E. O. Wilson, Atheist

Notes on the controversies of E. O. Wilson.

E. O. Wilson was one of our leading biologists and intellectuals, combining a scholarly career of love for the natural world (particularly ants) with a cultural voice of concern about what we as a species are doing to it. He was also a dedicated atheist, perched in his ivory tower at Harvard and tilting at various professional and cultural windmills. I feature below a long quote from one of his several magnum opuses, Sociobiology (1975). This was putatively a textbook by which he wanted to establish a new field within biology- the study of social structures and evolution. This was a time when molecular biology was ascendent, in his department and in biology broadly, and he wanted to push back and assert that truly important and relevant science was waiting to be done at higher levels of biology, indeed the highest level- that of whole societies. It is a vast tome, where he attempted to synthesize everything known in the field. But it met with significant resistance across the board, even though most of its propositions are now taken as a matter of course ... that our social instincts and structures are heavily biological, and have evolved just as our physical features have.

The enduring paradox of religion is that so much of its substance is demostrably false, yet it remains a driving force in all societies. Men would rather believe than know, have the void as purpose, as Nietzsche said, than be void of purpose. At the turn of the century Durkheim rejected the notion that such force could really be extracted from "a tissue of illusions." And since that time social scientists have sought the psychological Rosetta stone that might clarify the deeper truths of religious reasoning. In a penetrating analysis of this subject, Rappaport proposed that virtually all forms of sacred rites serve the purposes of communication. In addition to institutionalizing the moral values of the community, the ceremonies can offer information on the strength and wealth of the tribes and families. 

[ ... long section about potlatch and rite of passage trituals ...]

To sanctify a procedure of a statement is to certify it is beyond question and imply punishment for anyone who dares contradict it. So removed is the sacred from the profane in everyday life that simply to repeat it in the wrong circumstances is a transgression. This extreme form of certification, the heart of all religions, is granted to practices and dogmas that serve the most vital interests of the group. The individual is prepared by the savred rituals for supreme effort and self-sacrifice. Overwhelmed by shobboleths, special costumes, and the sacred dancing  and music so accurately keyed to his emotive centered he has a "religious expreience". He is ready to reassert allegiance to his tribe and family, perform charities, consecrate his life, leave for the hunt, join in battle, die for God and country, Deus vult was the rallying cry of the First Crusade. God wills it, but the summed Darwinian fitness of the tribe was the ultimate if unrecognized beneficiary.

It was Henri Bergson who first identified a second force leading to the formalization of morality and religion. The extreme plasticity of human social behavior is both a great strength and a real danger. If each family worked our rules of behavior on its own, the result would be an intolerable amount of tradition drift adn growing chaos. To counteract selfish behavior and the "dissolving power" of high intelligence, each society must codify itself. Within broad limits virtually any set of conventions works better than none at all. Because arbitrary codes work, organizations tend to be inefficient and marred by unneccessary inequities. As Rappaport succinctly expressed it, "Sanctification transforms the arbitrary into the necessary, and regulatory mechanisms which are arbitrary are likely to be sanctified." The process endenders criticism, and the more literate and self-conscious society's visionaries and revolutionaries set out to change the system. Reform meets repression, because to the extent that the rules have been sanctified and mythologized, the majority of the people regard them as beyond question, and disagreement is defined as blasphemy.

This leads us to the essentially biological question of the evolution of indoctrinability. Human beings are absurdly easy to indoctrinate- they seek it. If we assume for argument that indoctrinability evolves, at what level does natural selection take place? One extreme possibility is that the group is the unit of selection. When conformity becomes too weak, groups become extinct. In this version, selfish, individualistic members gain the upper hand and multiply at the expense of others. But their rising prevalence accelerates the vulnerability of the society and hastens its extinction. Societies containing higher frequencies of conformer genes replace those that disappear, thus raising the overall frequency of the genes in the metapopulation of societies. The spread of genes will occur more rapidly if the metapopulation (for example, a tribal complex) is simultaneously enlarging its range. Formal models of the process, presented in Chapter 5, show that if the rate of societal extinction is high enough relative to the intensity of counteracting individual selection, the altruistic genes can rise to moderately high levels. The genes might be of the kind that favors indoctrinability even at the expense of individuals who submit. For example, the willingness to risk death in batle can favor group survival at the expense of the genes that permitted the fatal military discipline. The group-selection hypothesis is sufficient to account for the evolution of indoctrinability.

The competing, individual-level hypothesis is equally sufficient. It states that the ability of individuals to conform permits them to enjoy the benefits of membership with a minimum of energy expenditure and risk. Although their selfish rivals may gain a momentary advantage, it is lost in the long run through ostracism and repression. The conformists perform altruistic acts, perhaps even to the extent of risking their lives, not because of self-denying genes selected at the group level but because the group is occasionally able to take advantage of the indoctrinability which on other occasions is favorable to the individual.

The two hypotheses are not mutually exclusive. Group and individual selection can be reinforcing. if war requires spartan virtues and eliminates some of the warriors, victory can more than adequately compensate the survivors in land, power and the opportunity to reproduce. The average individual will win the inclusive fitness game, making the game profitable, becuase the summed efforts of the participants give the average member a more than compensatory edge.  -Sociobiology, pp. 561-562

Well, you can imagine that this struck a nerve! Sociobiology was more an extended and speculative manifesto than a sober textbook of dry facts. It is a backward testament to Wilson's influence that today no one calls the field sociobiology- evolutionary psychology, biocultural evolution, cultural neuroscience ... anything but.

Yet the points still stand, from evolution to sociology and religion. Religion is dying in the West, but it is a very slow and agonizing death. The conservative clingers to religion play relentlessly to type, passing abortion restrictions and immigration bans, expressing precisely the tribal and patriarchial underpinnings that Wilson outlines above. Conservatives decry individualism and independent thought. The religious political party prides itself on discipline, meaning lack of independent thought and dedicated tribalism. In the current world battle between authoritariansm and democracy, the question is whether individualistic cultures can muster enough collective discipline to fight back against mortal threats, and on the other side, whether the sclerotic structures of authoritarianism (complete with a renascent national orthodox church) can muster enough intelligence and thoughfulness to make their discipline effective. Ukraine is telling us that it is at least an even fight.

The deeper question raised by Wilson was that of human evolution and group diversity. Do mental and social attibutes like indoctrinability, intelligence, adaptabilty, personality traits, etc. evolve, are they still evolving, and have they evolved differently in different populations? To put it most provocatively, is racism based on something true? The original pushback against Sociobiology revolved about this issue, from conventional people of the left (Stephen J Gould and Richard Lewontin, to mention only departmental colleagues). They essentially passed on the science, and maintained that the structure of our society, or any pluralistic society, depends on keeping a blind eye from such essentialism, maintaining instead that everyone is the same, has the same potential, and it would be a moral, if not political, crime to think otherwise.

Ants are highly social, and are genetically programmed in myriad ways to serve each other and the group, including the development of highly distinct physical castes specialized for distinct tasks. Does that have anything to do with us? E. O. Wilson sought to put the question on the table and create a new field of sociobiology to address it.

So here we are, in our modern progressive paradise, celebrating racial and all other identifiable forms of diversity while at the same time denying biological or mental diversity, while at the same time fostering a capitalistic system that is so brutally selective about exactly that latter diversity. It is a rather odd cultural circle to square, really. And it is all quite unneccessary. Suppose for the sake of argument that the fundmental point on which racism turns is true- that human groups differ genetically in psychological aspects. Due to the recency of human divergence out of Africa and from our ultimate progenitors there, any evolved diversity has to be slight, as is observed. Nevertheless, populations such as ethnic groups might vary somewhat (on the average) in their mental and cultural attributes, as they do in their physical ones. What then? Does that mean that tribalism and racism are justified? Each group would still have its internal diversity, range of character and talent. The fact is that people are still be best judged individually, not by collective stereotypes, whether those are wholly illusory, or founded on some kernel of statistical truth.

Taking the example of basketball, where black players are far over-represented relative to the general population, one would be, if we used racism as a blanket policy, faced with a situation where the NBA might bar whites entirely from playing, given their evident collective genetic deficiencies. Does that make any sense? Feelings of tribalism (while biologically rooted) are not justified through biology, whether the biology says we are all the same, or whether it says we are different in some averaged-out statistical sense. The two are, at least rationally, separate issues, and while their conflation is common, it is also wrong-headed. Nor are political and legal assertions of equality impaired either, being quite obviously not limited by real-world inequalities in wealth, education, talent, and countless other sources of diversity. Again, they are quite different concepts. As Darwin observed with great acuity, the physical and mental features of humans have been built upon those of our animal forebears, and have been evolving continuously up to today in ways that reflect pressures from our social and group environments as they do from our physical environments. Evolution did not stop when culture started. 

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