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.

Longevity in a Time of Certainty

The big news last week in science was the discovery of a gene that is believed to be linked to longevity. Though there is some disagreement about this finding, for the sake of this blog I will assume that it is valid research, and that indeed it is possible to find out if we carry the genes necessary to live to be over 100 years old.  On a personal note, while I would have this test or any genome analysis which would give me insight into my inner cellular self, I can be nearly certain that I do not have this enviable gene. I have had far too many illnesses which don’t seem to be purely environmental. Because of these illnesses I have wavered between two cliché philosophies on how to live. The first is the hedonistic, and second being the hypochondriac.  These may be opposites as one involves living only for the moment, and one is obsessed with having a future, yet both stem from my intimate acknowledgement that life will come to an end. The uncertainty of when it will end is what leads to the fluctuation of healthy and destructive habits. If for instance I knew that if I didn’t drink alcohol I would live to be 90 and that if I did drink alcohol I would die at 40, there is no question that I would not touch another drink. Unfortunately there has not been such information available. I may know that drinking is not great for me, but I also know that most people who drink fairly moderately do not die from complications related to drinking, so I continue on, as my inner risk assessment tells me that it is not so bad. All of my behavior including hamburger eating and stress probably does make a difference though; it is just that those differences are not quantifiable. That is they have not been quantifiable in the past. Genomics may change this.

I attended a wonderful World Science Festival event called Our Genomes Ourselves, which explored the state of the art and some of the philosophical implications of understanding our own genomes. This was before the longevity gene discovery of last week, but the concept of genetic information informing decision making was still a focus. A prime and rather moving example involved a family of women who had been tested for a genetic pattern responsible for breast cancer. It was a mother who had the cancer gene (and the cancer I believe) with three daughters in their late teens and early 20’s, all of which were tested for the genetic defect. The results would not only tell them the strong likelihood of whether they would develop breast cancer, but just as importantly give them options. They could for example make the radical choice of having double mastectomies before even having the cancer, guaranteeing that they would never get it. This is interesting in itself, but something even more psychologically intriguing to me happened when the daughters received the results. Two of them had the breast cancer disposition, and one did not. Immediately the one without started crying uncontrollably. She was apparently feeling a sense of survivor’s remorse, before the others had even gotten sick. This is touching and encouraging as it shows the power of human empathy. It is also an indicator of things to come as more such genome analysis reveals our futures.

I have spent a lot of time on the question of free-will and my belief that we essential live in a deterministic universe. I am involved in a movement called Applied Naturalism, the application being that by recognizing humans as a part of an ordered and determined part of nature, we can approach justice, politics, science and psychology differently. Essentially in my view it is the opposite view point of books such as The Secret, where power is assumed to be in the individual. I find The Secret model of existence to be harsh rather than compassionate, as it places a responsibility for action in humans which is impossible to achieve.

It is easy to see how Applied Naturalism and Genomics can be viewed through the same philosophical lens. That is, the breast cancer is predetermined. The young women tested could be said to have freewill to decide what to do with that information, but it could also be argued that the personalities and predispositions that they have will predetermine the action. Some people are just more likely to have extremely invasive preventive surgery than others. The issue of the longevity gene however is even more deterministic. The knowledge that you have a gene to live to be very old may keep you off of motor cycles with a knowledge that if you don’t die in an accident you will be around for a long time, but I think that is unlikely. People generally don’t ride motorcycles, nor goes skiing or any other dangerous activity thinking that it will kill them. More likely the information gained by knowing the longevity gene is more important in an existential context. 

The most profound aspect of Heidegger’s “Being in Time” in my view is when he describes the core difference between the authentic and inauthentic self (Dasein). There are many aspects to his long description but the one which remains for me is that the authentic self acknowledges life and death. This is not so different from the Buddhist key principle of emptiness. It is acknowledging that there is a frame in which we exist, and one in which we don’t. This applies whether we know when that end is, or don’t, but could be seen as easier to deal with if we do have an idea of when the end is. Suicide is generally an act of depression, but I don’t believe it always is. Sometimes it is just a way of framing life and death, so that it is not unbearably unknown. If both Heidegger and my hypothesis on suicide are right, then the longevity gene test could very well be the most important biological discovery of all time. With knowledge of our life expectancy we can frame a productive life, even though we may not live it all that much differently. We will view our illnesses, our accomplishments and our children in new, more enlightened ways. It is true that the test itself should not be necessary for this, but I think that it may be for a lot of us. The human desire for answers may be too great to overcome through philosophical revelations of Heidegger or any other philosopher. It may come only from an understanding of something deep within us. Something in our genes.