Dale Easley's Favorite Quotations

Dale Easley's Favorite Quotations

Wilson, Edward O.

Naturalist

Wilson, Edward O.

All my life I have placed great store in civility and good manners, practices I find scarce among the often hard-edged, badly socialized scientists with whom I associate. Tone of voice means a great deal to me in the course of debate. I try to remember to say, `With all due respect' or its equivalent at the start of a rebuttal, and mean it. I despise the arrogance and doting self-regard so frequently found among the very bright. [p.~25]

[Talking about G.E. Hutchinson, Yale professor who trained many of the best ecologists and population biologists with his students:] I asked several after they became my friends what `Hutch' did to inspire such enterprise in his disciples. The answer was always the same: nothing. He did nothing, except welcome into his office every graduate student who wished to see him, praise everything they did, and with insight and marginal scholarly digressions, find at least some merit in the most inchoate of research proposals. He soared above us sometimes, and at others he wandered alone in a distant terrain, lover of the surprising metaphor and the esoteric example. He resisted successfully the indignity of being completely understood. He encouraged his acolytes to launch their own voyages. It was pleasant, on the several occasions I lectured at Yale before Hutchinson's death in 1991, to encounter him and receive his benediction. Head bobbing slightly between hunched shoulders, a wise human Galapagos tortoise, he would murmur, Wonderful, Wilson, well done, very interesting. it would have been pleasant to stay near him, the kindly academic father I never knew. I came to realize that the overgenerous praise did not weaken the fiber of our character. Hutchinson's students criticized one another, and me as well, and that was enough to spare us from major folly most of the time. [p.~237]
As populations increase in density, those of many species are constrained by a growing resistance from one or more factors. Among these density-dependent responses are the rise in per capita mortality from predation and disease, the loss of fertility, a greater propensity to emigrate, and---aggression. Whether aggressive behavior originates at all during evolution depends on whether other density-dependent factors reliably intervene to control population growth. Even then the form it takes can vary, emerging as territorial defense, dominance hierarchies, or all-out physical attack and even cannibalism, depending on the circumstances in which population limits are attained. Thus aggression is a specialized response that evolves in some species and not others. Its occurrence can in principle be predicted from a knowledge of the environment and natural history of the species. [p.~315]

What made Hamilton's theory immediately attractive was that it helped to resolve the classic problem in evolutionary theory of how self-sacrifice can become a genetically fixed trait. It might seem on first thought---without considering kin selection---that selfishness must reign complete in the living world, and that cooperation can never appear except to enhance selfish ends. But no, if an altruistic act helps relatives, it increases the survival of genes that are identical with those of the altruist, just as the case of parents and offspring. The genes are identical because the altruist and its relative share a common ancestor. True, the corporeal self may die because of a selfless action, but the shared genes, including those that prescribe altruism, are actually benefited. The body may die, the the genes will flourish. In the enduring phrase of Richard Dawkins, social behavior rides upon the `selfish gene.' [p.~317]

You may be willing to risk your life for a brother, for example, but the most you are likely to give a third cousin is a piece of advice. [p.~318]

[Wilson quotes from one of his earlier articles:] `The worst thing that can happen, will happen,' I said, `is not energy depletion, economic collapse, limited nuclear war, or conquest by a totalitarian government. As terrible as these catastrophes would be for us, they can be repaired within a few generations. The one process ongoing in the 1980s that will take millions of years to correct is the loss of genetic and species diversity by the destruction of natural habitats. This is the folly our descendants are least likely to forgive us. [p~355]

Naturalist
Wilson, Edward O.
All my life I have placed great store in civility and good manners, practices I find scarce among the often hard-edged, badly socialized scientists with whom I associate. Tone of voice means a great deal to me in the course of debate. I try to remember to say, `With all due respect' or its equivalent at the start of a rebuttal, and mean it. I despise the arrogance and doting self-regard so frequently found among the very bright. [p.~25] [Talking about G.E. Hutchinson, Yale professor who trained many of the best ecologists and population biologists with his students:] I asked several after they became my friends what `Hutch' did to inspire such enterprise in his disciples. The answer was always the same: nothing. He did nothing, except welcome into his office every graduate student who wished to see him, praise everything they did, and with insight and marginal scholarly digressions, find at least some merit in the most inchoate of research proposals. He soared above us sometimes, and at others he wandered alone in a distant terrain, lover of the surprising metaphor and the esoteric example. He resisted successfully the indignity of being completely understood. He encouraged his acolytes to launch their own voyages. It was pleasant, on the several occasions I lectured at Yale before Hutchinson's death in 1991, to encounter him and receive his benediction. Head bobbing slightly between hunched shoulders, a wise human Galapagos tortoise, he would murmur, Wonderful, Wilson, well done, very interesting. it would have been pleasant to stay near him, the kindly academic father I never knew. I came to realize that the overgenerous praise did not weaken the fiber of our character. Hutchinson's students criticized one another, and me as well, and that was enough to spare us from major folly most of the time. [p.~237] As populations increase in density, those of many species are constrained by a growing resistance from one or more factors. Among these density-dependent responses are the rise in per capita mortality from predation and disease, the loss of fertility, a greater propensity to emigrate, and---aggression. Whether aggressive behavior originates at all during evolution depends on whether other density-dependent factors reliably intervene to control population growth. Even then the form it takes can vary, emerging as territorial defense, dominance hierarchies, or all-out physical attack and even cannibalism, depending on the circumstances in which population limits are attained. Thus aggression is a specialized response that evolves in some species and not others. Its occurrence can in principle be predicted from a knowledge of the environment and natural history of the species. [p.~315] What made Hamilton's theory immediately attractive was that it helped to resolve the classic problem in evolutionary theory of how self-sacrifice can become a genetically fixed trait. It might seem on first thought---without considering kin selection---that selfishness must reign complete in the living world, and that cooperation can never appear except to enhance selfish ends. But no, if an altruistic act helps relatives, it increases the survival of genes that are identical with those of the altruist, just as the case of parents and offspring. The genes are identical because the altruist and its relative share a common ancestor. True, the corporeal self may die because of a selfless action, but the shared genes, including those that prescribe altruism, are actually benefited. The body may die, the the genes will flourish. In the enduring phrase of Richard Dawkins, social behavior rides upon the `selfish gene.' [p.~317] You may be willing to risk your life for a brother, for example, but the most you are likely to give a third cousin is a piece of advice. [p.~318] [Wilson quotes from one of his earlier articles:] `The worst thing that can happen, will happen,' I said, `is not energy depletion, economic collapse, limited nuclear war, or conquest by a totalitarian government. As terrible as these catastrophes would be for us, they can be repaired within a few generations. The one process ongoing in the 1980s that will take millions of years to correct is the loss of genetic and species diversity by the destruction of natural habitats. This is the folly our descendants are least likely to forgive us. [p~355]

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