Media Contact: Pat JaCoby, (858) 534-7404  
                   or Jan Jennings, (858) 822-1684

PULITZER PRIZE-WINNING AUTHOR, CONTROVERSIAL CHAMPION
OF SOCIOBIOLOGY EDWARD O. WILSON TO SPEAK APRIL 3 AT UCSD

Whether Edward O. Wilson is defending sociobiology as the systematic study of the biological basis of all social behavior or describing consilience as the search for proof of the alignment of knowledge from difference disciplines, the scientist/theorist teases exploration. He challenges thought and conventional knowledge.

“The greatest enterprise of the mind,” writes Wilson in his book, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge, “has always been and will always be the attempted linkage of the sciences and humanities.”

Wilson will lecture on The Coming Synergism Between Science and the Humanities at 7:30 p.m. April 3 in Mandeville Auditorium at the University of California, San Diego. The lecture is free and open to the public.

Internationally regarded as one of the foremost biological and sociological theorists of the late 20th century – and on the other hand, dubbed a racist and a sexist whose theories are viewed by some to support Darwinian survival of the fittest and genetic determinism – the Pulitzer Prize winning author and Harvard University researcher and professor casts a broad and inclusive net. His lecture is the inaugural public event for UCSD’s Center for the Humanities.

Wilson also will participate in a Center for the Humanities panel discussion at 2 p.m. April 4 in Garren Auditorium at the UCSD School of Medicine. Wilson will explore Connections between the Humanities and Sciences with UCSD professors Ronald Berman, literature; Paul Churchland, philosophy; William McGinnis and Nicholas Spitzer, biology, and associate professor Naomi Oreskes, history. The discussion also is free and open to the public.

UCSD philosophy professor Georgios Anagnostopoulos, director of the Center for the Humanities, says Wilson was selected for the center’s inaugural public lecture because he is considered one of the major thinkers of our times and has articulated, “perhaps better than anyone else,” the ideal of the unity of knowledge.

“Wilson’s attempt at finding the unifying threads of inquiries across many disciplines and exploring the linkages between the scientific and humanistic/artistic approaches resonates with the Center for the Humanities central objective,” says Anagnostopoulos. That objective is the continuing of a “dialogue across disciplines in our endeavors to understand ourselves and our place within the order of nature.”

Wilson’s theories also resonate with the overall interdisciplinary approach to academia at UCSD.

Wilson’s UCSD presentations will be based upon his 1998 book, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge. Anagnostopoulos says Wilson will draw on studies from a broad spectrum of disciplines, to show “how various fields of inquiry, and especially the humanities and sciences, intersect with, rather than exclude, each other.”

Wilson is best known as a biologist for his seminal studies on ants, tracing the effects of natural selection on biological communities. He applied the insights from his research on ants to the study of human society. From this study, two of his major works developed: Sociobiology: The New Synthesis, 1975, and On Human Nature, 1978, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize.

The scientist found himself at the heart of controversy with the publication of Sociobiology: The New Synthesis. In this book he attributed the development of social behaviors to genetic as well as cultural factors, claiming that human social behavior had a biological foundation. This was interpreted by some to suggest genetic determinism, igniting a dispute over heredity and environment that continues. Wilson’s argument, however, is that genetic predispositions exist upon which cultural forces operate and that the outcome entails the interplay of biology and culture, not the supremacy of one over the other. His is a coexisting, inclusive theory.

In March, 2000, the 25th anniversary edition of Sociobiology: The New Synthesis was published. In its introduction, Wilson writes: “To grasp human nature objectively, to explore it to the depths scientifically, and comprehend its ramifications by cause-and-effect explanations leading from biology into culture, would be to approach if not attain the grail of scholarship. And to fulfill the dreams of the Enlightenment.”

Wilson speculates that sociobiology will continue to play a role in blurring the traditional lines that separate the great branches of learning.

Wilson is the Pellegrino University Research Professor at Harvard University where he has spent his entire academic career since receiving a doctorate there in 1955. He received bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the University of Alabama. In addition to the Pulitzer Prize for On Human Nature in 1979, Wilson won a second Pulitzer in 1991 for The Ants, co-written with Bert Holldobler. He is the author, co-author or editor of more than 20 books.

Among Wilson’s awards are the U.S. National Medal of Science, Japan’s International Prize for Biology, the Royal Swedish Academy of Science’s Crafoord Prize, the French Prix du Institut de la Vei, Germany’s Terrestrial Ecology Prize and England’s Kent Conservation Book Prize. In 1996, Time Magazine named Wilson one of the nation’s 25 most influential people.

Most recently, Wilson received the Lewis Thomas Prize: Honoring the Scientist as Poet from New York’s Rockefeller University. The prize recognizes the scientist whose voice and vision speak of science’s aesthetic and philosophical dimensions, offering not only new information, but cause for reflection, even revelation, as does a poem or a painting.

The UCSD Center for the Humanities, a focal point for intellectual life on the UCSD campus, was established in 1996 to promote research and related activities in the humanities. It provides annual support for graduate student fellowships, faculty fellowships, distinguished visitors, interdisciplinary research, conferences, and community outreach. To UCSD’s established research and scientific disciplines, the Center for the Humanities adds a haven for scholarly reflection on the human condition, endeavoring to analyze concrete human problems and explore and project imaginative solutions.

For information on the April 3 Wilson lecture, April 4 discussion, or on the Center for the Humanities, call (858) 534-6270 or visit the Center’s website: http://dah.ucsd.edu/humctr.htm.