I originally picked up this book for UT’s Annual Reading Round-Up for freshmen, but never finished it after my discussion group with a professor got cancelled. As I started rereading the book, the author, famed biologist Edward O. Wilson who is often called “Darwin’s heir”, passed away. The book is generally pretty interesting, and since Wilson’s most famous work is on ants, there’s a lot to learn about social evolution from them (thought most of it not practical for humans to apply to their personal lives). It’s a pretty short read which recaps how humanity potentially evolved to our dominance on Earth, and how we should not enter the Anthropocene, an age of history where only humans matter. We should protect biodiversity on our planet rather than focusing only on our own existence.

Wilson ponders what the meaning of human existence is. He explores that the meaning comes from the “accidents of history, not the intentions of a designer”. He states that the humanities describes the human condition, while science encompoasses the more general meaning of human existence. He argues that the meaning of human existence then comes down to what created the human species, and that it was random events during evolution led to where we are today, not predestination. Wilson evaluates the nuances to natural selection and evolution to examine the “Anthropocene Epoch”, detailing how humanity’s social behaviors are what differentiated us from most other species.

In particular, he contrasts kin selection, where an individual being altruistic tends to benefit its close relatives (and thus preserves some of their genes) to multilevel selection, where natural selection occurs between individuals within a group and between groups. Wilson is one of the originators of multilevel selection, and claims that this belief has been gaining popularity, though does have staunch detractors such as Richard Dawkins. Wilson claims that this multilevel selection enhanced the social intelligence of Homo sapiens, and led to our dominance on earth. Unrelated, but this work was what motivated genetic and evolutionary algorithms which I previously worked on, so it was interesting to read about the biological origins and debates that took place to develop these theories.

Whereas other animals have amazing sensory capabities, we need instruments to measure most forms of stimuli. Humans, however, are narcistic about themselves, and this anthropocentricity lets almost every human be a genius in understanding complex social cues to cooperate, bond, gossip, and control. We even create animal caricatures to attach meaning human-like emotions to non-human entities.