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Sir, After reading Clive Cookson’s review of Harvard professor Edward O. Wilson’s new tome, The Social Conquest of Earth, one may be forgiven for concluding that Prof Wilson, who puts great emphasis on the biological underpinnings of human behaviour, is Panglossian in the extreme to argue that “Earth, by the 22nd century, can be turned into a permanent paradise for human beings, or at least the strong beginnings of one” (“The buzz word”, Life & Arts, May 5).
This sanguine conclusion runs counter to everything that Prof Wilson believes and has written since introducing the world to “sociobiology” in the 1970s; for example: “Our instincts remain unprepared for civilisation.” Indeed, the historical record demonstrates eloquently that, despite some exceptional displays of altruism, our “selfish genes” tend to be trumped by concerns for collective welfare only when our ingroups need to be defended against threatening outgroups.
What this suggests is that, until a credible planet-wide threat is discovered, this complex conflict “between the poorer and the better angels of our nature” will continue. Regrettably, thus far, global warming has failed to achieve this status of the “moral equivalent of war”!
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