----- Original message -----
From: "Stewart Brand" <s
...@gbn.org>
To: "SALT list" <s
...@list.longnow.org>
Date: Sun, 22 Apr 2012 15:42:37 -0700
Subject: [SALT] The real creation story (Edward Wilson talk)
“History makes no sense without prehistory,“ Wilson declared, “and
prehistory makes no sense without biology.” He began by noting that
every religion has a different creation story, all of them necessarily
based on ignorance of what really happened in the past. Religions thus
can’t give valid answers on the meaning of life---Gaugin’s
questions: “Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?”
Philosophy gave up on the questions long ago. The task was left to
science, and from science a valid, shareable creation story is now
emerging.
For the last 65 million years Earth has been dominated by eusocial
animals. Ants, termites, and bees in some areas make up half of all
biomass. Yet only a few of the million known insect species made the
jump to eusociality. One variety of mammal, a tiny set of primates,
made a similar jump. Once they began to use their eusocial skills to
fan out from Africa 60 thousand years ago, they gradually became far
more dominant even than the social insects. “The term
‘eusocial,’“ Wilson said, “means a society based in part on a
division of labor, in which individuals act altruistically, that covers
two or more generations, and that cares for young cooperatively.”
That eusociality is so rare suggests how difficult it is for atruistic
traits to evolve. The powerful evolutionary force to make individuals
that successfully reproduce has to be overcome by some form of selective
pressure which generates altruistic individuals who yield their
interests to the interests of the group. How does that occur?
Examining near-eusocial species like African wild dogs and snapping
shrimp along with primitively eusocial species like sweat bees shows
that a crucial step appears to be made when multiple generations linger
to defend a constructed nest with valuable access to food. That step
can be made with a simple change to a single behavioral gene, silencing
the trait for normal dispersal of young to carry out their own
independent reproduction. When the young linger to defend the nest and
begin to provide for the next generation of young, eusociality begins.
All eusocial species appear to have arisen from multi-generational nest
defense. Two million years ago our ancestors began using fire for
campsites and cooking. At the same time hominid brain size began
expanding dramatically. Social traits emerged that have characterized
humanity ever since. We love joining groups, and we became geniuses at
reading the intentions of each other, a skill we fine-tune incessantly
with our enjoyment of gossip. In another distinctively human trait,
like ants, we became highly adept at collaborative warfare.
Wilson had long been a proponent of William Hamilton’s theory of
“kin selection” as an explanation for how altruistic traits could
evolve. But as a naturalist he found it did not explain phenomena that
he and others were discovering in eusocial species, and he began to
favor “group selection” instead---a process where the “target”
of evolution was sacrificially collaborative traits, because highly
cooperative groups beat poorly cooperative groups, and the “units”
of evolution (genes) adjusted accordingly. It is successful groups,
more than successful families, that are being selected for. In 2010
Wilson, along with mathematician Martin Nowak and Corina Tarnita
formally challenged kin selection with a peer-reviewed paper in Nature.
There was, as Wilson put it, “considerable blowback” from kin
selection theorists and supporters.
Wilson’s alternative he calls “multi-level selection,” where
individual selection and group selection proceed together (with kin
selection a continuing bit player). In our eusocial species, that mix
of traits makes us “permanently unstable, permanently conflicted”
between selfish impulses and cooperative impulses. We negotiate these
conflicts endlessly within ourselves and with each other. Wilson sees
inherent adaptive value in that constant negotiation. Our vibrant
cultural life may be driven in part by it.
In response to a question about what the next stages of human
eusociality might be, Wilson said he hoped for a fading of interest in
end-state ideologies and end-time religious creation stories because
they so fervently deny negotiation.
--Stewart Brand
______________________
Stewart Brand -- s...@gbn.org
The Long Now Foundation - http://www.longnow.org
Seminars & downloads: http://www.longnow.org/seminars/
