Letters to a Young Scientist

Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 2013

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Prologue-Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Parts 4-5

Key Figures

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Background

Social Context: The Uses and Misuses of Science

Content Warning: This section discusses eugenics and scientific racism.

At several points in Letters to a Young Scientist, Wilson describes science as the foremost, if not the only, source of truth in human beings’ understanding of the world. This is a lofty ideal, and it sometimes pays off. Genuine scientific inquiry is indeed a rigorous and well-established way to determine new facts about the world. When scientists think they have learned something new through an experiment, other people must conduct that experiment for themselves to ensure that the alleged discovery is sound. This is an excellent way to ensure academic rigor in all branches of science. Today, science is crucial in solving some of the most important problems facing humanity. Climate change, the spread of diseases, and the loss of biodiversity are just a few of the major issues that scientists are working hard to understand and solve.

When it is done well, science is a major force for good. However, good science requires intellectual honesty, the removal of personal bias, and an unerring commitment to truth. Throughout history, some scientists (even those who have done extraordinary work) have let bias and harmful misconceptions impact the conclusions they have drawn. Scientific racism is a term for various racist beliefs that were once held to be valid scientific theories. Many people, including scientists, used to believe that humans were neatly divided into different races, and that those races had strong genetic differences that could impact intelligence, kinship structures, and pain tolerance, among other things. Today, race is understood as a social construct. A person’s ethnic background impacts their appearance, but it does not make them any more or less human, or more or less intelligent. Scientific racism was a way to justify racism and white supremacy, but it was based on incorrect assumptions and incomplete information. This is just one important example of how the quest for scientific discovery can be twisted or misused to justify oppression.

Historical Context: Evolutionary Biology

Wilson worked in the field of evolutionary biology, and claims he was the one who first gave the field its name, which may be true. Today, many people strongly associate the theory of evolution with Charles Darwin (1809-1882). Darwin was extremely influential in the development of the theory, but he was not the first to propose that organisms evolved gradually over time. In fact, the idea dates back at least as far as ancient Greece, though major discussions of evolution began in earnest in the 19th century. Wilson mentions one of the first people to come up with a theory of how evolution happened: Jean-Baptiste Lamarck. Lamarck suggested that environmental factors could impact an organism over the course of a lifetime, and those impacts would then be passed down to offspring.

Darwin proposed a different, ultimately correct mechanism: evolution by natural selection. He argued that organisms evolve through random mutations. Favorable mutations that make it easier for an organism to survive and reproduce are more likely to remain in the gene pool, while unfavorable mutations are less likely to survive. Organisms adapt to fit into ecological niches, differentiating themselves from other species so that they can more effectively compete for resources. Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection is the foundation of modern-day evolutionary biology.

Unfortunately, Darwin and some other important biologists like early taxonomist Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778) were strong proponents of scientific racism. They used taxonomy and evolutionary theory to suggest that some races of people were more advanced, more intelligent, and more civilized, therefore making them more deserving of rights, freedom, and justice than others.

Authorial Context: Edward O. Wilson’s Links to Scientific Racism

Edward Osborne Wilson was born in Alabama in 1929. He became fascinated with insects when he was a child, and he maintained that interest even after losing vision in one eye in an accident. He studied entomology at the University of Alabama, focusing on ants. At the time, very few people in the world were studying ants, so he was able to publish his findings almost immediately. He got his PhD from Harvard University in 1955, going on to work as a professor and researcher there.

Wilson’s work was highly influential, not just in the study of ants or entomology, but in the field of biology more broadly. Wilson’s experiments provided great insight into how ants and other insects use pheromones to communicate with each other. He created the first taxonomies of many ant species, allowing researchers around the world to collaborate more easily. Wilson is credited with developing the fields of island biogeography and sociobiology, both of which he describes in Letters to a Young Scientist.

While much of Wilson’s work has been influential and well-received, he has also encountered significant criticism. He briefly mentions in Letters to a Young Scientist that his 1975 book Sociobiology: The New Synthesis was met with “protest from social scientists and radical leftist writers” who “were incensed by [his] argument that human beings have instincts, and therefore that a gene-based human nature exists” (75). This description lacks context. Sociologists argued that Wilson’s book promoted biological determinism, ignoring environmental factors in human development and reducing humans (and non-human animals) to a collection of involuntary responses to biological impulses.

After Wilson’s death, his personal correspondence revealed that he had long supported the work of Canadian psychologist J. Philippe Rushton (1943-2012). Rushton argued that people of different races had genetic differences that resulted in stratifications of intelligence, a racist idea that has long been debunked. Rushton spent his career advocating for scientific racism. For the last 10 years of his life, he was the leader of the Pioneer Fund, a eugenics organization. This information posthumously damaged Wilson’s reputation.