FORBES, Sept. 21, 1998
Edward O. Wilson has come to the conclusion that economists don't know what
they are talking about. Forget your abstractions, he advises, and study how
ants operate.
Please pass the ants
By Dyan Machan
IN HIS LABORATORY OFFICE in the Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard
research professor Edward O. Wilson hands me a paper bowl filled with
roasted leafcutter ants. Native to Venezuela, the little morsels are the
size of bullets. This is to be our appetizer before heading off for lunch. I
recoil, but Wilson reassures me: "The fat around the ovaries makes the
abdomens quite tasty," he says, happily popping one in his mouth.
It tasted like a roasted soybean, only somehow more, well, insectlike.
Wilson, 69, knows his ants, but more than that, he has become one of today's
most influential scientists, one who's added philosophy to his discipline.
Starting with ants, which build great organizational structures, he moved
quite easily to studying humans, who build even more elaborate social
structures. Organizations, too.
He has written prolifically on both subjects. On Human Nature (Harvard
University Press, 1978) won the first of two Pulitzer prizes he would
receive. The Ants (Harvard University Press, 1990), written with Bert
Hölldobler, won the second.
In this age of specialization it is not uncommon for scientists to bury
themselves in their own little corner of the universe and stay there. What
caused Wilson to move up the scale from ants to Homo sapiens? "I was
intellectually ambitious," Wilson explains, as we walk across campus to the
Harvard University Faculty Club for the rest of our lunch. "It's a human
trait to want to see how far one can go. There isn't a person we've passed
on this sidewalk who doesn't want to better their own lot."
In pushing our way upward, however, we humans are somewhat less nasty about
it than ants are, Wilson observes. "Ants are the most hostile warriors of
the animal kingdom," he says, his eyes sweeping the campus sidewalk as
though in search of a colony or two. "If ants had nuclear weapons, the world
would end in a week!"
Wilson's original work focused on how ants' social behavior is genetically
programmed and communicated through chemicals. In the end he concluded that
people are neither instinct machines nor all-purpose calculators, but
something in between. The implication that there is a genetic explanation
for much of human behavior infuriated a lot of social scientists and
particularly annoyed liberals who like to believe in human perfectibility.
Wasn't Wilson preaching genetic determinism, which could be misunderstood to
justify the racial theories of Hitler and the KKK? Freudians were furious,
too: So much for their argument that you can solve a lot of your problems by
sitting in a chair and pouring your dreams out to an analyst.
Wilson comes across as gentle and patient as a kindergarten teacher. Yet his
politically incorrect views led to noisy leftists demonstrating at Harvard
for his removal a few years ago. In the midst of the continuing controversy
following the publication of his book Sociobiology: The Modern Synthesis
(Harvard University Press, 1975), while he was addressing a large audience
at the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1978, a
bad-mannered protester dumped a pitcher of ice water on the professor's
head. So much for freedom of discourse.
"The liberal left was very strong in academia those days," Wilson says. The
Rousseauistic belief in human perfectibility, however, led to the Gulags,
the killing fields of Cambodia and Fidel Castro. Now that the world knows
all this, the left has quieted down a bit, and people like Wilson can speak
without being shouted down.
Thus his latest book, released this year, has been generally greeted warmly
and has been selling well. Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge (Knopf, $26)
deserves to be taken seriously.
It is an impassioned appeal for a reunion of hard science and the
humanities, for closing the chasm that has increasingly divided the two in
recent centuries. Wilson argues that the social sciences and the
humanities—from anthropology to art theory—can and should be grounded in the
principles of the natural sciences, especially biology. Consilience refers
to the joining of all those branches of knowledge at a fundamental level.
Wilson is almost scornful of modern economics, rooted as it is in
abstractions that take little or no account of human nature.
As we are seated in the elegant faculty club and take food from the buffet,
I ask him to explain what's wrong with economics.
"A large percentage of the Nobel laureates in economics live in cocoons," he
says, delaying the forkful of salad he is about eat. "They base their models
on a tidy world with a too-simple view of psychology. The usual assumption
is that people just want more of whatever it is. Admittedly, I'm an amateur
here, but the economists should break down to the next level of causation
that deals with what is human nature."
In place of their abstractions about demand and supply and marginal costs,
he says, economists need to deal with the epigenetic rules: the genetically
based neural wiring that predisposes animals and humans in certain ways.
Until they do, they won't have much luck in predicting economic events and
behavior, especially at the microeconomic level.
"It's like the early days of endocrinology—the study of the hormonal
system—which is utterly fundamental to understanding and curing a great many
diseases. At first just a few hormones were known. As science progressed, we
found we are absolutely charged with hormones that affect everything from
our daily cycle to our response to many diseases," Wilson says. Similarly,
there are building blocks underlying economic disciplines.
"But we didn't figure this out in endocrinology until a lot of empirical
research was done. I don't know what the rules are in economics, but it
disturbs me that no one is looking," he says, pressing his hands together. I
notice his hands are covered with small welts. He tells me he was bitten by
army ants he was classifying over the weekend. Wilson classifies ants the
way other people do crossword puzzles.
Getting back to economics: It bothers Wilson that economists automatically
conclude that in most cases higher prices lead to lower demand. "For
example, research has shown time and again that 80% to 90% of Americans
would pay more for protecting the environment. Your hard-liner, Geneva-based
economists would take that into account, but just barely," he says. In other
words, economists should realize that our genetic wiring may lead us to act
in ways that the current economic models cannot predict. "It may be that
people will deviate powerfully from these classical economic models if given
opportunities and choices with respect to the environment."
Now he's off on one of his favorite subjects: conservation of natural
environments and biodiversity. "There seems to be an epigenetic rule in
regard to an ideal environment. Research shows—not mine—that across humanity
people want their domicile located in an area of prominence—on a hill for
example, overlooking parkland and next to a body of water. Perhaps this
speaks of our African origins.
"Not long ago I was visiting a very wealthy man who was dubious about this
theory until I pointed out he lived in a penthouse apartment in New York
City overlooking a lake in Central Park. He had a balcony filled with potted
plants." Wilson smiles, pleased with the comparison: This guy was willing to
spend big bucks in ways that would be scarcely cost-efficient if he were a
purely economic man wanting maximum space for his money. The guy was
responding to his wiring, not to his calculator.
Because economists don't factor this in, he says, we are deprived of
choices. He mentions "civic egalitarianism." I raise my eyebrows
questioningly.
"Obviously, not everyone can get a seaside home on a bluff," he responds.
"Civic egalitarianism suggests that the government should buy more seaside
property and convert it into parks and other cultural and recreational
areas, taxing people to pay the cost. That way everybody, not just the rich
person, gets the nice view and cool breezes."
Hey! What is this professor? Is he a liberal after all? In fact, you can't
really classify him this way.
Plates are cleared, fruit arrives. Nibbling a strawberry, I probe his
politics a bit further. What does he think about the recent welfare reforms?
Does this show that human selfishness is wired in, that the well-off don't
want to help the less well-off?
"We were headed in a wrong direction," he answers. "The assumption, held
primarily by the left, was that the more prosperous the middle class became,
the more it would want to share. Of course, it turns out that people are
very different from that. They worked hard to be part of that prosperity and
took a dim view of what they thought was a shiftless underclass."
In short, people are inherently selfish? He counters that. "There is a
widespread human trait—not just among Americans—of a willingness to give a
helping hand, particularly to members of their own tribe," he says. You went
to Princeton, you give to Princeton. You are Catholic, you give to Catholic
charities, Jewish to Jewish charities. "People identify powerfully with
their tribe and take the greatest pleasure in contributing to tribal
welfare." However, when they are not members of your tribe, that generosity
shrinks considerably.
"Humans are very primal in the way they acquire and distribute power. Apes
don't sit around and vote."
This kind of wiring can be dangerous. It leads to intragroup generosity but
to intergroup hostility. "Ethnicity is a very dangerous phenomenon, not just
between societies but within them," he goes on. "To the extent that you have
multiple nationalities battling for their fair share, you inflame ethnic or
tribal rivalry and diminish what gets devoted to civic egalitarianism."
His conclusion seems to be that policymakers must take tribal loyalties into
consideration rather than just condemning them as racism.
Lunch is finished, but Wilson isn't finished talking. Good. I tag along as
he walks back to his office: Wilson in tennis shoes, me in heels. I notice
he walks carefully, trying not to step on the ants we see scurrying on the
sidewalk.
I ask: Considering the goods and the bads of tribal loyalties, is there an
ideal size to human organizations to which we are suited by ancient neural
wiring?
Wilson: "Humans are very primal in the way they acquire and distribute
power. Primates don't sit around and vote on how each can contribute to make
their community work at optimum levels, nor is it human nature. But there is
an ideal grouping size from monkeys on up to apes and humans that seems to
relate to the size of the brain. The larger the brain, the larger the group.
The ideal size for humans is about 150. Hunter-gatherer groups get up to
about that level before they split. One hundred and fifty is about the
number of people every person knows well; it doesn't matter if you live in
Namibia or Manhattan. By the way, that's about the size of a company in
military organizations."
Nearing the office, he goes on: "If you want to know how congressional
medals of honor are won—that is, where men have been virtually willing to
throw away their lives—it's usually at the level of the squad, or eight to
ten [men]. Soldiers don't charge a machine-gun nest because they care so
much about American democracy, but in support of their squad or buddies."
FORBES is a business magazine. What does this mean for business? Wilson: "As
a corporation grows, I would guess you would want squad-or company-sized
teams of people who know each other well and who feel the effort of the team
redounds to their own welfare.
"In any organization people are driven by a need for competition, and also
to cooperate. At a university nothing gets done—because you're loaded with
competition but there's little cooperation. Universities are not organized
to encourage both. There are rarely squad- or even company-sized bodies
within academic institutions. I think it was a former Yale president who
said, 'Scholars come to university to disagree.'"
My final question to this distinguished scholar: "Dr. Wilson, what can
humans learn from ants?"
Wilson looks skyward, takes a breath and with a telling smile says:
"Absolutely nothing! Humans are on their own!"
One can't do justice to the depth and breadth of his ideas in a lunchtime
conversation. Go buy the book and read it. There's more helpful mental
stimulation in it than you could ever find in many of the shoddy offerings
cramming bookstore shelves.
