people of my age may not be familiar with
them.
In this case, I
splurged with a bit of my credit card rewards (essentially my “mad money” for
books) and got the E. O. Wilson hardback. Biophilia is the first work in
that book, and I decided to read it first. (Well, it was first in the
book, so…)
I probably ran
across Wilson somewhere at some point, because his name seems familiar, as does
his work studying ants. But I certainly hadn’t read anything longer than a
magazine article.
Biophilia
is a pretty short work, but it packs in a lot of wonderful writing, and
thoughtful contemplation. The name itself was coined by Wilson to refer to the
fact that humans naturally gravitate toward the natural world, toward living
things. This instinct is certainly part of my personality, and indeed research
has proven this to be a near-universal of human psychology. (And those who do
not resonate with the natural world are sad persons indeed.)
It is a bit
difficult to describe the book itself, because it consists of a series of related
but not directly connected essays on the subject. Each is different and could
stand alone. The best I can probably do is hit some highlights.
The book thinks
long and hard about the ways that our evolutionary history still affects our
psyches, and about the connections we have to other organisms in our
ecosystem.
I won’t quote
from the opening chapter, but it is entitled “Bernhardsdorp,” after the town in
Suriname where Wilson spent significant time researching ants - that was his
major contribution to scientific knowledge. In particular, he was looking at
leaf-cutter ants, which are, to be sure, thoroughly fascinating. It is easy to
take for granted that these ants are well known - for many of us, we first saw
them in action at the zoo. (Both Los Angeles and San Diego keep colonies.) But
they are not native to the wilds of urban California, and were not well known
outside of South America for much of history. The second chapter is all about
these ants, and has a great description of the “superorganism” that
characterizes Hymenoptera.
People often ask me whether I see any
human qualities in an ant colony, any form of behavior that even remotely
mimics human thought and feeling. Insects and human beings are separated by
more than 600 million years of evolution, but a common ancestor did exist in
the form of one of the earliest multicellular organisms. Does some remnant of
psychological continuity exist across that immense phylogenetic gulf? The
answer is that I open an ant colony as I would the back of a Swiss watch. I am
enchanted by the intricacy of its parts and the clean, thrumming precision. But
I never see the colony as anything more than an organic machine.
Let me qualify that metaphor. The
leafcutter colony is a superorganism. The queen sits deep in the central
chambers, the vibrant growing tip from which all the workers and new queens
originate. But she is not in any sense the leader or the repository of an
organizational blueprint. No command center directs the colony. The social
master plan is partitioned into the brains of the all-female workers, whose
separate programs fit together to form a balanced whole. Each ant automatically
performs certain tasks and avoids others according to its size and age. The
superorganism’s brain is the entire society; the workers are the crude analogue
of its nerve cells. Seen from above and from a distance, the leafcutter colony
resembles a gigantic amoeba. It’s foraging columns snake out like pseudopods to
engulf and shred plants, while their stems pull the green pieces down holes
into the fungus gardens. Through a unique step in evolution taken millions of
years ago, the ants captured a fungus, incorporated it into the superorganism,
and so gained the power to digest leaves. Or perhaps the relation is the other
way around: perhaps the fungus captured the ants and employed them as a mobile
extension to take leaves into the moist underground chambers.
In either case, the two now own each
other and will never pull apart.
That’s
marvelous writing, I must say. The whole book is that way, just gem after gem,
the work of a master scientist who is also a great writer.
From these
specifics, Wilson in the next chapter moves to a more expanded view of the
science of biology as a whole (with a discussion of Darwin versus Agassiz
thrown in for good measure.) Here is another brilliant passage.
The modern biological vision sweeps
from microseconds to millions of years and from micrometers to the biosphere.
But it is merely ordinary vision expanded by the electron microscope,
earth-scan satellite, and other prosthetic devices of science and technology.
The precise discipline is defined by the point of entry. Organismic biology
explores the way we walk and speak; cell biology, the assembly and structure of
our tissues; molecular biology, the ultimate chemical machinery; and
evolutionary biology, the genetic history of our whole species. The modes of
study depend upon the levels of organization chosen, which ascend in a
hierarchical fashion: molecules compose cells, cells tissues, tissues
organisms, organisms populations, and populations ecosystems. To understand any
given species and its evolution requires a knowledge of each of the levels of
organization sufficient to account for the one directly above it.
The next
chapter is all about the Bird of Paradise (the birds, not the plants that
resemble them.) I have to quote this line, which is just amazing and
profound.
The role of science, like that of art,
is to blend exact imagery with more distant meaning, the parts we already
understand with those given as new into larger patterns that are coherent
enough to be acceptable as truth.
This is really
a microcosm of the human experience. We learn through our senses, which give us
an impression of the reality, not some pure reality itself. Just as an obvious,
colors do not exist. Different wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation exist,
and our sensory organs interpret a narrow band of these waves (or is that
particles?) in a way that creates what we call “color” in our brains. We
instinctively understand the “redness” of red light, but trying to explain it
to anyone who cannot see color is pretty much impossible. Our very experience
of the world is a metaphor our brains create.
Wilson’s point
is universal. Every scientific endeavor requires taking an immense amount of
information, data, experience, whatever you choose to call it, finding patterns
that work coherently enough to strike us as true. Nobody really knows what
gravity is or how it works, but we can, through various metaphors, from
classical physics to Einstein’s relativistic space-time, to predict its effects
and accept it as truth.
So too with the artist, of course. A
poem is true (at least if it is a good poem), but it isn’t the truth. It is a
metaphorical blending of imagery we understand with that other, new or
forgotten, kernel of underlying reality that, when emotionally coherently
blended by a master poet, can be accepted as truth.
The next
chapter, my favorite, “The Poetic Species,” takes this idea further. If I were
to recommend a single chapter, this would be it. Here are some favorite quotes
from it. Speaking of scientists and the endeavor above, he says this:
Their principal aim is to discover
natural law marked by elegance, the right mix of simplicity and latent
power. The theory they accept is the one that defeats rival schemes by uniquely
explaining the experiments of numerous independent investigators. It is a sleek
instrument forge by repeated exposure to stubborn and sometimes inconvenient
data. Conversely, the ideal experiment is one that settles the rival claims of
competing theories. Both the dominant theory and its patron data endure only if
they fit the explanations of other disciplines through a network of logically
tight and quantitative arguments.
This tidy conception is made the more
interesting by the deep epistemological problem it creates and the biological
process it implies. Elegance is more a product of the human mind than of
external reality. It is best understood as a product of organic evolution. The
brain depends on elegance to compensate for its own small size and short lifetime.
As the cerebral cortex grew from apish dimensions through hundreds of thousands
of years of evolution, it was forced to rely on tricks to enlarge memory and
speed computation. The mind therefore specializes on analogy and metaphor, on a
sweeping together of chaotic sensory experience into workable categories
labeled by words and stacked into hierarchies for quick recovery.
Dang,
that’s amazing. It isn’t a new idea to me, of course, but he puts it so
beautifully and, dare I say, elegantly? Here is more:
Scientific innovation sometimes sounds
like poetry, and I would claim that it is, at least in the earliest stages. The
ideal scientist can be said to think like a poet, work like a clerk, and write
like a journalist. The ideal poet thinks, works, and writes like a poet. The
two vocations draw from the same subconscious wellsprings and depend upon
similar primal stories and images. But where scientists aim for a generalizing
formula to which special cases are obedient, seeking unifying natural laws, artists
invent special cases immediately. They transmit forms of knowledge in which the
knower himself is revealed.
That last line
is thrilling. And another one:
The essence of art, no less than of
science, is synecdoche. A carefully chosen part serves for the whole. Some
feature of the subject directly perceived or implied by analogy transmits
precisely the quality intended. The listener is moved by a single surprising
image.
This extended
comparison of art and science really resonates with me. There is a tendency by
many to set up art and science as opposed opposites, perhaps even as mortal
enemies, but this is a gross misunderstanding. The two are so closely related
in actual fact, that they can and should be seen as part of the same tradition,
facets of the same wonder at life, existence, and being. It is no accident that
many scientists are fans of poetry and music and art. Or that many artists,
musicians, and poets seek inspiration not merely from the natural world, but
from science itself. Wilson clearly is in that category, quoting Octavio Paz in
this chapter, and expressing a deep admiration for artistry.
The mind is biologically prone to
discursive communication that expands thought. Mankind, in Richard Rorty’s
expression, is the poetic species. The symbols of art, music, and language
freight power well beyond their outward and literal meanings. SO each one also
condenses large quantities of information. Just as mathematical equations allow
us to move swiftly across large amounts of knowledge and spring into the
unknown, the symbols of art gather human experience into novel forms in order
to evoke a more intense perception in others. Human beings live - literally
live, if life is equated with the mind - by symbols, particularly words,
because the brain is constructed to process information almost exclusively in
their terms.
As I said, the
whole chapter is amazing. The next one is on snakes, and their universal
presence in all mythologies, likely reflecting our evolved mechanisms for not
dying from snakebite. I won’t quote from it, but it is fascinating.
“The Right
Place” is similarly fascinating, tying evolutionary theory to recognized human
behaviors. In this case, he makes the observation that, given a choice, humans
naturally seek specific habitats, just like other animals. In our case, we tend
to like to be on top of hills, in open country with some trees, overlooking
water. Think about it: where do rich people tend to want to be…that lake or
ocean or river view… Wilson ties this to where humans first evolved, and the
way that our particular strengths made survival under those conditions easiest.
The more habitats I have explored, the
more I have felt that certain common features subliminally attract and hold my
attention. Is it unreasonable to suppose that the human mind is primed to
respond most strongly to some narrowly defined qualities that had the greatest
impact on survival in the past?
He continues
later:
The practical-minded will argue that
certain environments are just “nice” and there’s an end to it. So why dilate on
the obvious? The answer is that the obvious is usually profoundly significant.
Some environments are indeed pleasant, for the same general reason that sugar
is sweet, incest and cannibalism repulsive, and team sports exhilarating. Each
response has its peculiar meaning rooted in the distant genetic past. To
understand why we have one particular set of ingrained preferences, and not
another, out of the vast number possible remains a central question in the
study of man.
The older I
get, the less a facile and shallow “god in the gaps” argument satisfies.
Wilson’s musings are scientifically supportable, of course, but also
emotionally satisfying. We are how we are because of how we developed and
evolved, and understanding that can help us understand how our instinctive
reactions can work poorly in new situations.
The penultimate
chapter is “The Conservation Ethic,” and it is really great, but also
depressing as hell. Let me give a few quotes to give the idea.
When very little is known about an
important subject, the questions people raise are almost invariably ethical. Then
as knowledge grows, they become more concerned with information and amoral, in
other words more narrowly intellectual. Finally, as understanding becomes
sufficiently complete, the questions turn ethical again. Environmentalism is
now passing from the first to the second phase, and there is reason to hope
that it will proceed directly on to the third.
The future of the conservation movement
depends on such an advance in moral reasoning. Its maturation is linked to that
of biology and a new hybrid field, bioethics, that deals with the many
technological advances recently made possible by biology. Philosophers and
scientists are applying a more formal analysis to such complex problems as the
allocation of scarce organ transplants, heroic but extremely expensive efforts
to prolong life, and the possible use of genetic engineering to alter human
heredity. They have only begun to consider the relationships between human
beings and organisms with the same rigor. It is clear that the key to precision
lies in the understanding of motivation, the ultimate reasons why people care
about one thing, but not another - why, say, they prefer a city with a park to
a city alone. The goal is to join emotion with the rational analysis of emotion
in order to create a deeper and more enduring conservation ethic.
Aldo Leopold, the pioneer ecologist and
author of A Sand County Almanac, defined an ethic as a set of rules
invented to meet circumstances so new or intricate, or else encompassing
responses so far in the future, that the average person cannot foresee the
final outcome. What is good for you and me at this moment might easily sour
within ten years, and what seems ideal for the next few decades could ruin
future generations. That is why any ethic worthy of the name has to encompass
the distant future. The relationships of ecology and the human mind are too
intricate to be understood entirely by unaided intuition, by common sense -
that overrated capacity composed of the set of prejudices we acquire by the age
of eighteen.
Herein lies a
lot of the difficulty. Humans struggle to think far enough ahead, particularly
when the future and present are in conflict. (That’s the central problem of
environmentalism: we need to pay costs now to avoid greater costs for our descendants
in the future, and few want to do that.) One could even note that better
standards of living now are in conflict with environmental protection, or that
the right kind of authoritarianism could have better consequences down the
road. Wilson, while definitely not a fan of authoritarianism (see below),
wrestles with these issues. In addition, humans are pretty horrible. For
Wilson, it seems almost hopeless for humans to truly act altruistically, at
least at the population level. And, alas, it seems too common for humans to act
in ways that are bad now and in the future. (See: Republican Party
policies that harm most humans now, destroy the environment for future humans,
and essentially enrich a handful of billionaires while making religious bigots
feel powerfully self-righteous.)
Human beings, for all their professed
righteousness and brotherhood, easily discriminate against strangers and are
content to kill them during wars declared for relatively frivolous causes. So
it is much easier to find an excuse to exterminate another species.
Furthermore,
this leads to the unanswerable question of the purpose of humanity in the first
place. We strive for fulfillment, and many of us for the common good. But does
it ultimately mean anything? (See: Ecclesiastes)
The truth is that we never conquered
the world, never understood it; we only think we have control. We do not even
know why we respond a certain way to other organisms, and need them in diverse
ways, so deeply. The prevailing myths concerning our predatory actions toward
each other and the environment are obsolete, unreliable, and destructive. The
more the mind is fathomed in its own right, as an organ of survival, the
greater will be the reverence for life for purely rational reasons.
The final
chapter takes us back to Suriname, and the changes that took place politically
since Wilson studied ants there. An authoritarian dictator took over, and
essentially did what authoritarian dictators do. There is a line in that
history that I am stealing, about the problem that outside countries have.
Suriname cut off both democracies and communist states like Cuba, afraid of
anything that might threaten power and control.
All are wrestling with a problem as old
as recorded history: how to deal with the kingdoms of Caliban.
The kingdoms of
Caliban indeed. I can think of no better way to describe the Trumps and other
dictators of history. They are all irrational rage and destruction, feeding
fears and hatreds and leaving nothing but destruction behind them. Because
Wilson looks at the long view, he notes that regimes are just blinks of the
eye. They can be removed a generation later, and often are. What lasts forever
is extinction, and that is why environmental degradation is the biggest
long-term issue we face. They are all connected, though, as environmental
arsonists like Jair Bolsinaro and Trump demonstrate. The same instinct behind
authoritarianism seems to be connected to a willingness to burn the planet to
the ground to make a few more bucks.
I really loved
this book, and look forward to reading the others in the collection. (And also
the promised second volume of Wilson’s works from LoA.)
***
Other Library
of America selections that are related to conservation:
Home
Economics by Wendell Berry
The
Unexpected Universe by Loren Eiseley
My
First Summer in the Sierra by John Muir
Walden by Henry David Thoreau
