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Edward O. Wilson: The Meaning of Human Existence

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/b...story.html

EXCERPT: [...] In our own day, no biologist has been more persistent or eloquent in correcting our misapprehensions about human origins than Edward O. Wilson. At age 85, author of more than 20 books, twice winner of the Pulitzer Prize, recipient of numerous major awards for science and public service, he could easily rest on his laurels. [...] Instead, Wilson tries yet again, in “The Meaning of Human Existence,” to convince ordinary readers of the scientific view that humans have evolved, along with millions of other species, from earlier life forms, entirely by natural processes, without guidance from any supreme being. He has his work cut out for him. According to the most recent Pew Research Center poll, roughly two-thirds of Americans reject this view of evolution [...]

Ironically, the religious faiths that are the chief source of this skepticism are themselves a product of evolution [...] he argues that natural selection operates not only at the individual level but also at the level of groups. Throughout our evolutionary history, those groups that bonded most firmly against outsiders enjoyed greater reproductive success — and religion is the most potent binding force that human cultures have produced.

[...] Tribalism is only one consequence of what Wilson calls the “Paleolithic Curse: genetic adaptations that worked very well for millions of years of hunter-gatherer existence but are increasingly a hindrance in a globally urban and technoscientific society.” Among other ways in which our genetic adaptations ill suit us for contemporary conditions, he notes [...] racism, [...] population growth, our failure to cooperate with one another [...] our devastation of the natural environment.

[...] He predicts that neuroscientists will soon identify the physical basis of consciousness, revealing the material processes that give rise to our emotions and thoughts. [...] the conscious “self” may believe that it freely chooses how to behave, but that belief, Wilson implies, is an illusion.

“Confidence in free will is biologically adaptive,” Wilson argues. It protects us from fatalism. Reassured by imagining that we exert conscious control over our lives, we keep on reproducing our kind. But in a material universe governed entirely by physical laws, he concedes, free will does not exist “in ultimate reality.” Then what is the point of exhorting readers to embrace the theory of evolution, to preserve the Earth’s wealth of living things, to overcome bigotry and put an end to war? How could we, by conscious effort, change our actions or beliefs?

Despite this seemingly fatal flaw in his enterprise, we should be grateful that Wilson...
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