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Review by Michael Sims
Apparently Edward O. Wilson never rests. He is curator of entomology at Harvard's prestigious Museum of Comparative Zoology. He teaches. He seems to be involved in a dozen major projects at any time. He received his first Pulitzer, for On Human Nature, in the late 1970s. David Quammen's back-cover claim that Wilson is "the most brilliantly daring and influential of 20th-century biologists" is not hyperbole.
First and foremost, Wilson is an entomologist. After he and occasional collaborator Bert Holldöbler carried off another Pulitzer for their massive tribute to The Ants, they wrote the much smaller popular account Journey to the Ants. Wilson's studies of insect societies helped inspire some of his general observations about evolution, including our own.
In 1994, Wilson published a charming autobiography, Naturalist. That he chose such an old-fashioned label for himself is telling. He is no laboratory-bound theorist. His interests and experience range throughout the natural world and across the planet. Wilson published a previous collection of short pieces in 1984. Its title, Biophilia, he coined, defining the new term as "the innate tendency to focus on life and lifelike processes." He has spent his life doing that.
The new collection is as beautifully written as the first. Apparently the need to think clearly and express oneself lucidly is a rare job requirement, but a number of world-class scientists possess the trait. Wilson excels at it. His unadorned style quietly moves from expository to poetic, and he has a gift for the enlightening analogy.
At barely 200 pages, including a number of beautiful illustrations, In Search of Nature is Wilson's smallest book. Nevertheless, it addresses his usual huge topics -- the origins of cooperation and altruism, the nature of aggression, the roots of culture in biology. The bottom line of each of the 12 essays is the nature of our relationship with the world, and our place in it. That question's urgency can be summed up in the title of one of Wilson's essays: "Is Humanity Suicidal?"
Michael Sims is the author of Darwin's Orchestra which will be published next March by Henry Holt.
©1996, ProMotion, inc.
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