E.O. Wilson's The
Meaning of Human Existence— A Conspectus.
José Angel García Landa
E.O. Wilson has provided a consilient
evolutionary approach to anthropology, and to the problems of human
nature, action and ethics in his book The Meaning of Human Existence. Here follow my notes providing a conspectus of the book — with some parenthetical comments (JAGL).
I. The Reason We Exist
"History makes little sense without prehistory, and prehistory makes
little sense without biology. Knowledge of prehistory and biology is
increasing rapidly bringing into focus how humanity originated and why
a species like ours exists on this planet."
1. The Meaning of Meaning. Meaning is either "intention",
"design", or seen as the result of "overlapping networks of physical
cause and effect" —the 2nd view is more inclusive. Understanding brings
about the capacity to decide—and the greatest moral dilemma: "how much
to retrofit the human genotype". "We are not predestined to reach any
goal, nor are we answerable to any power but our own. Only wisdom based
on self-understanding, not piety, will save us" (15).
2. Solving the riddle of the human species.
This cannot be entrusted to the humanities. "The time has come to
consider what science might give to the humanities and the humanities
to science in a common search for a more solidly grounded than before
to the great riddle of our existence" (18). Eusociality (the "true"
social condition) is an extreme biological rarity, arising only 19
times in biological history. It originates in social life around a
protected nest, with parents and children cooperating in raising
additional generations. "Such primitive assemblages then divide easily
into risk-prone foragers and risk-averse parents and nurses" (21).
Australopithecine eusociality as a result of a shift in diet and
foraging strategies. "A premium was placed on personal relationships
geared to both competition and cooperation among the members" (21).
Cognitive improvements in memory, prediction, and in "the ability to
invent and inwardly rehearse compeing scenarios of future
interactions." All this allows the evaluation of social interactions:
"They allow us to evaluate the prospects and consequences of alliances,
bonding, sexual contact, rivalries, domination, deception, loyalty, and
betrayal. We instinctively delight in the telling of countless stories
about others, cast as players upon our own inner stage. The best of it
is expressed in the creative arts, political theory, and other
higher-level activities we have come to call the humanities." The
origins of social intelligence are ascribed to either kin selection
(now discarded by Wilson) and the theory he now favors, in which "the
grand master is multilevel selection. This formulation recognizes two
levels at which natural selection operates: individual selection based
on competition and cooperation among members of the same group, and
group selection, which arises from competition and cooperation between
groups" (24). Multilevel selection is a sustainable model, kin
selection is unrealistic. There is consistent human interest in details
of social behavior, in gossip, in social evaluation of others. "We are
compulsively driven to belong to groups or to create them as needed,
which are variously nested, or overlapping, and in addition ranging
from very large to very small" (Note
here the analogy of social networks in electronic media. And, most
important—perhaps it is these shifting borders and embeddings of social
groups that give our minds the most powerful analogue for the
spontaneous syntax of frame theory—JAGL). Competition and
belief in the superiority of our own group. Teaching evolution and
prehistory: "Students will be taught prehistory as well as conventional
history, and the whole properly presented as the living world's
greatest epic." (25). Wilson advocates ecological realism and
responsibility: "It is folly to think of this planet as a way
station to a better world. Equally, Earth would be unsustainable if
converted into a literal, human-engineered spaceship." (An argument against the lessons on mankind's survival being taught in such movies as Interstellar.—JAGL). "Human
existence may be simpler than we thought. There is no predestination,
no unfathomed mystery of life" (26). "What counts for long-term
survival is intelligent self-understanding, based upon a greater
independence of thought than that tolerated today even in our most
advanced democratic societies." (Wilson seems to be thinking of religion-ridden USA.—JAGL).
3. Evolution and Our Inner Conflict. Human
beings, inherently good or inherently bad? "Each of us is inherently
conflicted. Team player or whistle-blower? Charitable donation or
personal certificates of deposit? Admitted traffic violation or
denial?" (27) "We are all genetic chimeras, at once saints and
sinners, champions of truth and hypocrites"—because of our evolutionary
history (28). Source of the mystery: "The leading candidate is
multilevel selection, by which hereditary social behavior improves the
competitive ability not just of individuals within groups but among
groups as a whole" 828). Genes promoting group behavior have been
selected by natural selection, we tend to belong to groups and to
assume group behavior. Development of group sociality starting from
competing individuals; dynamics of competing altruism and selfishness:
"a conflict ensued between individual-level seleection, with
individuals competing with other individuals in the same group, on the
one side, and group-level selection, with competition among groups, on
the other" (33); "Within grups selfish individuals beat altruistic
individuals, but groups of altruists beat groups of selfish
individuals. Or, risking oversimplification, individual selection
promoted sin, while group selection promoted virtue" (33). An inherent
conflict, which "might be the only way in the entire Universe that
human-level intelligence and social organization can evolve." We should
understand that this is the source of human creativity.
II. The Unity of Knowledge
"Although the two great branches of learning, science and the
humanities, are radically different in the way they describe our
species, they have risen from the same wellspring of creative thought."
(35).
4. The New Enlightenment.
Disappointment with the Enlightenment led to Romantic subjectivism, and
"For the next two centuries and to the present day, science and the
humanities went their own ways" (39). "Yet the Enlightenemnt was never
proved to be impossible. It was not dead. It was just stalled" (39).
"Studying the relation between science and the humanities should be at
the heart of liberal education everywhere, for students of science and
the humanities alike" (40). There has been an excessive emphasis on
specialization for academic success. But creativity is associated to
poetic thought, analogies, metaphors, curiosity. Anthropocentricity
sharpens social intelligence. "We are devoted to stories because that
is how the mind works—a never-ending wandering through past scenarios
and thorugh alternative scenarios of the future" (43). Science
specialises in the study and measurement of continua in every field,
"The exploration of continua allows humanity to measure the dimensions
of the reals cosmos, from the infinite ranges of size, distance, and
quantity, in which we and our little planet exist" (50). The
insights of the humanities are limited to our human perception, and
they must be placed within the context provided by science. And this
understanding will give new insights to the humanities to express our
existence in ways that further the Enlightenment.
5. The All-Importance of the Humanities. From
the point of view of aliens, the humanities would be our most specific
and unique kind of knowledge (the rest is objective science). "They are
the natural history of culture, and our most private and precious
heritage" (57). Soon humans will have the power to control their own
genome and future evolution. An unprecedented dilemma is created. "Now
we are talking about a problem best solved within the humanities, and
one more reason the humanities are all- important. While I'm at it, I
hereby cast a vote for existential conservatism, the preservation of
biological human nature as a sacred trust" (60).
6. The Driving Force of Social Evolution.
Paradoxical effects of natural selection in cooperative behaviour.
Selfishness benefits the individual but weakens the group and
eventually the individual too. Altruism damages the individual but
benefits the group. "The two levels of natural selection, individual
and group, illustrated by these extremes, are in opposition. They will
in time lead to either a balance of the opposing genes or an extinction
of one of the two kinds altogether. Their action is summarized in this
maxim: selfish members win within groups, but groups of altruists best
groups of selfish members." For inclusive fitness, the individual (not
the gene) is the unit of selection. But it is unrealistic. "The use of
the individual or the group as the unit of heredity, rather than the
gene, is an even more fundamental error" (64). Inclusive fitness has
been the dominant model to explain advanced social behaviour (from
J.B.S. Haldane and William D. Hamilton, in the form of kin selection).
"Also in 1964, Hamilton took the kinship principle one step further by
introducing the concept of inclusive fitness. (...) With inclusive
fitness the unit of selection had passed subtly from the gene to the
individual" (69). Wilson himself promoted the model, and "the
eloquent science journalist Richard Dawkins" popularized it in The Selfish Gene. By 2000,
It was a common practice for writers of
technical papers to acknowledge the truth of the theory, even if the
content of the data to be presented were only distantly relevant to
it. Academic careers had been built upon it by then, and
international prizes awarded.
Yet the theory of inclusive fitness was not just wrong, but fundamentally wrong. (70)
But through the system of peer review they hindered publication of
contrary evidence and opinions en leading journals (71). The theory was
a house of cards, risking collapse. "Pulling cards, however, was worth
the price to reputation. There existed in the air the promise of a
paradigm shift, a rare event in evolutionary biology" (72). Wilson,
together with Martin Nowak and Corina Tarnita, discredited inclusive
fitness in the cover article of Nature
(2010). Dawkins "responded with the indignant fervor of a true
believer" (73). But he could not refute the refutation. The argument is
summarized in the appendix. The driving force of human
sociality was different from that of social insects. "As brain size
more than doubled, the bands used intelligence based on vastly improved
memory. Where primitively social insects evolved division of labor with
narrow instincts that play upon categories of social organization in
each group, such as larvae and adults, nurses and foragers, the
earliest humans operated with variable instinct-driven behavior that
made use of detailed knowledge of each group member by all others"
(75). "The origin of the human condition is best explained by the
natural selection for social interaction (...). Social intelligence
enhanced by group selection made Homo sapiens the first fully dominant species in Earth's history" (75).
III. Other Worlds
"The meaning of human existence is best understood in perspective, by
comparing our species with other conceivable life-forms and, by
deduction, even those that might exist outside the Solar System."
7. Humanity lost in a pheromone world.
"The humanities treat the strange properties of human nature by taking
them as 'just is'" (79). But science must identify the causes of this
nature. Our species won "the grand lottery of evolution. The payout was
civilization based on symbolic language, and culture, and from these a
gargantuan power to extract the nonrenewable resources of the
planet—while cheerfully exterminating our fellow species" (80). But our
biological nature makes us perceive only a fraction of reality—our
olfactory reality is very limited. Other species communicate mainly
through pheromones, detected to an infinitesimal proportion. Pheromone
attacks in ants, chemical defenses in plants, etc. "In a nutshell, the
evolutionary innovations that made us dominant over the rest of life
also left us sensory cripples. (....) We cannot talk in the language of
pheromones, but it will be well to learn more about how other organisms
do it, in order better to save them and with them the majority part of
the environment on which we depend" (90-91).
8. The Superorganisms. Colonies
of ants are superorganisms, some more highly organized than others. We
can learn a lot from studying them, but nothing applicable to human
morality—a different kind of being. "The advanced superorganisms of
ants, bees, wasps, and termites have achieved something resembling
civilizations almost purely on the basis of instincts" (99). With
complexity also comes fragility, because of their connection to many
aspects of their environment. Human societies are not superorganisms,
because the labor division is based on the transmission of culture, and
human individuals are too selfish: "They will always revolt against
slavery: they will not be treated like worker ants" (101). (I
would argue that many societies of hierarchical human predators have
found the techniques to deal with that selfish and rebellious
potential, and keep the faces under the boots. —JAGL).
9. Why Microbes Rule the Galaxy. Potential
for life within a narrow "Goldilocks" limit. Versatility of microbes in
many ecosystems within that limit (e.g. SLIMEs (subterranean
lithoautotrophic microbial ecosystems) under the earth surface).
Extremophiles too, candidates to have analogous life forms on Mars,
Callisto, Europa, Titan or Ganymede. Finding extraterrestrial
life would tell us about the degree to which Earth and humans are
exceptional. "If, on the other hand, the code of extraterrestrials is
basically the same as that of native Earth organisms, it could suggest
(but not prove, not yet) that life everywhere can only originate with
one code, the same as in Earth's biological genesis" (108).
10. A portrait of E.T. The
extreme complexity and rarity of intelligence at the human level makes
it far more unlikely than the simple existence of extraterrestrial
life. "The final evolutionary steps prior to the human-level
singularity, that is, altruistic division of labor at a protected nest
site, has occurred on only twenty known occasions in the hisotry of
life. Three of the lines that reached this final preliminary level are
mammals, namely two species of African mole rats and Homo sapiens—the
latter a strange offshoot of African apes." (111). So, "intelligent
E.T.s are also likely to be both improbable and rare" (112). But,
guessing in an informed way: they would be land-dwellers, relatively
large animals, biologically audiovisual, with a distinct, big head
located up front, and with light to moderate jaws and teeth. They have
a very high social intelligence and a small number of "free locomotory
appendages, levered for maximum strength with stiff internal or
external exoskeletons composed by hinged segments (...) and with at
least one pair of which are terminated by digits with pulpy tips used
for sensitive touch and grasping" (116). They are moral (as a result of
natural selection at individual and especially group level). And they
may have found ways to extend their memory or to change their
biological makeup, but not drastically, just like we "will be
existential conservatives" (118). But there are likely no
extraterrestrial colonizations; the aliens would have to destroy all
native life in order to reconstruct a viable ecosystem for themselves.
It is more feasible to avoid planetary destruction, given the advanced
technology needed. "There live among us today space enthusiasts who
believe humanity can emigrate to another planet after using up this
one. They should heed what I believe is a universal principle, for us
and for all E.T.s: there exists only one habitable planet, and hence
only one chance at immortality for the species" (121-22).
11. The Collapse of Biodiversity.
Even as we discover more species, extinction goes on at an alarming
rate as the result of our action—some call this the Anthropocene.
Taxonomy and the investigation of biodiversity: an important activity.
Identifying 'keystone' species, those on which the life of an ecosystem
depends. "The human impact on biodiversity, to put the matter as
briefly as possible, is an attack on ourselves" (127). HIPPO: Habitat
loss, Invasive species, Pollution, Population growth, Overharvesting.
Conservationism has real effects, but it is too limited. "The remainder
of the century will be a bottleneck of growing human impact on the
environment and diminishment of biodiversity" (131). We are
responsible, we understand the problem, and we have moral values.
"Might we now extend the same concern to the living world that gave us
birth?" (132).
IV. Idols of the Mind
"Humanity's intellectual frailties identified by Francis Bacon, in one
of the principal achievements of the first Enlightenment, can now be
redefined by scientific explanation."
12. Instinct. The human mind
originated as, and remains, "an instrument of survival that employs
both reason and emotion" (135)—not an instrument of pure reason or
emotional fulfillment. "The particular conglomerate of reason and
emotion we call human nature was just one of many conceivable outcomes"
(136). Our self-image is biased, as Bacon showed. E.g. extremes of
human nature as entirely cultural and constructed, vs. extreme of
genetic determination. "Both views, it turns out, are half wrong and
half correct, at least in extremity. The paradox created, often
described as the nature-versus-nurture controversy, can be solved by
applying the modern concept of human instinct, as follows" (137).
Instincts in humans exist, but they are flexible, "What is inherited is
the likelihood of learning one or a few alternative behaviors out of
many possible. The strongest among the biased behaviors are shared
across all cultures, even when they seem irrational and there are
plenty of opportunities to make other choices" (139). E.g. a bias
toward phobia for snakes (as against the more dangerous
automobiles). The intensity of biases is a product of evolution
by natural selection. "For example, human beings are born gossips. We
love the life stories of other people, and cannot be sated with too
much such detail. Gossip is the means by which we learn and shape our
social network. We devour novels and drama. But we have little or no
interest in the life stories of animals—unless they are linked in some
way to human stories" (142). "What we call human nature is the whole of
our emotions and the preparedness in learning over which those emotions
preside. Some writers have tried to deconstruct human nature into
nonexistence. But it is real, tangible, and a process that exissts in
the structures of the brain. Decades of research have discovered that
nature is not the genes that prescribe the emotions and learning
preparedness. It is not the cultural universals, which are its ultimate
product. Human nature is the ensemble of hereditary regularities in
mental development that bias cultural evolution in one direction as
opposed to others and thus connect genes to culture in the brain of
every person." (143) E.g. a bias towards a kind of habitat (gardens,
etc.)—we have some innate propensities.
13. Religion. "The brain was
made for religion and religion for the human brain. In every second fof
the believer's conscious life religious belief plays multiple, mostly
nurturing roles. All the followers are unified into a vastly extended
family, a metaphorical band of brothers and sisters, reliable, obedient
to one supreme law, and guaranteed immortality as the benefit of
membership." (149). Priests: "They sacralize the basic tenets of civil
and moral law, comfort the afflicted, and take care of the despreately
poor. Inspired by their example, followers strive to be righteous in
the sight of man and Go. The churches over which they preside are
centers of community life." (150) "The great religions are also,
and tragically, sources of ceseless and unnecessary suffering. They are
impediments to the grasp of reality needed to solve most social
problems in the real world. Teir exquisitely human flaw is tribalism."
(150). Need for memebership in a group. Religious groups defined by
their creation story and by privileging its own members. "Faith is
biologically understandable as a Darwinian device for survival and
increased reproduction. It is forged by the success of the tribe, the
tribe is united by it when competing with other tribes", etc. (151-2).
"For ages no tribe vould survive unless the meaning of its existence
was defined by a creation story. The price of the loss of faith was a
hemorrhage of commitment, a weakening nad dissipation of common
purpose." (152-3). Religion fosters tribalism: "Faith is the one thing
that makes otherwise good people do bad things" (154); "faith has
hijacked religious spirituality" (155). Intellectual compromisers face
Kierkegaard's dilemma of the Absolute Paradox, the intellectual
inconsistency of a personal God. "As Carl Jung once said, some problems
can never be solved, only outgrown. (...) The best way to live in this
real world is to free ourselves of demons and tribal gods." (158).
14. Free will. "I don't
believe it is too harsh to say that the history of philsoophy when
boiled down consists mostly of failed models of the brain" (161).
Project of neuroscience (the Brain Activity Map) to connect all
processes of thought to a physical base. It should be feasible to study
the emergence and nature of consciousness in a scientific way, as it is
the result of evolution. "The second point of entry into the realm of
consciousness and free will is the identification of emergent
phenomena—entities and processes that come into existence only with the
joining of preexisting entities and processes. They will be found, if
the results of current research are indicative, in the linkage and
synchronized activity of various parts of both the sensory system and
the brain." (165). The nervous system can be conceived as a
superorganism, analogy with termites. Selective nature of human
perception, we are aware of a small part of the space-time and energy
fields in which we exist. Our perception allows us to see and know the
events that matter for our survival. Another elemnto for our
understanding of decision and consciousness is our current
understanding of "the human necessity for confabulation. Our minds
consist of storytelling." (167). Stories as a means to organize and use
information, applying past stories—"Then we look forward to create—not
just to recall this time—multiple competing senarios. They are weighted
against one another by the suppressing or intensifying effect imposed
by aroused emotional centers. A choice is made in the unconscious
centers of the brain, it turns out from recent studies, several seconds
before the decision arrives in the conscious part." (167). (Conscious
awareness is then in part an emergent result of these competing
scenarios, and a way to manage them through increased attention. An
important issue here—Wilson proposes a narrative theory of
consciousness, in which fiction and possible stories play an
all-important role for decision-making and generate our impression of
freedom—JAGL). "Conscious mental life is built entirely from
confabulation. It is a constant review of stories experienced in the
past and competing stories invented for the future. By necessity most
conform to the present real world as best it can be processe by our
rather paltry senes. Memories of past episodes are repeated for
pleasure, for reharsal, for planning, or for various combinations of
the three. Some of the memories are altered into abstractions and
metaphors, the higher generic units that increase the speed and
effectiveness of the conscious process. // Most ciionscious
activity contains elements of social interactions. We are fascinated by
the histories and emotional responses of others. We play games, both
imaginary and real, based on the reading of intention and probable
response" (168). (And all this might be related to our account of the symbolic-interactional theatre of interiority—JAGL). "The
self cannot exist as a paranormal being living on its own within the
brain. It is instead the central dramatic character of the confabulated
scenarios. In these stories it is always on center stage, if not as
participant then as observer and commentator, because that is where all
of the sensory information arrives and is integrated. The stories that
compose the conscious mind cannot be taken away from the mind's
physical neurobiological system, which serves as script writer,
director, and cast combined. The self, despite the illusion of its
independence created in the scenarios, is part of the anatomy and
physiology of the body" (169). That does not mean it can be fully
analyzed or reconstructed; so we can believe in the illusion of free
will. "And that is a very fortunate Darwinian circumstance. Confidence
in free will is biologically adaptive. Without it the conscious mind,
at best a fragile dark window on the real world, would be cursed by
fatalism." So, free will exists "if not in ultimate reality then at
least in the operational sense necessary for sanity and thereby for the
perpetuation of the species." (170).
V. A Human Future.
"In the technoscientific age, freedom has acquired a new meaning. Like
an adult emerging from childhood, we have a vastly wider range of
choices but also a comparably larger number of risks and
responsibilities."
15. Alone and Free in the Universe. "What
does the story of our species tell us? By this I mean the narrative
made visible by sicnece, not the archaic version soaked in religion and
ideology. I believe the evidence is massive enough and clear enough to
tell us this much. We were created not by a supernatural intelligence
but by chance and necessity as one species out of millioins of species
in Earth's biosphere. Hope and wish for otherwise as we will, there is
no evidence of an external grace shining down upon us, no demonstrable
destiny or purpose assigned us, no second life vouchsafed us for the
end of the present one. We are, it seems, completely alone. And that in
my opinion is a very good thing. It menas we are completely free. As a
result we can more easiy diagnose the etiology of the irrational
beliefs that so unjustifiably divide us. Laid before us are new options
scarcely dreamed of in other ages. They empower s to address with more
confidence the greatest goal of all time, the unity of the human race.
The prerequisite for attaining the goal is an
accurate self-understanding. So, what is the meaning of the human
existence? I've suggested that it is the epic of the species, begun in
biological evolution and prehistory, passed into recorded history, and
urgently now, day by day, faster and faster into the indefinite future,
it is also what we will choose to become" (174). "The self-contained
worldview of the humanities described the human condition—but not why it is the one thing and not another. The scientific worldview is vastly larger. It encompasses the meaning of human existence—the
general principles of the human condition, where the species fits in
the Universe, and why it exists in the first place" (174). Can we
accomplish the goal of achieving a harmonious, paradisal existence in
our biosphere environment? "We can plausibly accomplish that goal, at
least be well on the way, by the end of the present century. The
problem holding everything up thus far is that Homo sapiens
is an innately dysfunctional species" (176)—hampered by the Paleolithic
Curse. "And it is still taboo to bring up population policies aiming
for an optimum people density, geographic distribution, and age
distribution. The idea sounds 'fascist', and in any case can be
deferred for another generation or two—we hop" (177). "Scientists who
might contribute to a more realistic worldview are especially
disappointing. Largely yeomen, they are intellectual dwarves content to
stay within the narrow specialties for which they were trained and are
paid" (178). A dysfunctional element in the human makeup: "Selfish
activity within the group provides competitive advantage but is
commonly destructive to the group as a whole. Working in the opposite
direction from individual-level selection is group selection—group
versus group. When an individual is cooperative and altruistic, this
reduces his advantage in competition to a comparable degree with other
members but increases the survival and reproduction rate of the group
as a whole. In a nutshell, individual selection favors what we call sin
and group selection favors virtue. The result is the internal conflict
of conscience that afflicts all but psychopaths" (179)."The products of
the opposing two vectors in natural seletion are hardwired in our
emotions and reasoning, and cannot be erased. Internal conflict is not
a personal irregularity but a timeless human quality. No such conflict
exists or can exist in an eagle, fox, or spider, for example, whose
traits were born solely of individual selection, or a worker ant, whose
social traits were shaped entirely by group selection" (179). There is
a resulting instability of the human mind: "They created a mind that is
continuously and kaleidoscopically shifting in mood—variously proud,
aggressive, competitive, angry, vengeful, venal, treacherous, curious,
adventurous, tribal, brave, humble, patriotic, empathetic, and loving.
All normal humans are noble and ignoble, often in close alternation,
sometimes simultaneously" (180). "We must learn to behave, but let us
never even think of domesticating human nature" (180). Destructive
traits of social life as parasites of the mind, they must be kept
within tolerable bounds. E.g. tribal religions should be subject to
historical and critical scrutiny; Wilson calls disingenuously for
debates among leaders to defend their supernatural beliefs in a
rational way. (But surely the point is to avoid such rational debate! —JAGL).
"It would be far from irrational in today's better-informed wolrd to
reverse the practice and charge with blasphemy any religious or
political leader who claims to speak with or on behalf of God"; ""It
might eventually be possible to hold seminars on the historical Jesus
in evangelical churches, and even to publish images of Muhammad without
risking death" (182). Pro rationl scrutiny on beliefs, politics,
evolution, etc. Wilson opposes the social prestige of faith: "Faith is
the evidence given of a person's submission to a particular god, ane
even then not to the deity directly but to other humans who claim to
represent the god" (184). Cost of religious enmity to evolutionism:
"Evolution is a fundamental process of the Universe, not just in living
organisms but everywhere, at every level. Its analysis is vital to
biology, including medicine, microbiology, and agronomy. Furthermore,
psychology, anthropology, and even the history of religion itself make
no sense without evolution" (184)—vs. Creatioinists. The force behind
blind faith is evolution: "The welfare of the group and defense of its
territory is biological, not supernatural in origin" (185). Another
misconception: "the belief that the two great branches of
learning—science and the humanities—are intellectually independent of
each other. And more, the farther apart they are kept, the better"
(185). Scientific knowledge will become unified, but the humanities
will continue to grow and diversify. (Actually
both will grow and diversify and also be unified; consilience also
takes place within the humanities, as Wilson well knows—JAGL).
"Although the details of the creative arts are potentially infinite,
the archetypes and instinct they are designed to exemplify are in
reality very few" (186). "Science and the humanities, it is true, are
fundamentally different from each other in what they say and do. But
they are complementary to each other in origin, and they arise from the
same creative processes in the human brain. If the heuristic and
analytic power of science can be joined with the introspective
creativity of the humanities, human existence will rise to an
infinitely more productive and interesting meaning" (187).
(Yes, but... perhaps this enlightened view of mankind is not for
everyone. Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise. And most
people make do with simpler, more simplistic and proactive, shorthand
accounts of human existence and purposes. That's what religion is for,
in part. And just as there are individuals who choose to believe
blindly, no matter the contrary evidence, there will be whole groups,
nations and civilizations, which will choose, to the end, to hold on to
their belief as identity glue. And who will use that as a lever in
group competition, a competition which will favour, if we have to
believe Wilson, the groups made up of altruists driven by collective
ideals, not groups of individualists. The Enlightenment had better
become a collective ideal, soon.—JAGL).
____
Appendix: An argument for the limitations of inclusive fitness, summarizing "Limitations of Inclusive Fitness" by Wilson et al, in PNAS 110.50 (2013)—a mathematical argument.
"It is immediately obvious that the additivity assumption which is
essential for the concept of inclusive fitness need not hold in
general. (...) It is clear that in general fitness effefts cannot be
assumed to be additive" (192-3). Many biologists signed a manifesto in
opposition to this, holding that "inclusive fitness is as general as
the genetical theory of natural selection itself."But this assumption
"rests on an alternative approach, which deals with the additivity
problem in retrospect. In this approach, the outcome of natural
selection must already be known or specified at the outset, and the
objective is to find additive costs and benefits that would have
yielded this outcome—regardelss of whether they correspond to actual
biological interactions" (194). (As
I see it, Wilson is accusing the inclusive fitness theory of resting on
hindsight bias, or of articulating prophecies after the facts are
known). But the "Regression Method Does Not Yield Predictions". "We
now evaluate the various claims made regarding the regression method,
starting with the claim that it predicts the direction of selection.
This claim cannot be true, because the allele frequency change over the
considered time interval is specified at the outset. The 'prediction'
merely recapitulates what is already known, such that the sign of BR-C [Benefit . Regression - Cost] agrees with the predetermined outcome" (195)—(So, a case of "foregone conclusions" in the method—JAGL). The "Regression Method Does Not Yield Causal Explanations"
(196). Hanger-on traits, supposedly leading individuals to interact
with individual of high fitness, cannot be understood as "cooperative"
traits, "However, of course, this gets causality backward—the high
fitness causes the interaction, not the other way around" (197).
Without additional assumptions, the regression methods explains
nothing, in the scientific sense. "There Is No Universal Design Principle" (199).
"Because experiments have shown that finess effects in real biological
populations are nonadditive, these results cannot be expected to hold
in general" (200). Models which are explanatory must take into account
special assumptions and make them explicit. "Having realized the
limitations of inclusive fitness, sociobiology now has the possibility
to move forward. We encourage the develoopment of realistic models
grounded in a firm unserstanding of natural history. With the aid of
population genetics, evolutionary game theory, and new analytic
procedures to be developed, a strong and resilient sociobiological
theory can emerge" (202).
________
Note (JAGL): Richard Dawkins replies to E. O. Wilson (without naming him) in "This is my vision of 'Life'". But he does not address the mathematical argument nor the accusations of hindsight bias.
_____________
References:
Allen, B., M. A. Nowak, and E. O. Wilson. "Limitations of Inclusive
Fitness." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United
States of America 110 (2013): 20135–20139.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1317588110
2013
Dawkins, Richard. "This Is My Vision of 'Life': A Conversation with Richard Dawkins."
Text, video and audio. Introd. John Brockman. Edge 30 April 2015.*
http://edge.org/conversation/richard_dawkins-this-is-my-vision-of-life
2015
Wilson, E. O. The
Meaning of Human Existence. New York: Norton, 2014.
—oOo—
E.O. Wilson's The
Meaning of Human Existence— A Conspectus.