The enlightenment had a firm faith that reason could discover truths about the world independently of religious received truth. Further this new truth about the world could make life on earth better for all. The enlightenment gave birth to all the new modern science and reinvigorated all the old sciences. Modernity followed the enlightenment with the “correct” answers in each science. Modernity broke with the enlightenment faith in a unity of knowledge as each discipline had its own truths and ways of looking at the world. Postmodernity challenged the correct answers of modern sciences with exceptions, inconsistencies, and alternative explanations. Against this intellectual tradition Edward Osbourn Wilson reaffirmed the enlightenment’s belief in the unity of all knowledge.
Edward O Wilson, one of the most esteemed and denigrated (but lately proven right) biologists in the world. He specialized in the study of ants but expanded into the humanities. He has won two Pulizer Prizes. He is credited with the notion of Biophilia[1], “Our evolutionary past resonates daily with how we respond to our present environment,”[2] which is now a popular theory in architecture and in urban and interior design. In 1975 he was called a fascist and racist shunned by his colleagues at Harvard and actually assaulted at a speech he was giving on an evolutionary approach to psychology and human behaviour[3]. Wilson claimed that there really was something to the ancient and medieval notion of human nature and it does constrain what we can think and achieve. He spent nearly 20 years as a villain in most circles for suggesting that the explanation of social behaviour in animals from insects to mammals and including humanity are nearly the same. His notion of sociobiology (“the systematic study of the biological basis of all social behaviour.”[4]) was vehemently and violently attacked, apparently discredited and vilified. But the science soon caught up. In 1992 his theory was rebranded as evolutionary psychology and is now mainstream. He could be called a prophet of moral psychology.[5]
Wilson’s 1975 tome Sociobiology: The New Synthesis, was a controversial book. Chapters 2 to 26 continue to be universally celebrated as a brilliant study of biology. Chapters 1 and 27 got him branded as a fascist. In chapter 1 The Morality of the Gene, Wilson asks, given that “the organism is only DNA’s way of making more DNA”, then “the central theoretical problem of sociobiology: [is] how can altruism, which by definition reduces personal fitness, possibly evolve by natural selection?” his quick answer is multi-level kinship: a balance is struck in altruistic behaviour between the survival of various group sizes from individual, families, colonies, clans, tribes and on up. Natural selection works on a spectrum at all kinds of society (invertebrate, vertebrate and human) and all sizes (colony, family, clan, nation, civilization). In other words, cultures and societies (of every level and kind) are selected for by natural selection similar to how natural selection works on individuals. Thus “Sociobiology is defined as the systematic study of the biological basis of all social behavior.” When he says “all” he means “all” in the broadest most expansive sense. In other words, altruism is a behavioral property of individual and groups of various sizes in various degrees. For example, Mohandus K Gandhi was very self-sacrificial and altruistic at a national level but very poor at a family level. Societies produce many poorly preforming family members – we judge them poorly – but who may be genetically coded to be altruistic at a different level. The fact is that most will never even get a chance to demonstrate because the society’s need for a Gandhi level altruist is so rare. Yet it is a survival mechanism of the species similar to how in nature some species produce vast numbers of offspring with very few surviving childhood (e.g. Galapagos turtles). In Canada today there may be 1000s of people like Gandhi biologically encoded to be altruistic at a national level. We call them deadbeat dads or absentee parents in Canada today their unique talents will probably never be put to good use. Parents who tell their kids that they can grow up to do or be anything they like, are just plain wrong. But as a civilization, or as a society, or as a city, or as a family we are more likely to flourish as a species if we have and tolerate a diversity of unpleasant people.
In the final chapter 27: Man: From Sociobiology to Sociology, having spent 25 long chapters documenting and explaining the social life of non-human animals he jumps to humans. First, he notes that we are orders of magnitude higher in social structure than any other animal. Where all other animals base their societies on what is popularly called biological relations, We humans can form kinship identity like bonds and sentiments and act with reciprocal altruism on a range with our whole species to our nuclear family. “it is the task of comparative sociobiology to trace these and other human qualities as closely as possible back through time….the exercise will help to identify the behaviours and rules by which individual human beings increase their Darwinian fitness through the manipulation of society…we are searching for the human biogram.” A biogram is a life story in a structured format that is useful for massive data accumulation, comparison, and analysis. With a large enough sample of biograms it can be determined “to what extent the [human] biogram represents an adaptation to modern cultural life and to what extent it is a phylogenetic vestige. Our civilizations were jerry-built around the biogram.”
The chapter continues a discussion of general traits of our humanity followed by current knowledge of the evolution of our human biogram. He ends with “some implications for the planning of future societies”. “When mankind has achieved an ecological steady state, probably by the end of the twenty-first century, the internalization of social evolution will be nearly complete. About this time biology should be at its peak, with the social sciences maturing rapidly.” All the social sciences are in the “natural history stage” of development: many systems based on faulty or speculative first principles have been proposed only to be discredited. The only thing that actually happens in the natural history phase is cataloging and labeling of phenomena and the development of rudimentary concepts. “The transition from purely phenomenological to fundamental theory in sociology [the humanities and all social sciences] must await a full neuronal explanation of the human brain.” It is ridiculous to think we can understand human behaviour without understanding the brain and its history of development. “The role of evolutionary sociobiology in this enterprise will be twofold. It will attempt to reconstruct the history of the machinery and to identify the adaptive significance of each of its functions. Some of the functions are almost certainly obsolete, being directed toward such Pleistocene exigencies as hunting and gathering and intertribal warfare. Others may prove currently adaptive at the level of the individual and family but maladaptive at the level of the group—or the reverse.” This is incredibly important if we as a species decide to “mold cultures to fit the requirements of the ecological steady state”. We must know what we can change and what we cannot. We must know the trade off in any change. “Uncertainty in this matter means that … a culture predesigned for happiness will surely have to wait for the new neurobiology. A genetically accurate and hence completely fair code of ethics must also wait.”
The second contribution will be “to monitor the genetic basis of social behavior.” The fact is that societies cannot be prefect as demonstrated by Arrow’s impossibility theorem (In short, the theorem states that no rank-order decision system can be designed that always satisfies three generally accepted "fairness" criteria for a population). Additionally, possibly more importantly ethical systems are pluralistic: there are many and to lose out on that diversity is also likely to be an impoverishing of our species’ future. “Moreover, the genetic foundation on which any such normative system is built can be expected to shift continuously.” We keep evolving and any optimum would also shift and drift.
Wilson also sees problems on the horizon for human society. “The rate of gene flow across the world has risen to dramatic levels and is accelerating….The result could be an eventual lessening of altruistic behavior through the maladaptation and loss of group-selected genes” The competitive nature of our world’s dominant civilizations means that it is possible to select out altruism naturally. An individualistic culture may select out the behaviour of altruism at levels of society farther from the individual. “Such traits can largely disappear from a population in as few as ten generations, only two or three centuries in the case of human beings. With our present inadequate understanding of the human brain, we do not know how many of the most valuable qualities are linked genetically to more obsolete destructive ones.”
As we plan society more and more we will have to overcome these stresses and tensions. We will need to fine an ecological steady state. “It seems that our autocatalytic social evolution has locked us onto a particular course which the early hominids still within us may not welcome.”
[1] Biophilia, Edward O. Wilson, 1984
[2] Ann Sussman and Justine B. Hollander, Cognitive Architecture, Designing for how we respond to the built environment, 2021, page 136
[3] https://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/13/books/review/the-social-conquest-of-earth-by-edward-o-wilson.html
[4] Sociobiology: The New Synthesis, E. O. Wilson, 1975, page 4
[5] Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind, Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion, 2012, page 38