Why E.O. Wilson Matters

E. O. Wilson is an influential American biologist, naturalist, and writer. He has been given the nicknames "The New Darwin", "Darwin's natural heir" and "The Darwin of the 21st century". 

Wilson was born in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1929. Growing up in the countryside around Mobile, he was entranced by nature and all its creatures. A fishing accident left him blind in one eye, interfering with his ability to study birds and other animals in the field.

Wilson is known for the term “genetic leash” which describes environmental factors and genetics as the cause of much more of an individual’s behaviour than previously thought — freeing humans from our “dogmatic slumber” of free will.

He is the world’s leading expert in myrmecology, which is the study of ants. He is personally responsible for discovering and describing more than 400 species of ants, and his studies have informed his understanding of human social behaviour.

Wilson has said in reference to ants that "Karl Marx was right, socialism works, it is just that he had the wrong species.” He meant that humans can be more independent because of their method of reproduction, while ants depend on the ant-queen to survive.

Wilson, a Harvard professor emeritus, introduced the concept of “sociobiology,” which he defines as "the extension of population biology and evolutionary theory to social organization".

Wilson has been called the “father of biodiversity.” He defines biodiversity as all things living on the planet; everything else is the physical world.

His book Sociobiology (1975) attracted a large number of critical reviews, not only by biologists but by social scientists. They objected especially to Wilson's application of Darwinian thinking to humans, and his implication of biological determinism.

One of Wilson’s most notable theories is that even a characteristic such as altruism may have evolved through natural selection. Traditionally, natural selection was thought to foster only those physical and behavioural traits that increase an individual’s chances of reproducing.

Wilson argues that belief in God and religious rituals are a product of evolution. He describes himself as agnostic rather than atheist, and has said, "Science and religion are two of the most potent forces on Earth and they should come together to save the creation.”