Harvard Book Store; WGBH Forum Network; Edward O. Wilson: Anthill

Walk. Thank you very much for joining us this evening and thanks as always to the Harvard bookstore for putting on these events. What a wonderful series. That's coming up. And Ed Wilson is a very special welcome to you. It's great to great to be here and congratulations on the publish and the publication of Anthill. Thank you. Coming up one of the great privileges I've had as an editor over the years has been the task of editing and I use that word laughably. Ed Wilson at Vanity Fair at The Atlantic Monthly and a long long ago at the Wilson Quarterly. E.O. Wilson is a literary scientist which is part of a grand tradition. Why is it that scientists so often write so well that goes back to Darwin and Galileo and I'll embarrass you if I keep mentioning names I'd like at some point though to come back to the just the idea of your writing and and and how you came to you know to be the kind of writer you are. But first a few words of introduction and biographical background. E.O. Wilson is a professor emeritus

at Harvard University and his his actual official former title is too long to read. He first came to prominent attention to public attention with his book sociobiology which argues for the biological basis of all social behavior in the course of his career. He has published some 30 or 40 30 40 books 30 books. Two of them won the Pulitzer Prize. He has taken on topics ranging from ants up to God or maybe from your perspective from ants down to God. His work has aroused immense controversy. He once had a pitcher of water poured over his head by a member of the audience at a public event. You know which I'm confident will not happen tonight. No. You Wilson's new book departs from his previous books in one large respect. It's a novel his first work of fiction.

And for a first novel I just learned it's actually crack. The New York Times bestseller list. For those of you who haven't read it yet you should know that it's a coming of age story about a boy down south in an area around a place called Lake not Gobbi Alabama. A boy named Ralph Cody who comes to know and love his small patch patch of local earth and especially the ants and goes on to become a scientist and a lawyer and become embroiled in environmental fights over development and preservation in the middle of the book. There's this magical novella about ants which is a narrative dramatic version of this boy's undergraduate thesis. And on top of that there's a love scene if you count the ants there is more than one love scene takes place takes place at Harvard. Exactly. So I have a few questions that I'd like to ask and we'll talk about a half an hour or so. And then we can throw the conversation open open to the audience and have about a half hour for

that. So let me start with a very very foundational question. I remember once years ago you're telling a story about how it was that you came to look at the insect world as opposed to other parts of the natural world. And I think it involved a fishing trip and an accident. Could you take us through that story. Yeah I'd be glad to. First I'd like a paid interlocutor here a complement maybe written in a dozen fan letters in my life. One of them was a young woman when he was on the Atlantic. So I'm honored that you have. And I remember I will tell you what it was either. Well I will tell you what it got on you. How did I come to work with and sick. Well you know I like to say that every kid has a bug period. I just never grew out of mine. But there was a reason why I didn't

go out of it and it turned out and I really never understood this until I was an adult that I would classify as such but I'm handicapped. I had Ginger White. I was fishing when I was a boy down on the Gulf Coast. And in fact I lost the vision in the sky. So I was one I from the age of seven on and when I decided growing up in the beautiful woodlands of southern Alabama in the panhandle of Florida I wanted to do that all my life I just wanted to stay outdoors all my life. I actually did what all young naturalists do. And that is why I started with bird and I soon discovered the worst bird watcher in the world. It has something to do with monocular vision. You know you really can't. EJ You can't do very well on spotting in following birds and somehow it just doesn't work. We

do happen to have in the audience one of the world's foremost burgers and wish real a real air of sorrow I hope he's sitting here Peter all. And would you identify your show where you stand up. PETER. Why Fred is always up there so you can't see him. Right. Peter you sat here with us. He's truly a great naturalist. And he went the bird route big time. Well I decided then that I would do something else and I have had very good vision in the eye remaining. And I discovered I could see fine detail. So I turned to the what I call the little things that run the earth. I started with butterflies. I had episodes with snakes frogs and that sort of thing. But I finally turned to things six legged things. And in time I

turned to those that are the most abundant on earth. And I started working on them seriously about when I was about 16 and before I went on to the University of Alabama I came from the University of Alabama by way of University of Tennessee never thinking I would head north. But the doors of opportunity opened for me here and I have been here at Harvard for 59 years work on the little things that run the earth. And they do run the earth especially ants because it turns out at least from figures we have in the Amazon and I think it's not far off from what is the rest of the world that ants make up three you know two thirds of the biomass of all the insects. You know if you wait all the go into a habitat you weigh all the ends and you weigh all the insects and

would make up to two thirds roughly and outweigh all of the vertebrates and localities. You know mammals birds and amphibians reptile 401. So this was a group that I couldn't miss. In fact everywhere I go Cullen anywhere I still look for ants and wherever you are you can find them and it's wonderful to rejoin them for brief periods of time in any part of the world. And that's what led me on then in the events but beyond that many aspects of evolutionary biology and social behavior and so on. Well since your book is in many respects about ants and also about human society and the links between the two of them. I want to ask you something about that there's that there's a

there's a moment in the book when this wonderful character Ralph Ralph Cody in some ways seems like a character out of Willa Cather. And so he's applying to college and he's an improbable applicant to college but he does get it but he writes a letter to the Admissions Dean and this is one of those you know those letters to an admissions dean that makes the admissions Deans day I think it's it's a very unusual letter. And and here's one paragraph from it. It tracks some of what you just had to say. Answer very important in the environment Ralph Cody writes I have read you weigh all the insects ants make up two thirds. They wait four times as much as all the birds mammals reptiles and amphibians put together. But as you go on to show in this book there there are other reasons why we should pay attention to ants. It's about the way they organize themselves and I wish you could talk a little bit about that. I think human beings have a bit of a love hate relationship with the way ants

organelle themselves. Let me add at this point that this is the end part as a novella in the middle it's called the Chronicle. And Chronicle and all this really is a mostly a southern novel about people and how they relate to one another and how they go over three generations going from the passage from the old south to the new style and the complications that are involved across class all across religious conflicts and so on. Well I enjoyed rebuilding all of that for my home town of Alabama of the state of Alabama and mobile. My home town but you know may I read the first the very brief prologue because it actually that's the best way to manage this to explain what I try to do with people and that's all together and the ecosystem has free elements of this book are

the art the people of this area. And there's distinctive traits. It's an insular place. Movil is a little backwater city and it's preserved traits that make it one of the few cities in America that have a soul and that's how I've I've just finished a history of it. And that's how I've described it because I can't stay away from it. But anyway this I think makes a point. Best if I wrote it. OK. This is a story about three parallel worlds which nevertheless exist in the same space and time they rise together they fall they rise again but in a cycle so different in magnitude that each is virtually invisible to the others. The smallest or the ants who build civilizations and the dirt their histories are epics that unfold on picnic grounds

their colonies are like those of humans are in perpetual conflict. War is a generic imperative of motion and indeed and so the most warlike of all creatures the colonies grow and struggle and sometimes they triumph over their neighbors then they die. Always. Human societies of the Second World. There are of course vast differences between ants and men but in fundamental ways their cycles are similar. There is something genetic about this convergence because of it. Ants are a metaphor for us and we for them. Homer might have written equally advanced and then Zeus has given us the fate of winding down our lives in painful wars from youth until we perish. Each of us thousands of times greater in space and time is the third of our worlds the biosphere the

totality of all life plastered like a membrane over all of Earth. The biosphere has its own epic cycles. Humanity. One of the countless species forming the biosphere can perturb it but we cannot leave it or destroy it without perishing ourselves. The cycles of the other species can be destroyed and the biosphere are corrupted. But for each careless step we take our species will ultimately pay an unwelcome price always. So that basically the message and introduces the three characters. So my question to what you've just read is those are themes in many ways that run through your entire body of work and the people in your book speak about them in their own characters and so on. What what made you turn after 30 books to fiction

and how much second guessing and how much of this is drawn from your own life. How much of you is in RAF Cody. I'd say the boyhood is close first novelist I think generally are expected to be autobiographical when they're writing you know. So I write that wrap up to the time you get to college closely parallels my life but falls under the spell of his mother's from the patrician a patrician immobile family but he falls under the spell of a wealthy somewhat Philistine uncle who is determined that Raphael Sims is named after the great admiral of Confederate Admiral Safary Semmes. Cody is going to be take his place you know as the male heir of the mobile Selmes.

And he doesn't think that Rafael is going to do this mucking around in the Piney Woods top wanting to be a Ranger So he gives him support to go out in the street. That mother is married to a redneck. That's called the tremendous problems anyway. So he promises young Rath a free ride to the university. He can get into and then any providing you also go to the law school Dermont. Uncle Cyrus has determined that Ralph is going to get that kind of background. He hopes it'll will bend him in the right direction. Well so Ralph is up me up to the childhood all the child you know childhood experiences and then deviates powerfully so that I was able to develop and study in and learned a lot on my own. So I used up my childhood.

And then I devoted a lot of them I use up a lot of my relatives. Are they still with life. Fortunately most of them are gone. But my Aunt Nellie is becomes she becomes. And Jessica she's the family genealogist and blabber mouth and so on and on so that when I've been asked are you going to write another novel especially about that part of the world. I say no. I used up all my relatives and that's basically the thrust of it in terms of connection to reality the real reality however and human the human story and I try to recreate the southern culture as it has made this transition through and partway out of racism into what it is today and what it's like today. Describe what it's like today.

But the real wisdom comes in a natural history I don't think any author has ever in a novel described the natural world as it really is in enough detail to bring it to life. And this is what we must do. I think increasingly in the future most novelists take their character through will they take them through the dark woods to the lighted cabin or they have them thrash their way and find their way outside of the out of the marsh where they discovered the body of the murdered person. CONAN I didn't know. You know it's just a dark woods just shift of the global cycle more or just this or that. No we are a biological species in a biological world and we really have got to start thinking of ourselves more realistically that way. That's all. Ralph He is a child of nature who understands that and cares deeply and he's a vulture and fashions his

own life accordingly to save a part of nature that leads him into actually tremendous conflict in the board room of the developing developer country a company that's about to destroy a priceless piece of old girl for it brings him into conflict with a radical right religious fanatics of that area. And so on. But the novel Why would I write a novel. Well because I thought I could. You know first but there's another reason and that is that that message that I just read in the prologue. I've tried in so many ways to get it across with nonfiction and different styles and lecturing. And finally it dawned on me that people respect nonfiction but they read no people want a story and they will read

novels. And this is one way to get to them. So this is what I call my Billy Sunday strategy and I've I've given you a long winded and not not at all in the thousand pound alligator. Well we'll come to that. But I'll tell you one thing if I'm rattling on too long you just remember you fell into the trap of interviewing a person who is both a Harvard professor and a southerner. That's what southerners are such what we do for a living or more aptly put. That's what we do on those hot summer nights out on the veranda sipping lemonade or sweet tea and you wake up here. The novel was another way to get the message across and do it our whole place so that it doesn't spoil the story. And this is I'm going to give you an imitation. I know I've done it. One reason a lecturer at Harvard so

bear up if you've already heard it this is Billy Sunday my imitation of this famous revenge evangelist of the 1920s trying to save souls and fight sin and he tries everything he can. He's going to throw everything he's got into fighting sin. So consider that I'm fighting extinction of species and ecosystem. OK. Billy Sunday. Ah hey. See. I hate that so much. I'm grown up bite it till I can't move my arm no more. And when I can't move my arm no more I'm going to bite it. And when I got no more teeth I'm going to gum it. That's coming up. So have you gotten have you got the novel bug now. Well what have you got to

be in your bonnet. That's probably the wrong metaphor for you. Well actually I often the metaphor affectionately. Wrote the I hate saying this in the presence of a representative here of my publisher but this is first only last I'm back to nonfiction. I'm going right back. OK. And what about the movie. Oh yeah. Well there's always a first for that. Well every novelist dreams of a movie. I thought maybe there might be one of these far out cinematographers of the kind who lurk around Harvard who would consider making a movie out of my biggest volume which is of five hundred seventy eight page monograph entitled.

Finally in the new world an analysis of mega diverse genus that. I've received no feelers. However I have been invited out to Sundance by Robert Redford a wonderful man. We spent two days getting acquainted and he's expressed an interest in a way that he expressed an interest in this and suggested he would like to consider it so. He's just now finished and I guess it will be in theaters before long. All his movie on the Lincoln's conspirator's. So I hope to hear from him. But there are others. We have other feelers from other but I think it would make an excellent movie and I if I sign for any of it. All I'm going to say is that Woody Allen will not play one of the games. Well there's a character here that you could play. What is a character here that you could play.

I said I hope you're saying Fred Norvell. Oh well. Tell me this. There's Fred Fred Norvell And then there's there's also Bill Needham. Oh yes. Now here's how Bill Needham is described in his life. No not live the age aside but he had the lean hawk like looks when expects to find in a veteran field biologist but almost never actually does. He spoke in a low carefully modulated voice and enjoyed pronouncing scientific names in the exact original Greek or Latin. His imperturbably calm measured manner heat a passion with. You could play that role maybe but I actually modeled it on friends of mine at Florida State University which is where Ralph Cody ends up ends up going and of course are old people that have been living down there including the one that

the the reporter or the journalist in there. Bill Robbins was modeled on. So they know who they are and you know I joke with him and I just say anything between that and do. Any resemblance of course. Complete coincidence complete coincidence. Actually none of them would suit me anyway. And I mentioned that the at the outset that I that I'd love to hear a little bit more just about writing how you learned to write. I'm guessing probably that there's a lot of childhood reading that is reflected somehow in this just stylistically. Who are the novelists that you admired. Was any were any of them in the back of your minds while you were writing. But if you could talk a little bit about that. Well I'll admit that I'm a John D. MacDonald.

I read novels occasionally but they're mainly novels. I read like the Jack Allbery series and Patrick O'Brien. I've read everything Patrick O'Brien ever wrote and everything. John D. MacDonald of southern Florida crime novels ever. But I read when I do that is to put me to bed. You know I read about 10 or 11. Not for any other purpose and I don't think they influenced me very much. But like all undergraduates I had my own my own not powerful transformative writers notably among would be Sinclair Lewis and his. And then of course in my age and my generation my college years that was for those of you who were not alive at that time. This

was I think between roughly between the Boxer Rebellion in China or in the Spanish-American War you know this was the early 50s late 40s and it was Philip Wylie. I love that man style. You know that's a natural teenage rebellion. He was he was a highly favored bestselling author at the time very intellectual but other writers who influenced me know I had too much time and too much concentration on scientific literature you know building doing research. And when I started writing this novel I have I have one of the best editors in America. That's what really helped me. His name is Robert Weil Gras Bob while doubled up in New York and he's been called by many one of the 10 best editors in America. And when

I repeated that in front of the president of W.W. Norton at last night's pen international guala the response I got back was 10 of them. And then I had to say well I heard that but I said if I if I wouldn't work with the other night if I knew them I had a really terrific guy. And and Bob Weil kept saying to me while I was doing that you know he said Ed you've got to read other novelists you've got to read Faulkner. You have to read Harper Lee and so on. And I said no I wanted you know win or lose stand or fall. I wanted my own style of writing you could go and do this you know I want to be completely me I didn't want to be influenced by any of them. So I will hereby declare I have never read a novel by a Southern author. I wrote a

Southern book without doing that. I once read a short story by Eudora Welty and thought it was well I thought it was a poor short story. And then just to tell a story I suddenly had my opportunity to meet Harper Lee and she apparently is a recluse of the same magnitude as J.D. Salinger. But since much of my work and in and around Mobile it's been down to do research but also for conservation work has focused on a magical area called the Red Hills. It's an unromantic name but it's this area of a deep ravine in the sides and bottoms of which are ice age trees and plants ice age by which I mean during the advance of the last glacier

or the northern Appalachian Flora and some of the fauna move south very slowly century by century in advance of the ice. And some of it stayed in deep cool things as it went. The ice that. And so this is an area unexplored by biologically for the most part. And of course like everything else almost everything else down there it's under threat from developers and loggers. That's the theme with the book to these priceless areas that are could go under. But for the conservation movement get strong enough right now that there's a conflict developing it's a raw part of the world in terms of a conflict between developers and and and the growing rapidly growing conservation movement. So I've been I've been working with the nature conservancy and other groups there to make sure that that red hills area somehow comes into private or at least

our public benevolent public ownership. And it turns out by coincidence so as Harper Lee Schulman you know that area is just over 50 miles from from Monroeville. Monroeville is where she stays that's where she was born. That's where Truman Capote was born. So when that was mentioned to her she said she'd like to get together with me. So everybody jaw dropped. You know when I get to see Mark really she's had a stroke. She's 84 and maybe she would come maybe she would not. And we gathered we had read a photo op would have been great. She didn't show. Then she said oh I'll join you for lunch later she said. The message didn't show. He said I'll join you at the Bledsoe plantation where we're having supper. Evening meal in the south is called SAR and the Bledsoe's plantation has a history. Forget it

anyway for the present owners invited us to have supper and with a small group we did and she didn't come but she sent a message by way of a friend of hers. Sorry she would not come. She gave no reason and her friend said Well you know she's has good days bad days and it always like that she always says she will come. And then often she does not. How did I get into this. I thought it was the last I was really but you know the real good Southern story. How. I came close but I didn't get to meet Harper Lee. Well I'm not going to ask about Gettysburg Arkansas. You think I would be part of this race.

Maybe they are so life like this in the book and mention this again Peter all my friends speaking and to be asked about the state of the ivory billed woodpecker by Peter rolled and the sort of like having Einstein asking you to explain relativity. But I see it's a personal question. OK Peter well Knowsley Arkansas ivory bill siding created a tremendous stir and then it fizzled out for reasons I won't go into now but it's apparently an honest mistake. And we thought well the end of the ivory bill. But no. Another group from Auburn University apparently apparently from Oregon also claimed that they had definitely seen the ivory bill in the Choctaw Hatchie river floodplain for us. And as you all know the Choctaw Hatchie is just east of the Perdido river and

west of the Apalachicola indiction that one. Runs across the panhandle of Florida and it's closed down bracketed on both side by doneness floodplain forest with Cypress just the kind of habitat ivory bills would be in. So this group has drawn my drawings. They said it was the ivory bill. They look good. They made a recording which I've heard and the recording says B B B B B. I think that's unique to the ivory bill is it not for that region. And anyway they have drawings of whole photographs of holes it could be an ivory bill. So they came to me and they said would you sponsor an article that we were right on the basis of that evidence. I don't think I ever told you the story Peter. No you didn't. Well it's interesting you know be a sponsor in the scientific journal

because we think we really have a solid. And my answer was No. Because after Arkansas after the Arkansas debacle I mean people are going to have to have good videography and you know solid irrefutable evidence. They agreed that they should just wait. Now this is summer. Wait until winter because there are enough deciduous trees as the leaves will fall. You can see deeper into the forest. That was two years ago winter passed the word. Now another winter passed nowhere. Peter tell us is the ivory billed woodpecker extinct. What do you know. Well you ask we have you. Thanks for telling me that I thought that would be the answer. I remember the one time I met Roger Tory Peterson you were a good friend I'm sure.

And I said this was years ago before he died. I said is the ivory bill. What's the status of the ivory bill. He is when we're gone. Too bad. At any rate it does enter in that young raff who as that they can be tracked has pretty good forest in the bloodstream that goes into the chuck of the all the other tactics. What's a very realistically described as he dreams some day of seeing an ivory bill. So it's worth keeping the dream alive. You know that's right. Well I can explain that to you precisely. I have not only read Walden but many times and in the course of writing a book called The Future of life I opened the book with a letter to the

wall to Henry David Thoreau and I pronounce it I pronounce it so. Because that's the insiders way of pronouncing the family pronounce it apparently. And I spent lots of time there and was a thorough society so this is of that's one book I've read any case Sorrell describes how H-how outside his cabin if you can I call it a cabin a shack you know. It was pretty humble. He saw a war going on and there were red hands and fight black ants and battle and he said it was. And they were killing each other. It was of a ferocity he said that made the recent battles over in Concord and Lexington look like mere skirmishes. And he wondered what was going on in this war. What was going on.

Ironically because he was one of the great abolitionist himself was anti-slavery red ants were the slave makers and the black hands were the species they victimized. That is what you could call it almost like domestic animal because they different species and all summer long. If you watch for it you will see slave rage going on. There are a number of species of slaves making ants here in New England. And I've actually done a lot of research on them and also work out the pheromone language the slave makers used to communicate one another with one another during their raids on them on the fence that they attacked. And furthermore the I discovered which I call the propaganda substances of the Zandt's release alarm pheromones that alarm the other the other species to which they are immune.

It's sort of like attacking a readout before with extremely loud noise the way we captured Noriega. But like most Americans were deaf to that kind of music. So you know that's the answer to that. It's an interesting bit of natural history I'm glad you brought it up. Yeah. The question has to do with Raf's father who is both a sympathetic and a not sympathetic character. He has rough edges but he also has admirable qualities you know. And the question has to do with where does he come from. You know he comes. He's a redneck and in the history of just finished I takes you know history of the area I take some pleasure in working out the history of the redneck's where they came from. And I could spend the rest of the evening on the very favorite subject. These are the rednecks at the time of the civil war that is the all of the

people of the South were of three quarters of descended from people from the Celtic edge. So-call the more rebellious areas of the Scotch-Irish or Irish the Hebrides of Scotland and the highlands of parts of England the very areas that had been in rebellion pretty much against the crown for all that time and that in fact they arrived in that area through South Carolina and Tennessee in part because of the sudden Jean hundred's the British government encouraged them with the land grants to leave the British Isles and come and settle and so they came over and they were they brought these Celtic qualities with them. They were raw edge frontiersmen for the most part they were freeholders but some of them then got into the plantation business and began the great tragedy of slavery because that's how you made

big money during the cotton boom. And they had the qualities that most historians agree. I know you're not supposed to stereotype ethnic groups but you can do it safely on one of them all around me and the way they tend to be to stress or honor over law. They are very fiercely independent. They are quarrelsome. They believe in a code of honor. They are quick to challenge when they feel that they're insulted or code of honors is insulted. They are they believe highly in gallantry and bravery. They are reckless. They do not like people telling them what to do. They love guns and so on. And that's that's a better stereotype. In fact there's a tremendous amount of truth to it and

thus a rose red neck culture of the area. They were very well off until finally the the tragedy of slavery caught up with the South. It was it was a Greek tragedy it was inevitable once we went with that we started on that path then there could be only one solution. Churchill once referred to it as great history. The civil war that this was the noblest and most inevitable conflict of which we two that time have record and thusly went into the war. And when they did the cotton industry continued but it could only be continued by white and black becoming sharecroppers. They no longer could own slaves and they all had to work the land themselves and the sharecropper

system was cruel and debilitating and they produced a large population of rural whites who you find at the lowest point of their evolution depicted dramatically and painfully and let us now Praise Famous Men photographed by Walker Evans and James Algy's description. But many of them also went into the towns and cities. And as Rick Bragg of recent British Southern writer has brilliantly described it in his book The most they ever had. They have this combination of qualities which I have put into Raphael's sim Cody's father Ainslee Cotey which is inner nobility strong code of honor personal love with crudity and recklessness and love of guns. That

contrasts strongly with the more patrician Sims who had made their fortune before the Civil War and now occupied wealth and power in the city of Movil great. How are we doing. How is the human species doing or how is it with respect to what you do with the book and is right. And you know that that will give you an idea of how we're doing. Actually a ninth in the 1970s was a very bad time for the American intelligentsia and chattering class because at that time the social sciences sciences were pretty well dominated by view that the brain is a blank slate that this is a blank slate. And I won't go into it except to

say that this is in diametrical opposition to what the biologists were developing and cognitive psychologist as well at that time in the 70s and geneticist there were a whole range of already very substantial evidence that in fact there is a human nature and we knew many of the qualities of it. Some of spelled out in on human nature. And since that time of course we've now taken the subject to down to the level of human genetics to brain science to genetic past genetic program pathways and human behavior come to understand that the traits that make up human nature probably have an adaptive significance that dates back hundreds of thousands millions of years and that they represent predispositions not you know error. Unbelievable instincts as you would have in animals especially insect. So all of this has

evolved into and absorbed into parts of genetics brain science and also given rise to the subdiscipline of evolutionary psychology which is a spin off of sociobiology. I don't know if that's the answer to you. I think there may be a second part to the question which is is this. So the first part is just what was it that you were. What were the ideas that you were advancing. But as I remember conciliar us there's another part to it which has to do with well once we understand the implications of what makes us tick in a certain way. What does that tell us about the way we should organize ourselves as a society. I think that maybe the other part of the question is that and how are we doing on that. Well that's a good answer and so on for some reason. All there were people

intellectual Not many but who believe that. Just to talk about it was dangerous because it would give people ideas that maybe there are there were differences between sections that were different races and that you know. And that was it. I'm familiar with the ideological suppression of free speech and ideas. We spent a lot of time at the pen international gala last night listening to stories from Burma particularly focused on the repression of real ideas and how in China and the people who are now in prison because the regime didn't want to have certain ideas talked about. Well that's what happened to a substantial degree at that time. And I think all that long since forgotten and what was the question again.

Well yeah go on if if if we if we understand your ideas about how society. Oh yes of course. What are we to make of what the. Yeah I went on and wrote other books including consultants and developed the whole concept of the unification of disciplines on into the social sciences. I might add that the decision was made yesterday Incidentally the pen International is pre-eminently a literary organization. And but I attended a meeting yesterday when it was decided that there would be a pin up Prize for Science Friday. And that sort of help shows that you know we're opening up we're beginning to meet them. Now why should we know about these things. Well the same reason that a doctor should know something about human anatomy and physiology

before he prescribes medicine precisely the same. I mean if we have a structured brain and a propensity to behave in certain ways and you know we are almost absurdly irrational in our behavior. I like to say that our problem is due to the fact that we have Paleolithic emotions medieval institutions and gods like technology and it's extremely dangerous combination. So what we need to know is why we have these Paleolithic emotions why we cling to medieval institutions. And you know with absurd faithfulness tribalism is something we need to know why we are the way we are before we can begin to find a better life if we keep making it a war fair of idiology and religions

then we're really going to be in deep trouble because our technology really allows us to destroy not only each other but the whole world. And that's one reason that I keep coming back as long as I've got the pope here. This is a Southern Baptist pastor and you can have it for a few more minutes. I think that the distinction between an ant society and human society is very much that the ant colony is a super organism and to a substantial degree and I have a couple of colleagues I don't know if either is in this room but I don't see them yet. Martin Novak and. Korina turning to the zoo here. You know one of them here. Anyway we are working together now. They're mathematicians and we're working on a whole new approach to this which is putting more and more emphasis on an insect colony is a super organism which is essentially really the

queen in the case of the Hymenoptera Dansby term and speedin which is essentially the subject of natural selection. The object the target and all those workers showing how twisted behavior self-sacrifice for the colony are in effect an extension of her genetic material. Darwin first made that suggestion incidentally in the origin of species. And now we're beginning to drift back to that perception. But in a far more sophisticated way that is not true of human being human beings originated extremely complex societies in a very different way. And that is we kept our reproductive potential we kept our individuality but at the same time we developed strong propensities that

could be called a tribal instinct. We bond together quickly form groups and we and we have group versus group almost universal is a human trait. What piece of advice would you give to people who are in their teens who want to go into scientific work who want to go into environmental and conservation work. What's the most important thing that you would tell them. Yes look in case you haven't noticed there was increasing agreement among scientist including biologist even my proud colleagues in molecular and cell biology and biomedical research that we and biology are entering the age of synthesis meaning that we're going to be having to pay much more attention to complex systems the way all these elements that they've been sexting and identify are put together to create cell organisms. And beyond that

whole ecosystems we're now moving in that direction and there's going to be synthesis going on. We need broadly trained biologist who have in addition to a basic background in the sciences all pay attention to how you analyze complex systems. So that's something to keep in mind. This is going to be the century is going to be the age of biology. I mean it's preeminent already. It's going to be the age of the environment in which we settle down before we wreck the planet. Put them together and now you know what to do. Take Biology get a broad background. Become expert in one area but be prepared to move quickly with others and particularly in partnerships and research to one combination of problems and techniques to another and then realize that what you're doing is

absolutely crucial in saving the environment as it would also be if you went into medicine and did similar research to save people individually. And don't forget to write the novel. OK. Thank you very much. It's been a treat and a thrill.