Meeting E. O. Wilson & Clinical Sociobiology

A bit of August email can have large consequences in my fractal life.

Darren Long sent me (and the rest of the Human Behavior and Evolution Society) an invitation to hear Edward Osborn Wilson speak on January 15, 1999 at a church on the campus of Emory University in Atlanta. I booked a flight in November and arranged to tour the nearby Yerkes Field Station where research is done on social behavior in chimpanzees and in rhesus. There was to be a symposium on the 16th, one that featured DeWaal, Pinker, Wrangham, Cheney, Bob Frank, and William McGrew giving their "Origins" talks about language, culture, war, and peace. (Notes posted separately on http://www.behavior.net/forums/evolutionary/). It looked like a very big weekend, the more so because Nando Pelusi, a psychologist from New York and Lorraine Rice, also from New York and a collaborator on the Paleopsych effort, agreed to attend.

I was a little frightened, having conceived of a"Clinical Sociobiology" in October 1996 but now worried some 2 years later about meeting Wilson. Would he be indignant? Would he see me as an opportunist? I obsessed for weeks about the wisdom of designing a T-shirt to advertise "Clinical Sociobiology: Taking Charge of Our Genes" at this conference. I decided to make the shirt and keep it in my case while I appraised Wilson throughout his talk.

The shirt itself was simple; Darwin, a black portrait in the upper left and big red letters front and back, "Clinical Sociobiology: Taking Charge of Our Genes." The front also advertised this summer's course, "Darwinian Feelings and Values" and the back, in red, announced "Visionaries Wanted."

Weather -- snow and freezing rain came to the northeast on the 14th, coating my driveway and local roads with several inches of ice. I got up at 4 AM and checked the PHL home page; yep, my 10:20 AM flight was cancelled, Delta couldn't get in planes the night before. However, rain and warm air blanked the area near the airport so I pulled out my drive and skated in my car some 10 miles to wet pavement.

There was a flight scheduled for 8:30 AM so I waited 2.5 hours to be the next to last standby allowed aboard. Delta's next best offer was a Sunday flight; my own next best plan was to drive to Washington and try to get a flight.

Dr. Wilson gave his talk on the relation of biology to the humanities while in perfect control of the 1500 packed into the church. He'd come a long way from people's dumping water on his head at a Yale podium in the '70s. He communicated warmth and humility and concluded with a plea that we work together to stop "wrecking the planet."

Dr. Wilson spoke for an hour and took questions and then stayed late, signing autographs and sharing stories with us, his students. (Ed Wilson seems to be the messenger, the Paul Revere riding through the town although no one asked him to do this and a lot of people don't see a problem. He must both convince us that a crisis is possible and that it is occurring NOW. I'm not optimistic about our outcomes but the American Revolution was launched by about 10% of our population. "Consilience" is a call, indeterminately timely or late but still a call, to action. Buy, read, splice "Consilience" into your genes! [Wilson might smile here and comment that "Consilience" is already in your epigenetic rules, you just don't know it!])

Even after Dr. Wilson's talk, the shirt mission remained a 51% decision -- a Prufrock dilemma -- but I marched obliquely to the altar rail with some prodding from Lorraine and waited in line with the T-shirt under one arm and an abridged "Sociobiology: The New Synthesis" under the other.

Gosh! Wilson read the shirt and grew an immense smile. He laughed and first pulled out his pen but then accepted my marker. There's now a diagonal "Edward O. Wilson" across the shirt's chest. An ink trail from his hand and wrist validated 2.5 years of my nervous obsessing about the possibility of such a field of study and application.

Twenty people complimented the shirt at the meetings on the next day.

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