Scientist: E. O. Wilson: A Life in Nature
This review of a biography of E. O. Wilson by Richard Rhodes, Doubleday (2021) was written for the newsletter of the Evolution Biology and Society section of the American Sociological Association but for some reason the newsletter has not been published so I am posting it here. A few days after it was written, E. O. Wilson died.
For R & R I like to read books that are not exactly work, but not exactly unrelated to work either. One I read lately which both older and younger members of the section might enjoy is Richard Rhodes’ biography of Edward O. Wilson. Wilson was the author of Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (1975) among other books including earlier The Theory of Island Biogeography; The Insect Societies; and later, On Human Nature; Genes, Mind and Culture: The Coevolutionary Process; and Biophilia among others, as well as many articles.
I say both because the oldest of us know that without Wilson, our section might well not exist, and for the youngest, well his importance may be lost in history. Personally, I well remember, while finishing my PhD thesis comparing theories of change in biology, psychology and the social sciences, reading a review of Sociobiology: The New Synthesis on the front page of the New York Times no less. While at a conference in another city I found a copy of the large format, heavy hardback book in the university bookstore, purchased it, and subsequently wrote my own review, the second thing I ever published.
Wilson’s argument was that a new science of “sociobiology”, the systematic study of the biological basis of all social behavior, will incorporate the sociology of all species into the neo-Darwinian synthetic theory of evolution so that the social sciences will “shrink to specialized branches of biology . . . the sociobiology of a single primate species”. Not surprisingly, reactions went to both extremes – raving or scathing. To give an example of how heated things became, a graduate student dumped a pitcher of water on Wilson’s head while he was on stage at a conference exclaiming “Wilson, you’re all wet”! I tried to be more balanced in my review- praising his treatment of the “preformationist” disciplines but criticizing his neglect of the “epigenetic” ones i.e. of development, as well as of the possibility of a distinct sociocultural evolutionary process. To this day there is a large literature on the elusiveness not of a theory of evolution and genetics which is well established, but of one also incorporating development and ecology. However, in the second case, the study of Darwinian-style cultural evolution is flourishing, among other places, in a large Cultural Evolution Society.
Rhodes biography is not officially authorized, but one with which Wilson cooperated by being interviewed in a series of lengthy interviews while resting comfortably in a retirement community at the age of 92. He had a difficult childhood growing up in Alabama with divorced parents, the loss of an eye in an accident, and due to the exigencies of his father’s job, attending 16 different schools! (I once read a study showing that moving for a child, involving a change of neighbourhoods, schools and friends is as hard on a child as a divorce.) His fascination with insects, particularly ants, and later membership in the Boy Scouts saved him and after his bachelors and masters degrees in Biology at the University of Alabama, he did his PhD at Harvard. For that, with his fiancé waiting at home, he was funded for a long trip throughout many Pacific islands, collecting, classifying and identifying many new species of ants. Shortly thereafter he married and soon became a faculty member at Harvard.
Rhodes includes interesting material on Wilson’s conflicts with Watson who also joined the faculty there (yes, that Watson) who thought that the kind of field naturalists’ research that Wilson engaged in was outdated “stamp collecting” and all that was important for the future was biochemistry and molecular biology. It did not help their relationship that Wilson received tenure before Watson. They clashed over positions for hiring at Harvard and eventually the department was split into two – organismic and evolutionary biology in the one and molecular biology in the other. However, as Wilson’s reputation grew, they eventually reconciled and Watson decamped anyway to the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island where he achieved great success for some years.
Wilson had a 40 year career at Harvard, retiring from there in 1996. During that time, among other things he championed the concept of group selection particularly for eusocial species like ants which have reproductively sterile casts and embraced gene-culture coevolution (doubtfully according to some). Once retired, he embraced “consilience” rather than reduction as the best concept for inter-disciplinary relations, became even more of a champion of the conservation of biodiversity, and developed from an agnostic to an atheist. He received many awards and honorary doctorates during his career and after his retirement, and in fact was one of most publicly well known scientists of his time. Whatever one thinks of Wilson’s concepts and his work which Rhodes provides an entertaining overview of, there can be little doubt that he was the origin of modern discussions of the relationship among evolution, biology and society.
Niklas Luhmann still publishing!
A few days ago I received one of those notices from research gate that an article of mine had been cited in a journal article in 2021 by the German sociologist, Niklas Luhmann no less. I was aware that he had cited an early article on mine on “Sociocultural Evolution: An Untried Theory” in one of his books and I had reviewed a book of his (“Theories of Distinction: Redescribing the Descriptions of Modernity” translated and introduced by William Rasch) in the Canadian Journal of Sociology in 2002. Still, that was nice given that he was probably the most prominent sociological theorist in Europe in the Parsonian era. Nice, except that he had died in 1998!
John Simpson kindly contacted an ex-colleague of his who reads German. The journal was “Soziale Systeme” 24(1-2):71-105 with the issue actually dated 2019 and the article (title translated) was “The paradox of system differentiation and the evolution of society” .It would appear that the entire issue of the journal is composed of articles by Luhmann. Given that he published some 40 books and hundreds of journal articles while alive and was said to write 3 hours a day, every day, it should not be surprising that he left more writing when he died that someone has resurrected. I doubt that any of us alive today will still be publishing more than 20 years after our death!
Sex and Sexual Selection in Economic Terms
In 2019 I published a paper in Biological Theory that sex is trade in somewhat different naturally-selected strategies which reduces risk and that sexual selection is conflict over the profits of that trade. Recently, while exchanging some views and papers with Ugo Pagano, I was drawn to the conclusion that that theory, put in economic terms, is that sex is profit-seeking and sexual selection is rent-seeking.
One of Pagano’s papers that was published in the Journal of Bioeconomics led me to browse further in that unfamiliar journal. Low and behold, I came across there a paper published in 2016 by a great evolutionary biologist, Michael Ghiselin, (whom I had met a couple of times at ISHPSSB meetings and who is well known for his work on sequential hermaphroditism among other things), titled “What is sexual selection? A rent-seeking approach”! Great company obviously – I just wished I had seen the paper in time to cite it!
The Potential Role of Centrioles in Active or Passive Female Choice
In animals and some other groups in which centrioles are inherited through males, good centrioles may be what females/ova are commonly choosing for or being manipulated with sexually to provide offspring or the expectation of offspring with the ability to escape difficult conditions by dispersing in time, space and/or niche, hence yielding grand offspring. These are the 3M’s – maintenance, motility and mutability. Centrioles as cellular organelles provide maintenance (the aster which emerges from them nucleates the cytoskelton), hence the choice for more mature, healthier males. They provide motility (they form the base of flagella), hence the choice for songs, dances and nuptial flights. They also provide mutability (in the sense of differentiation in development because they determine the planes and directions of cell divisions affecting cytoplasmic heredity), hence the choice for complex, symmetrical ornaments – for example those peacocks’ tails. The dramatic colour patterns sometimes observed in complex, symmetrical ornaments may make the latter more likely to be noticed by females in active or passive choice. And since it may be unclear whether flagella actually contribute to motility at the organismic level, it may be that songs, dances and nuptial flights are simply another form of complex, symmetrical ornament, one in space and time outside the body instead of inside it.
Feminist Views on a Theory of Sexes, Sex and Sexual Selection
In an article in Biological Theory in 2019 on mating markets and in two posts here, one in September 2019 on the two-fold cost of sex and in May 2020 on mating markets, together I hope made clear that a single premise, if justified, could solve the three major evolutionary puzzles about sex. The premise is that in a dioecious population for example, i.e. one composed of males and females, the two are ecologically, i.e. naturally selected, to be somewhat different. That would solve:
a) the puzzle of what compensates for the two-fold cost of sex because of the advantages of specialization
b) the puzzle of why they engage in sex at all because such trade is a form of bet hedging which produces diversity reducing the risk of extinction, and
c) the puzzle of why they engage in sexual competition and selection and why it takes the form that it does because sexual competition and selection are conflict over the profits of the sexual trade and the form it takes depends on what the naturally-selected differences are.
However, there is one thing not discussed in any of the three (possible feminist views of such a theory) and one briefly discussed in the article (the potential role of centrioles) but not in the posts. The former is discussed here and the latter will be in a subsequent post.
As noted in the article and in the most recent post, if the naturally-selected sex allocation is with males/male gametes at high frequency but low quality, i.e. low per capita cost, and females/female gametes at low frequency but high quality, i.e. high per capita cost, then sexually males/male gametes would compete intrasexually for female mates/female gametes and females/female gametes would compete intersexually choosing high quality male mates/male gametes. Feminists might find both something to both dislike and to like about this explanation of “conventional” sex roles. On the one hand, one can imagine some people reacting, “I see, on this view the sexes are naturally different, well then that justifies etc.” On the other hand, in this scenario, females/female gametes choose not just as a side effect of high male/male gamete frequency, nor even necessarily because they invest more in each offspring, both of which theories are popular. They can choose because they are of higher quality, i.e. have more invested in them than do males/male gametes, and hence they can afford to choose. Of course, where the naturally-selected strategies are different – sex role reversed, or both sexes high quantity but low quality, or both high quality but low quantity, then sex roles would be different than the conventional ones. And as previously noted, if the naturally-selected population were for some reason completely out of sex allocation equilibrium, then sexual selection could restore it as, or perhaps even more easily than by Fisher’s principle.
Is the Chicken and Egg Problem Solvable?
Evolutionary biologists sometimes say that a chicken is just an egg’s way of making more eggs even though they in fact begin their story of “generation” with chickens making eggs rather than eggs making chickens! Developmental biologists on the other hand actually study how eggs make chickens. Meanwhile, a “chicken and egg problem” has become a synonym in popular usage for an unsolvable problem. So is the apocryphal chicken and egg problem solvable?
I don’t know whether it can or ever will be solved empirically. However, theoretically I think the key question is whether geological and physio-chemical processes originally created many small things or a few large ones. I think the former is far more likely. If so, then individual growth and development came first and demographic growth developed rather than demographic growth coming first and individual growth and development evolving. Eventually of course the circle was closed so that instead of individual growth and development being the end and demographic growth a means to that end, or demographic growth the end and individual growth and development a means to that end, both became ends and both a means to the other’s end.
Get Costs In!
A lesson can be drawn from Charnov who transformed Fisher’s sex ratio theory into sex allocation theory but unfortunately the lesson has generally not spread in evolutionary theory beyond that. The lesson is that costs as well as frequencies have to be included and every time one dives deeper, one finds both again. That is the case whether we are talking about evolutionary ecology (e.g. density-dependence), social evolution (e.g. sexual selection), the origin of life, the extended evolutionary synthesis or whatever. The same point can be put in a variety of ways – costs as well as frequencies, quality (qu) as well as quantity (qa), investing as well as spending, somatic as well as reproductive functions etc. need to be included.
Both are needed and every time we dig deeper we need both again:
e.g. density dependence traditionally is qa (r) vs qu (K) but then need qa & qu of both 1
e.g. sexual selection theories are qa or qu but need both for sexual and for natural selection 2
e.g. the ‘originals’ grew (qu) as well as coming to reproduce (qa) 3
e.g. development as well as evolution must become part of the modern evolutionary synthesis 4
1 Density-Dependent Selection Revisited: Mechanisms Linking Explanantia and Explananda. Biological Theory 11(2) 2016: 113-121.
2 Mating markets: A naturally selected sex allocation theory of sexual selection. Biological Theory 14(2) 2019: 103-111.
3 Origins and the Eco-Evo-Devo Problem. Biological Theory 1(2) 2006: 116-118.
4 Three Modes of Evolution by Natural Selection and Drift: A New Or an Extended Evolutionary Synthesis? Biological Theory 12(2) 2017: 67-71.
Florestan Fernandes at the University of Toronto
In the academic year 1969-70 as a new graduate student in Sociology at the University of Toronto I took a course in “Latin American Societies” taught by Prof. Florestan Fernandes. I had a strong interest in economic and social development in the “third world” as it was called it in those days. I had spent two years after my Bachelors degree in Psychology and English as a Canadian University Service Overseas volunteer (the Canadian version of the American Peace Corps) teaching in eastern Nigeria. I and other volunteers were horrified at the English curriculum in secondary schools and teacher training colleges. It was composed exclusively of English novels and poems. We took great pleasure in introducing the students to Nigerian novels and poetry such as Chinua Achebe’s novel Things Fall Apart and Wole Soyinka’s poetry which they very much enjoyed. (Soyinka later became the first African to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.) I had also travelled in South America in Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay and Brazil for some months. Another ex-volunteer who had been stationed there told me he thought that the people of the altiplano area there were the poorest in the world but I had told him I thought that those of the Sahelian area of Africa were so I decided to see for myself!
I had also been politically active in protesting the siege of Biafra and along with other ex-volunteers and others, in organizing a teach-in on “The Crisis in Development”. Rather than an afternoon or evening of lectures, we did the teach-in a different way. We organized four weeks of discussion groups in the community, churches, recreation centres and so on. Each of us led one group having produced four handbooks with readings and questions for discussion. A few of the readings were from works by Frantz Fanon and Ivan Illich.
I have fond memories of Prof. Fernandes and his lectures and was particularly impressed, not only by the content, but also by his academic rigour. He walked in each week and sat in a small circle with ten or so of us and read his lectures which he had previously written out in full. The lectures were eventually published in a book “The Latin American in Residence Lectures”, Toronto, University of Toronto, 1969-70 edited by Prof. Kurt Levy, a political science professor. I gather that I and another graduate student from the course assisted the editor with some comments. When Prof. Fernandes gave us pretty much free reign on topics for a paper for the course, I decide to follow up on my interest in Frantz Fanon and Ivan Illich on development and wrote arguing that there was a convergence of their views on autonomous development.
After another year, once my MA degree was completed, my interests took a somewhat different turn. I eventually wrote my PhD thesis on comparing theories of change in biology, psychology and the social sciences in the sociology department but with an interdisciplinary committee. Among other things I wrote a fairly widely cited article on “Sociocultural Evolution: An Untried Theory” on the idea that culture and social organization and not just genes “descend with modification”. For example, the languages within each of some two hundred language families have descended with modification from a common ancestral language. I taught at the University of Toronto, The University of Western Ontario (now Western University) and eventually returned to the University of Toronto as Associate Professor, then full Professor then Emeritus (retired) Professor even though I am still active. In 2010 I also published a book with Cambridge University Press, “Darwinian Sociocultural Evolution: Solutions to Dilemmas in Cultural and Social Theory”.
Looking back now on the paper I wrote for Prof. Fernandes’ course (which I actually managed to find a copy of when asked by Diogo Valença and which he had published translated into Portugese along with this note in Novos Olhares Socials – UFRB V 3(2) 2020) my most egocentric memory is that he tried to give me a grade of 100 to which the powers that be objected so I ended up with a grade of 90 which was fine with me! But reading through the paper now, I don’t think I would change the substance at all – autonomy in development is as important as ever. And today the pandemic problem (hopefully in the short run), and the climate crisis in the longer run, are the two most important problems facing us all. I have every confidence Prof. Fernandes would agree with that as well were he still with us.
More Transmissible Mutants of COVID-CoV-2 Likely to be Less Rather Than More Damaging
In a post here on May 3 and in a post on the on-line magazine TVOL here
(https://evolution-institute.org/gene-culture-and-potential-culture-gene-coevolution-the-future-of-covid-19/)
I suggested that the virus COVID-CoV-2 could well evolve to become more transmissible. Three broad classifications of mechanisms were mentioned – increases in maintenance, motility and mutability. This now seems to have occurred in London and south-east England although the mechanism remains unknown. This is not just an “I told you so” but also to add another prediction. Mutants of the virus that successfully spread are likely to cause the disease COVID-19 to become less rather than more damaging and fatal. This is because it is not in the virus’ interest to keep one down and unable to circulate let alone kill its victims along with itself.
Blute Blog 