To Love in Wilson's World

Many years ago a mentor and friend told me something long before I had children. She was already a grandmother. She told me that unconditional love is largely an illusion. She stressed that there were two major exceptions which were unidirectional. That is we love our children and our grandchildren unconditionally, and no one else. She said this in a non-selfish, but rather self-aware moment just after her mother had passed away. She had a realization that no one would ever love her unconditionally again. At the time I had no idea if she were correct. I loved my parents and grandparents after all. She assured me that love for a parent is not unconditional as love for a child is. Now many years later I do understand her point, as the depth of sacrifice I would make for my children is so unquestionable that it is unique, despite all of the many loves in my life.

I have had the pleasure of having several incredible conversations with the great octogenarian biologist E.O. Wilson. Perhaps the last of a certain kind of field naturalist, Wilson has been respected in his role as Harvard Professor, scientist and popularizer. And as much as any of this, he is such a nice guy. This is why those of us who are not biologists were surprised this last year by the complete attack of Wilson over a paper he co-published with two Harvard mathematicians challenging a fixture in modern biology that he himself had helped to form. That is something known as Kin Selection. If you are interested in understanding the theory in any profound way look into it from a biologist not applied physicists like myself, but I think I get the very basics of the concept. The idea is that altruism is apparent in many, or perhaps most creatures. What Wilson's students and he had conjectured more than 40 years ago, and has become the accepted view popularized by the Richard Dawkins book “The Selfish Gene” in 1979 is that self-sacrifice is the way in which natural selection works to spread the genes of the family. Therefore altruism is not really selfless, or doesn’t really exist in the way we think of it. Instead an animal may alert a kin to danger by sacrificing himself.  Darwin himself never came to this conclusion, instead claiming that it was a problem that was too complicated to fit into the theory. Wilson, Dawkins and others felt that understanding of genetics allowed them to realize what had eluded Darwin. 

So until last year all of this was accepted. That is until Wilson and the Mathematicians challenged this with a new theory of group selection. It was published in Nature, and immediately attacked by Dawkins and most of the biology community.  The idea is that altruism does actually exist outside of kin relations. Sacrifice for a group, in order to strengthen the group rather than an individual family line was occurring. The mathematicians used models to identify this, something that biologists are not as used to as we are in physics.  The original idea of group selection was articulated by the Maynard Smith who described what he called the "Haystack Model" which indeed considers statistical ramifications of altruism.  This can be visualized by picturing a group of animals that grow up together in a haystack. They mix randomly in the haystack as well as emerge from the original haystack to form groups in new haystacks. From this, traits that benefit the group may result in  altruistic acts at the sacrifice of the individual. In essence Wilson is saying that the haystack model more resembles the norm than traditional Kin Selection.

In June Wilson addressed a group at the World Science Festival to discuss the requirement to change views with evidence. His bravery is profound, as shaking up the world of evolutionary biology at 81 is not a completely pleasant affair. I spoke to him about this and he had the most rational response I have ever heard. I am paraphrasing but he basically told me that he would be failing as a scientist if he didn’t report this, because this is what he and his colleagues were observing in nature. That is what made him love nature and science. It is also what makes me love him. What he said officially is this “I think that’d be a pretty poor scientist, who couldn’t reverse his view from new evidence.”

I couldn’t figure out why there was such anger about his paper. There are debates and disagreements all of the time. This is good and important for progress in science. But this wasn’t like Wilson had claimed that evolution was not occurring. It was basically a revision to something that was observed but still not confirmed in a way that I would consider definitive. I have no idea who is right about this issue, but I was shocked by the response. Then I remembered the conversation with my friend about unconditional love, and also another experience I had with E.O Wilson. I was taking my 6 year old daughter to California for a family reunion, and by great luck we were sitting across the row from Wilson and his friend. (see picture above;)) Wilson is most famous for his work with ants, and I told my daughter Juliette this, and the four of us talked ants. It was incredible that my little girl was discussing ants with the world’s foremost ant expert. What I loved most though was not Wilson as terrific as he was. I loved Juliette. I was so happy for her. I was in love with her, as she was gaining a memorable experience. Looking back I realized that I loved Juliette more than anyone in the world. I realized that I loved her and her alone unconditionally. I would sacrifice my life for her. Was this Kin Selection? Was I genetically programmed to carrying on my genes by protecting her, and caring more for her than anyone else? I have a son now too and I feel the same for him. Perhaps this is why Dawkins and the rest take Wilson's challenge to Kin Selection as such a profound and threatening concept to them. Are they afraid that their own love of family, and the love that their parents gave them is being reduced?  This may not be it at all, but I could understand how that could happen.

With all of this said, WiIson, myself, Dawkins and all of the others are scientists. Emotion is the magician of science, always making things feel certain even when they are unresolved. Wilson has more emotion than most, and a personal tie to Kin Selection but instead he collaborated with mathematicians to see if Kin Selection was an illusion. What he claims to have found, altruism in group selection, may or may not be correct, but it is the most admirable and hardest thing for person in science to do. By doing this Wilson has elevated science, and given us all reason to contemplate if indeed we can love and be loved by more than just our ancestors.