GROUP READ: The Social Conquest of Earth (main thread)

Hi everyone! This is the main thread for a group read of The Social Conquest of Earth, by Edward O. Wilson. This group read is organized the by the Science, Religion, and History group read thread, for which we choose a book to read for each trimester. We will start reading The Social Conquest of Earth in November, but we can read and discuss the book from November through the end of January.

In order to make this three-month discussion a little livelier, we've decided to separate the book into sections and make discussion threads for each section. I haven't got my copy of the book yet, so I don't know where the natural breaks will be, but as soon as I figure this out, I'll post links to the in-depth discussion thread. This main thread can be used for general discussion that isn't region-specific.

Everyone is welcome to join in the discussion at any point in this trimester.

Although my library does have this, I decided to go ahead and get it for my Kindle since it was under $10. I may order the print version from the library next month as backup, for footnotes and any maps if it has them.

I'm going to listen to it on audiobook, but I'll get a hard copy from my library so I can look at maps and such.

Ordered it today...

I'm probably not going to start reading it until the end of November, as I'm working on the Team of Rivals group read and another group read this month.

Okay, I started the book the other night and am about 6 chapters in. Is anyone else reading it?

6: To hit 75 this year, I need to read the remaining December New Yorkers, the November and December Scientific Americans, and the remaining three chapters of On the Origin of Species. Then I want to read your summary of The Closing of the Western Mind as “book” 76 (per http://www.librarything.com/topic/137995#3452080). I will catch up with reviews as much as possible by the end of the year. If I find myself with room to spare, then I’ll begin The Social Conquest of Earth this month. Otherwise, next month. I have it, and I very much want to read it regardless of this group, but I can’t keep up with the pace of you folks.

I've already finished it, but I'm happy to split this thread into individual sections as suggested earlier, if there are enough people ready for that?

I started yesterday, but I'm not going to speeding through.

Started this morning and already enjoy it!

I'm in Chapter 9 and moving slowly--very dry.

Yeah, there was a dry spot in the middle there. :)

I've also finished it. Whew! To ronincats and others: yes, there was a dry spot in the middle, particularly Part IV. But the technical language gives way to fascinating and easily read reflections on human nature in Part V. My only complaint is that sometimes Wilson stays on his tangential soapbox for too long. But as one of the most famous biologists alive, perhaps he has earned that right. :)

The part about the insects got a little long for me...I realize that's his specialty and the basis on which he's built his theories, but that portion was a bit slow. However, I think he has some interesting theories and I found the book interesting.

13: He's 83. At that age, people should be given leeway to say whatever they feel the need to say.

I haven't started yet. Still chipping away at 2012. Soon. :-)

I'm in the middle of Chapter 15, with the social insects.

I just finished chapter 4, and had a discussion with my husband about whether Wilson's definition of social is too narrow. I decided to go with it for now and see where he ends up.

Finally finished! Very much worth reading once the technical chapters are past.

The Social Conquest of Earth by Edward O. Wilson
Finished 12/23/12

Ants. Most people hate them, or at least prefer them to be distant. Wilson's book, about sociality and its role in evolution, draws a close parallel between ants and people. Ants, like humans, have complex societies with division of labor and a central nest. These qualities have enabled them to take over the insect world as we have the mammalian world. Specifically, this quality is eusociality - forming social groups beyond one's family with a central nest. He illustrates this principle by recounting the history of human evolution, refuting the kinship selection theory in favor of his, demonstrating that human evolution works by both individual and group selection. While his chapters on insect evolution were very dry, his discussion of hominid evolution was not: Neanderthals died out because despite their large brains, they were not the social creatures the homo sapiens were. (Also, I never even knew the subfield "cognitive archaeology" existed.)

"An iron rule exists in genetic social evolution. It is that selfish individuals beat altruistic individuals, while groups of altruists beat groups of selfish individuals. The victory can never be complete; the balance of selection pressures cannot move to either extreme. If individual selection were to dominate, societies would dissolve. If group selection were to dominate, human groups would come to resemble ant colonies." (243)

Wilson extends these scientific theories to provide insights into human nature. Why do we have such a precarious balance between good and evil? Because of our evolutionary history. Faking altruism brings social benefits, so we are very sensitive to liars and hypocrites and punish them greatly if caught. Why do we feel overwhelmed by modern society's social demands? Because we are still hardwired for hunter-gatherer groups of 30 or so.

Wilson writes with a firm conviction that science will be the new arbiter of humanistic questions about our nature. And while this book is truly a gem, it does not deliver on that promise. Wilson never explains just why religion is incompatible with science. The Christian who sees a cause and creator of human nature beyond the evolutionary history of Wilson will not be swayed by that science alone. And I wish Wilson had avoided those polemics. But still - worth reading.

I've finished the first section (through chapter 11) on human evolution. This is not his area of expertise, so it's sketchy and simplified, which is OK by me since I'm here for the ants. I'd be interested in more about group selection, because this is controversial. Seems from the index that more will occur...

I'm stuck in chapter 7 and, except for a heavy skim, I'm giving up. qebo asked what my problems were, so here they are.

First, let me say that I've been working for a while on a science fiction story set with eusocial, spermatheca mammals that bears no resemblance to anything Wilson is talking about. So even if I thought he was convincing, I'd still be arguing with him.

However, Wilson's book falls into the category that I term socio-evolutionary fairy tales. You pick a human trait or traits, you figure out a way to explain them by natural selection, then you explain how they evolved by natural selection as if you had evidence. But the fact is that except for a lot of stone tools, some campsites and some footprints we have almost no evidence of what happened to make us Homo and the chimpanzees Pan after our ancestors split up. In addition, we can pass on our cultural knowledge and that is also subject to evolution, so we have a very hard time sorting out what's biological and what's cultural. This leaves a lot of room for speculation. After falling for some interesting stories (anyone remember Nancy Makepeace Tanner?), I've learned to read these things with a critical eye. There are a lot of ideas floating around that compete with Wilson's but so far he hasn't mentioned any of them let alone explain why he thinks his explanation is better.

Just a couple of for instances:

Many birds and mammal species display altruism (see Biological Exuberance). How does that fit in with his idea of it being a primary cause of eusocialization?

There are spermatheca mammals (also Biological Exuberance), how does that fit in with his ideas about the eusocialism of insects?

I started getting really annoyed at this book after I started reading Paul Krugman's End This Depression Now where Krugman very carefully cites his opposition and refutes them. You can write a perfectly readable book for laypeople and still do this. Does Wilson not do that because he doesn't know about competing theories? Or he doesn't think he needs to pay attention to them because he's so famous? Or because he doesn't have good arguments? Or is it just later in the book and I should keep reading? I don't know.

I should note here, since this is the second book I've bailed on, that there are a number of topics where I have fairly settled ideas, one of them being that the evolution of human culture is more determinative of our behavior than the evolution of our genes. I like to think that I would change this position if it was unwarranted, but it'll have to be a very good argument, not a good story. So, I get impatient with books that are challenging my ideas but not arguing well.

There's a whole different kind of reading where people are gathering ideas and trying to decide what they think. In that type of reading (which my husband often engages in), books like this provide very interesting food for thought. Just because they don't have enough evidence for me to change my mind, doesn't mean they don't have interesting ideas that should be stirred into the pot.

one of them being that the evolution of human culture is more determinative of our behavior than the evolution of our genes.

He is dealing with this in depth in Part 3. I just finished the chapter about language, where he agrees with you.

21: Thanks. I'll be sure to go over that section.

20: Thanks for the explanation.

Spermatheca? A new word to me. :-)

I guess I’m in the food-for-thought camp. I read the earlier chapters as set-up for what follows. Chapter 5 on the sequence of pre-adaptations reads as though he’s piecing together hypotheses that he likes, but I’m not expecting tightly constructed theory here. He gets more into cultural evolution in chapters 8-11. I’m not entirely sure why human evolution is included at all, since it’s really not his thing, but he does have a tendency to stray outside the boundaries of expertise (or, less charitably, to try to fit everything else into his own field of expertise), and he’s comparing two routes to eusocialism, which I’m tentatively going along with at an OK, maybe, level.

see Biological Exuberance
Huh. Added to the wishlist as a reminder, though I’m making an effort this year to read the books I have.

On reading Biological Exuberance

The first six chapters are the main meat of the book. In chapter 7, after spending way too much emotional energy on his dissertation, the author went insane and/or had a religious experience. It has nothing to do with the thesis. The rest of the book after chapter 7 (over half the book) is a list of animals and details of their interesting sexual behaviors with extensive references to the original field work. This was fun for a while (particularly if you write science fiction) but can not be read in its entirety without risk of mental breakdown/religious experience.
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I think most of the people in this group are food-for-thought readers, which is a very nice thing to be. I just wanted to explain why I'm often jumping the tracks.

20: Many birds and mammal species display altruism... How does that fit in with his idea of it being a primary cause of eusocialization?

Where does he say this? (I’m in my first pass, don’t recall all details, won’t get everything pieced together until I go back through notes to write a review.) Altruism does not appear to be the key. He goes into some detail in later chapters (especially 15-16, maybe beyond but this is where I am) about the importance of a defensible nest with multiple generations (i.e. offspring don’t leave), a common factor of all eusocial species. Also discusses group selection versus kin selection (a theory that he advocated for decades, and has now discarded). On p 146: “Further, the very idea of altruism within an insect colony, while a nice metaphor, turns out to have little analytic value in science.”

25: p. 54 (I have the hard copy) "The genetic fitness of a human being must therefore be a consequence of both individual selection and group selection. But this is true only with reference to the targets of selection. Whether the targets are traits of the individual working in its own interest, or interactive traits among group members in the interest of the group" (which he previously equated with altruism -- assuming I understood him)

Again, assuming I understood, chapter 6 seems to be an argument that humans are the way they are because of the conflict between group selection (related to altruism) and individual selection (related to being out for oneself). Presumably he thinks this has something to due with human eusocialization, since that's the theme of the book. He completely ignores altruism in other mammal and bird species, which would presumable lead to the same selection pressures and hence, perhaps to some kind of eusocialization? Maybe not, but he's not going to tell me one way or the other. I really don't like books that leave me hanging with bits of information that to me seem to undermine arguments, but the author is oblivious. Could be I don't have the background to read the book -- the counter arguments are well-known, just not by me. Could be the author thinks this takes him too far afield for a popular book (but that's what footnotes are for). Could be the author doesn't know the stuff I know and so hasn't thought about it. Could be the author does know what I know, it does indeed undermine his argument so he's leaving it out.

Food-for-thought readers (which I am in some disciplines), don't need to do anything more than acknowledge that a writer didn't answer all their questions when confronted with situations like this, until, of course the questions become overwhelming enough that you go looking for the answers. However, if you're reading the book and need convincing, that kind of problem means you're reading the wrong book.

BTW, I picked up Among the Creationists since it looked interesting and it didn't look like we were going to get to it for a while. I'm only halfway through, but I'm very impressed. It is meticulously footnoted, has an excellent bibliography which will take you further in a number of different areas, and is excellently argued. Rosenhouse very carefully looks at a broad range of ideas that he does not share, weighs them and distinguishes between factual arguments which refute them vs. his own opinions which disagree. In addition, it deals with religion, science and, tangentially with history (mostly the history of the controversy between evolution and religion). I think many of the folks here would find it interesting.

He’s not arguing that altruism leads to eusocialization. The earlier chapters seem looser than the later chapters (setting the stage? drawing people into a popularization?), and terms such as “altruism” and “cooperation” may not be precisely defined. I don’t think of them as interchangeable, and it seems with his description of eusocialization, he’s talking more about cooperation than altruism, but again, I need to review my notes and that’ll be awhile.

I plan to get Among the Creationists even though it was rejected (or postponed) for this group. I’ve been reading the author’s blog for years.

Clearly I have to look at Wilson's later chapters, but if the beginning was setting the stage, it would have been helpful to tell me what he was going to go into more later ...

Thanks for explaining that.

There may well be all sorts of holes. Especially, his expertise is in ants, and he makes analogies with humans, and leaps over everything else. I'm assuming at the moment though that any holes are in my head, because my memory is poor and my usual approach to non-fiction is to take notes while reading, then organize the notes. There are references at the back to articles in science journals which are presumably more technically precise. I've just finished the chapter where he goes into his rejection of kin selection as an explanation, and I think I get the gist, but I am also aware that other evolutionary biologists reject group selection as a legitimate mechanism, so this is an area where I may seek another source.

ETA: Last year there was a New Yorker article about E. O. Wilson that I summarized here, but I haven’t seriously followed the various links. There was also an Atlantic article, which I have but haven’t read.

Chapter 19 is where he set up his theory of what leads to eusocialism, and like Katherine, I am not remembering altruism as being a key factor. In fact, I am remembering him talking about altruism being seen in a number of non-eusocial species and that it is not a necessary and sufficient feature. I can't refer back specifically because I am reading it on my Kindle.

I've put a review / summary in my 2013 75er thread here. I want to pare it down before I plop it onto the review page.