Back at about the time Richard Dawkins was writing the ground-breaking book "The Selfish Gene" in Great Britain, Wilson was busy writing "On Human Nature".
By doing so, he sent shock waves through the sociology and anthropology communities of academia. He was hugely vilified for observing simple truths about our nature.
Today, his work is viewed rightfully as being as ground-breaking in his field as Dawkins' was in his.
Listen to this gentle genius and see if he is "evil"!
Sunday, September 09, 2007
E.O. Wilson - Grand Old Man of Sociobiology, er, "Evolutionary Psychology"!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Thanks for this.
I have just read Wilson's Conscilience and Pinker's The Blank Slater so I could really relate to this interview.
I thought The Blank Slate was one of the best books I've read. Highly insightful about work on human consciousness. I liked Wilson's Consilience a lot, but I absolutely loved On Human Nature which was, I take it, something of a bible (if you will!) to guys like Pinker. And I could see why. When you consider that really no one was saying what Wilson was back then (1978) and realize what a limb he went out on, and the ultimate accuracy of what he was talking about - astonishing in many ways. I have to read more by him. He's a special old guy.
Post a Comment