Arvind Sujeeth

Cradick

A.P. Biology

12/19/02

On the cover of Biophilia is written, in the simplest of words, its definition: the human bond with other species. In a series of personal and eloquent essays, Edward O. Wilson affirms biophilia; he reconciles it with supposed opposing ideologies; he relates it to human existence; and ultimately, he provides an inspired and convincing argument for, as he calls it, “the conservation ethic” – the ethic of preserving our humanity by preserving the life that it stems from. Wilson chooses not to argue with abstract ideas, but with, as he says, the optimism inherent to science. He injects a level of expertise, personal experience, and a dry sense of humor into his writing that has the stunning ability to communicate the most profound of ideas with the most concise of examples. In other words, in a scant 145 pages, Wilson has convinced me beyond a doubt of the validity of the Conservation Ethic. As a species, on every level, we are a part of a whole – it is a pattern and necessity found throughout all of biological life. It would be unfair, then, to summarize Wilson’s discourses collectively, when each chapter is so intrinsic to the collective. I find it difficult myself to be unjust to a book with such noble convictions, and thus this analysis will necessarily occur chapter by chapter, identifying, defining and consolidating the various themes Wilson builds into the concept of biophilia.

Wilson begins not with a detailed lecture, nor with an abstract discourse, but instead by painting the picture of the place called Bernhardsdorp. He will return to this place at the end of the book – an important note of interest. Bernhardsdorp is a very, very small village in the very small country of Surinam in South America – one of the few places mostly untouched by man. In this opening chapter, the key emerging feeling is that of Wilson’s passion for the natural world. It is a passion, he argues, that the human mind is naturally inclined towards, for we are a part of the world and cannot exist without it. It is a personal account, yet hopelessly universal: “At Bernhardsdorp I imagined richness and order as an intensity of light…around them the village became a black disk, relatively devoid of life, its artifacts adding next to nothing. The woodland beyond was a luminous bank, sparked here and there by the moving lights of birds, mammals, and larger insects” (6). Here too, he introduces the motif of order out of chaos; it is through the analysis of science and biological organizations that the chaotic puzzle is pieced together, each a vital part to the other and to the whole. He also begins to attack the seeming contradiction between science and the humanities; the former studies the world to understand the self, the latter studies the self to understand the world. Yet in both, “the living world is the natural domain of the most restless and paradoxical part of the human spirit. Our sense of wonder grows exponentially: the greater the knowledge, the deeper the mystery and the more we seek knowledge to create new mystery” (10). Wilson argues that biophilia is the uniting agent, we cannot understand them without understanding ourselves, and likewise, we cannot understand ourselves without understanding them. It is a telling point – a defense both for the rigor of the scientific method and the abstractness of the humanities. He defends the existence of a human “spirit” by defending its affinity to life- “humanity is exalted not because we are so far above other living creatures, but because knowing them well elevates the very concept of life” (22). And he sets the groundwork for his case: “then a tragedy: this image is almost gone…the wildernesses of the world have shriveled into timber leases and threatened nature reserves” (11). We leave Bernhardsdorp with an intimate knowledge of a few of the species living there, but more importantly, with the introductory elements of biophilia.

The proceeding chapter is labeled “the Superorganism”, and in essence, it is Wilson’s defense of the unbelievable complexities of the smallest of visible organisms – the ant. He imports extraordinary facts of the social existence of the ant – from a single queen being able to produce 20 million offspring, and control the sex of each offspring to the chemical fluids it secretes and releases to communicate with the colony. Every member of the species has a distinct and communal role; the colony itself is a superorganism, capable of extraordinary feats. It is the quintessential validation of the subthesis of the part being essential and intricate to the whole, and of the resulting order. Using his wide breadth of knowledge as a field biologist, and an entomologist at that, Wilson contrives a decidedly convincing argument which he summarizes near the end of the chapter: “To find a colony in the South American forest is like coming upon some device left in place ages ago by an extraterrestrial visitor for a still undisclosed purpose. Biologists have only begun to puzzle out its many parts” (37).

His next essay, “the Time Machine”, is an attempt at describing biological studies as relative to time. In “biochemical” time, the biological processes that drive life are infinitely continuous and extraordinary – he breaks down the example of a simple conversation into its simplest chemical processes. He then speeds up the time machine, and considers “organismic time” – what we would consider real time. And then there is “ecological time”: “Biochemical events have been compressed beyond reckoning. Organisms are no more than assembles defined by the mathematical laws of birth and death, competition, and replacement” (43). The complexity of each paradigm becomes blatantly obvious, and this is the framework for the consideration of which paradigm is to be addressed (all three, actually) in the Conservation Ethic.

“The Bird of Paradise” is a short essay on Paradisaea guilielmi – the male Emperor of Germany bird of paradise. He describes its appearance: in short, stunningly beautiful. He then spends the latter half of the essay relating the bird of paradise as a metaphor for his themes, namely, science being reconciled with the arts. “Described this way, the bird of paradise may seem to have been turned into a metaphor of what humanists dislike most about science: that it reduces nature is insensitive to art…[however] science is not just analytic; it is also synthetic. It uses artlike intuition and imagery…the full answer can only be given through a combined idiom of science and the humanities, whereby the investigation turns back onto itself” (54-55). In other words, the mysticism and beauty of the biology is not to be ignored, but instead accepted and marveled at as we consider the source of that attraction – biophilia, of course.

In the “Poetic Species”, Wilson attempts to reconcile science with the humanities head on. Since biophilia cannot be completely recognized from either direction alone, this chapter is a critical analysis of the metaphysics of humans – what we know about what we know. He describes the intricacies of science, the critical nature of the scientific community versus the nature of the humanities community. The scientific community, he says, values scientists that do not know, but continuously discover. The humanities community yearns for the opposite: to discover so as to know. Both, though, approach the matter poetically; that is to say, both use elegance to seek truth. Each incorporates carefully chosen parts to serve the whole – he quotes Picasso, “art [is] the lie that helps us to see the truth” (63). Likewise, science does not profess to know truths, but only to present lies that aid in finding the truth. The latter half of this section goes into the details of the scientific method, and Wilson’s own personal experiments with it in the field and in the scientific community. Where he arrives is at a description of the mind as nodes, continuously expanding. Science finds the new nodes, expands the tree; the humanities study the existing nodes. The ultimate goal of each is to find “ultimate meaning [in the] remainder of life…In principle, at least, nothing can be denied to the humanities, nothing to science” (81).

“The Serpent” is Wilson’s personal account of his childhood, snake loving days. In it, he shows the universal affiliation and inclination of humans towards the serpent, an instinctively feared yet admired organism. He discusses how science and myth share the common affinity to the serpent; indeed, it is biophilia, measured and displayed in an evolved and almost instinctual respect for the serpent’s power.

The following essay is aptly named “the Right Place.” It serves a twofold purpose in the book; first, it incorporates the oh-so vital nature of the preservation of a particular ecosystem or niche to the preservation of the species living within it; second, it provides “another way to measure the strength of human biophilia” (114). He discusses the amazing aspects of life that make it so much more fascinating than the inanimate; it is a case he has been building, effectively, all book long. It is completely logical that our affinity is to the animate, to the living, rather than to the unloving, for there is nothing so universal that we could share and relate to than life itself. He cites the example of the deteriorating psychological health of astronauts in space; an inanimate world is mentally damaging. I found this example to be particularly compelling – take us out of our environment, take us away from life, and like every other species on the planet, we risk our own sanity, our own lives.

The second-to-last chapter is the summation of Wilson’s argument, plea and ideology: “The Conservation Ethic.” While biophilia is his central theme, it is essential to the conservation ethic. For, even discounting all the many selfless reasons there are for preserving life on this planet, biophilia is the single most compelling selfish reason to preserve life on this planet. Wilson provides stunning, shiver-inducing facts from 1984: “a conservative estimate of the current extinction rate is one thousand species a year. By the 1990’s the figure is expected to rise past ten thousand species a year (one species per hour)” (122). As I read that, I wondered whether his projection has proved correct…and yet, I fear the answer. Wilson is a scientist, and he uses scientific fact to fight this fight; he talks about – lists – the wide range of potential benefits from specific species that are as of yet untapped and diminishing at a rapid pace; he discusses the evolutionary attachment we have with other species; he provides the hard numbers on diminishing ecosystem sizes and the proportionate effect they have on their populations; he responds directly to the selfishness argument by affirming the goals of life to necessarily be the goals of humanity. Nonetheless, this chapter is especially eloquent, especially passionate, and especially convincing. It seems as if it is Wilson’s own reconciliation with the humanities; the very reconciliation he argues is necessary for a true understanding of what it means to be human. It is the summation of a love for life that Wilson argues throughout the book and defines by biophilia; it is the natural love of existence and co-existence. The last questions Wilson asks is perhaps the most tragic to consider, knowing, in many ways, the probable response is no: “Is it possible that humanity will love life enough to save it?” (145).

Wilson closes the book by returning to Surinam, as I mentioned he would; I almost wish he didn’t - what he has to say is damn near heartbreaking. Rather than attempt to describe what I haven’t seen, I will let Wilson’s words describe what he has:

Bernhardsdorp has changed strikingly since my visit in 1961…someone has erected Coca Cola signs and a billboard with the national coat of arms…the bulldozer came: the forest has been mostly cleared, leaving behind a scattering of palms and second-growth edge thickets. …I will remember Bernhardsdorp as a special place, a portal to far-reaching dreams. To the south stretches Surinam eternal, Surinam serene, a living treasure awaiting assay.

I believe this was an excellent, verily powerful book; Wilson’s expertise lent enormous weight to his words, his eloquence and humor enhanced them. The profoundness of his ideas, namely biophilia itself, I found to be as astounding as it is true. The evidence, as he has shown, is plentiful; moreover, I need little evidence to be convinced of something I feel myself. We are living creatures; I, for one, would rather have an affinity to life than death, and am glad to have an attachment to life. An irreverence to that attachment, to biophilia, betrays an ignorance to the biological foundations of life and to the universal condition that is life. We can speak to humanity as much as we wish, and we should, but we will still always be a part of life, never its master. It is a profound idea I have always believed in, but never really considered enough to vocalize – perhaps I, too, have become “biophilic”.