Wilson, Edward Osborne

Wilson, Edward Osborne,

1929–, American sociobiologist, b. Birmingham, Ala. Founder of sociobiologysociobiology,
controversial field that studies how natural selection, previously used only to explain the evolution of physical characteristics, shapes behavior in animals and humans.
..... Click the link for more information. , Wilson was educated at the Univ. of Alabama and Harvard. He joined the Harvard faculty in 1956, eventually becoming university professor (1994) and university research professor (1997, emeritus from 2002). His exhaustive study of ants and other social insects, on which he is the world's chief authority, led to his Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (1975), a controversial work on the genetic factors in human behavior in which Wilson argued that all human behavior, including altruismaltruism
, concept in philosophy and psychology that holds that the interests of others, rather than of the self, can motivate an individual. The term was invented in the 19th cent. by the French philosopher Auguste Comte, who devised it as the opposite of egoism.
..... Click the link for more information. , is genetically based and therefore "selfish." He later called for careful study of "gene-cultural co-evolution." Critics have called sociobiology a dangerously reductive determinism that could be used to defend notions of racial superiority and eugenicseugenics
, study of human genetics and of methods to improve the inherited characteristics, physical and mental, of the human race. Efforts to improve the human race through bettering housing facilities and other environmental conditions are known as euthenics.
..... Click the link for more information. ; others have defended Wilson's evidence and biological reasoning.

Wilson's On Human Nature (1978) won the Pulitzer Prize; Biophilia (1984) suggests that human attraction to other living things is innate; Consilience (1998) urges wider integration of the sciences; and The Creation (2006) pleads for a unified effort by secular and religious thinkers to save the earth's biodiversity. A long-time advocate of preserving biodiversity, he and Robert H. MacArthur wrote The Theory of Island Biogeography (1967), which examined and sought to explain how isolated natural communities acquire and lose species; the work had significant negative implications for attempts to preserve species and environments in areas of limited extent. Other books by Wilson are Insect Societies (1971), The Diversity of Life (1992), The Ants, with Bert Hölldobler (1990; Pulitzer Prize), The Future of Life (2002), The Superorganism, also with Hölldobler (2008), The Social Conquest of Earth (2012), Anthill (2010, a novel), The Meaning of Human Existence (2014), A Window on Eternity (2014), on the destruction and rebirth of Mozambique's Gorongosa National Park, Half-Earth: Our Planet's Fight for Life (2016), a call to stem species extinction by creating interconnected development-free zones on half the earth's surface, and The Origins of Creativity (2017) is a plea for a closer relationship between science and the humanities. Letters to a Young Scientist (2013) celebrates the devoted scientific life.

Bibliography

See his autobiography (1994).

单词	wilson, edward osborne
释义	DictionarySeeWilson Wilson, Edward Osborne Wilson, Edward Osborne, 1929–, American sociobiologist, b. Birmingham, Ala. Founder of sociobiologysociobiology, controversial field that studies how natural selection, previously used only to explain the evolution of physical characteristics, shapes behavior in animals and humans. ..... Click the link for more information. , Wilson was educated at the Univ. of Alabama and Harvard. He joined the Harvard faculty in 1956, eventually becoming university professor (1994) and university research professor (1997, emeritus from 2002). His exhaustive study of ants and other social insects, on which he is the world's chief authority, led to his Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (1975), a controversial work on the genetic factors in human behavior in which Wilson argued that all human behavior, including altruismaltruism , concept in philosophy and psychology that holds that the interests of others, rather than of the self, can motivate an individual. The term was invented in the 19th cent. by the French philosopher Auguste Comte, who devised it as the opposite of egoism. ..... Click the link for more information. , is genetically based and therefore "selfish." He later called for careful study of "gene-cultural co-evolution." Critics have called sociobiology a dangerously reductive determinism that could be used to defend notions of racial superiority and eugenicseugenics , study of human genetics and of methods to improve the inherited characteristics, physical and mental, of the human race. Efforts to improve the human race through bettering housing facilities and other environmental conditions are known as euthenics. ..... Click the link for more information. ; others have defended Wilson's evidence and biological reasoning. Wilson's On Human Nature (1978) won the Pulitzer Prize; Biophilia (1984) suggests that human attraction to other living things is innate; Consilience (1998) urges wider integration of the sciences; and The Creation (2006) pleads for a unified effort by secular and religious thinkers to save the earth's biodiversity. A long-time advocate of preserving biodiversity, he and Robert H. MacArthur wrote The Theory of Island Biogeography (1967), which examined and sought to explain how isolated natural communities acquire and lose species; the work had significant negative implications for attempts to preserve species and environments in areas of limited extent. Other books by Wilson are Insect Societies (1971), The Diversity of Life (1992), The Ants, with Bert Hölldobler (1990; Pulitzer Prize), The Future of Life (2002), The Superorganism, also with Hölldobler (2008), The Social Conquest of Earth (2012), Anthill (2010, a novel), The Meaning of Human Existence (2014), A Window on Eternity (2014), on the destruction and rebirth of Mozambique's Gorongosa National Park, Half-Earth: Our Planet's Fight for Life (2016), a call to stem species extinction by creating interconnected development-free zones on half the earth's surface, and The Origins of Creativity (2017) is a plea for a closer relationship between science and the humanities. Letters to a Young Scientist (2013) celebrates the devoted scientific life. Bibliography See his autobiography (1994).
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