Genesis: The Deep Origin of Societies Hardcover – March 19, 2019

Mother Earth has reclaimed one of her most outstanding servants…on 26 December of last year. Dr. E. O. Wilson put together a professional career of unparalleled stature during his 92 years on Earth. The book under review here, Genesis: The Deep Origin of Societies, was published in 2019, but not long ago I finally read it. This fine small volume was followed by another work I reviewed at this site as well, i.e., Tales from the Ant World, published in 2020. Whether we will see a posthumous work from his pen remains to be seen, but in the years leading up to his death, Wilson was putting out about a book a year. Nonetheless, the writing of this review provides me an opportunity to not only provide a summary of his views on the evolution of eusociality, but also a review of his accomplishments throughout his long career. The career first. Another Wilson (by the way, I am not related to E. O. Wilson), i.e., David Sloan Wilson published a long piece entitled “The Six Legacies of Edward O. Wilson.” This Wilson identified and explored what he considers the major contributions of E. O. Wilson to our knowledge and understanding of the world about us, both the natural part and that occupied by our own species. These contributions (or legacies, if you will) are as follows: (1) his contributions to evolutionary biology; (2) his contributions to the conservation of biodiversity; (3) his contributions to a sociobiology that includes humans; (4) his contributions to the unification of knowledge; (5) his encouraging stance toward young scientists and other learners; and the new frontier he was working on at the time of his death, i.e., ecosystems. Interested readers might wish to find D. S. Wilson’s essay online or read a summary of it as published in Nautilus Magazine. I can do no more here than to point out the principal book-length works that are exemplary of Wilson’s six legacies. Interested readers can find these titles elsewhere at the amazon.com site. The five books thus far published and their dates of publication are: (1) The Theory of Island Biogeography (1967); The Diversity of Life (1992); (3) Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (1975); (4) Consilience (1998); and (5) Letters to a Young Scientist (2014). These titles are my choices as exemplary of his contributions in these areas, not necessarily those of David Sloan Wilson. These choices include only some of his most significant work and do not mention, for example, his major work in myrmecology, the study of ants, his chosen field of expertise. As an example of such work is the Pulitzer-prize-winning book he coauthored with Bert Hölldobler, simply titled The Ants. In the final analysis, we are not likely to see this sort of gentleman pass our way again soon, if ever.The book under review is relatively short, encompassing only 153 pages. The size of the book is stretched a bit by the inclusion of several pages devoted to a few sentences. For example, and of significance to the overall subject of the book, is the following information: “Eusociality, the organization of a group into reproductive and nonreproductive castes, occurred in only a tiny percentage of evolving lines, then relatively late in geological time, and almost entirely on land. Yet these few, leading to the ants, termites, and humans, have come to dominate the terrestrial animal world” (pg. 76). This book deals in fact with the evolution of eusociality, the pinnacle of the overall phenomenon of social evolution, which Wilson explored in several earlier books, including Sociobiology: The New Synthesis, mentioned above. The centerpiece of Genesis is a listing and discussion of the six so-called “great transitions of evolution,” i.e., organismic evolution. These stages are: (1) the origin of life; (2) the invention of complex (“eukaryotic”) cells; (3) the invention of sexual reproduction, leading to a controlled system of DNA exchange and the multiplication of species; (4) the origin of organisms composed of multiple cells; (5) the origin of societies; and, finally, (6) the origin of language. I will leave it to the reader to pursue these subjects in Wilson’s book, but be prepared to expand the reading to include others of Wilson’s prodigious works, and, generally, a study of the subject known as biology. The enforced confinement brought about by the coronavirus endemic might provide some of the time necessary for this sort of academic undertaking. This sort of reading might be best undertaken by people who have advanced professional degrees, but any intellectually curious person can gain great benefit from reading Genesis, as well as the ancillary reading.A question of interest to many readers, I think, is given that Wilson includes humans among the eusocial creatures (see the definition above), then what evidence do we show of having gone through these various stages of evolution on our way to our current perilous position on the planet? Obviously humans are living organisms and thus exemplify the first stage identified in the previous paragraph. Life is generally defined by biologists by virtue of what living things do, rather than what they are (see the biology textbook called Campbell’s Biology (now in its 12th edition). Living things exhibit the following features: (1) order; (2) evolutionary adaptation; (3) energy processing; (4) growth and development; (4) regulation; response to the environment; and (5) reproduction. Humans clearly are characterized by these features of life. Humans are eukaryotic organisms, i.e., they are composed of cells that enclose membrane-bound organelles, such as DNA-containing nuclei and mitochondria, and, thus, illustrate the second great transition. Humans reproduce sexually and have two genders, male and female. Males produce sperm and female eggs, which carry out the production of an embryo carried to full-term in the body of the female. Such, after all, is a bit obvious. Humans are also obviously multicellular and, beyond that, have these cells organized into tissues, organs, and organ systems. The reader can simply look at his or her outside and find the outer layer of the integumentary system. I took a break for lunch while writing this review, so I am now employing my digestive system to deal with what I consumed. And so, it goes. Humans are also obviously social animals. Societies are defined as consisting of members of the same species living in a multigenerational group that exhibits communication and cooperation (see the splendid text Biology: Concepts and Applications by Starr, Evers, and Starr). Finally, humans clearly are able to use language. This is what I am doing in this review. I am typing on a laptop computer using the English language. By language, Wilson means (pg. 38), a system of “words and symbols invented and assigned arbitrary meaning, then combined to create an infinite variety of messages…The messages generate stories, imagined and real, variously from all times past, present, and future.” Anyone reading this review obviously has a past (it takes time to learn how to read in any language), a present (he or she is reading this review now), and a future (if you don’t finish reading it today, you can do so tomorrow). Such a person can also understand the words and symbols I used in writing this review in American English.One characteristic of eusociality some readers might find peculiar as applied to humans is the matter of having both reproductive and nonreproductive castes, analogous to the queen, workers, and soldiers of termite societies. So, what nonreproductive castes exist in human societies. Wilson indicates (pg. 69) that “the strongest evidence is the postmenopausal ‘caste’ of grandmother helpers.” Grandmothers (and grandfathers who no longer reproduce) stay around after their own reproduction has concluded to help their own offspring and the offspring of those people. Such was certainly the case in my own life. Even though these people are all gone from the Earth now, they still occupy a favored place in my memory and among the family photographs displayed in my home. Wilson also mentions certain monastic order among organized religions around the world (members of the Catholic priesthood, for example). He also points out that given that homosexuality has at least a partly genetic basis that this group of people might also qualify as members of a nonreproductive caste, although, obviously, unlike the sterile workers of an ant or termite society, such people are still able to reproduce were they to choose to do so.Another feature of eusociality discussed by Wilson is altruism. This phenomenon gave earlier biologists intellectual fits, inasmuch as it seems to run counter to the idea of natural selection, as developed by Charles Darwin and his intellectual descents. So, Wilson briefly discusses how this tendency of individuals to serve society and cease to reproduce can be continued evolutionarily. This problem bothered the inestimable Darwin, but he explained it by invoking a phenomenon we now call group selection. Finding out about this process is another good reason to read this book. I’ll leave it to the other readers to do this.In the final analysis, I highly recommend a reading and a study of this book. With Dr. Wilson’s passing, the world has darkened quite a bit for me, although he admittedly lived a long and amazingly valuable life. He was long a mentor to me, although we never met and rarely communicated directly. I will be continuing to study his work and referring to it in my own I expect for as long as I have left. I hope that the humans he left behind will finally learn the many lessons he taught through his life and work. In a very large sense, Mother Earth depends on E. O. Wilson to teach the lessons that will allow the mother we all have to continue to thrive and support us and the rest of the diversity of life on this splendid planet.

In "Genesis," Wilson takes on what few would dare approach—a description of the evolutionary history of society. Even more astonishing, he reveals this prodigious theory in plain English and in just 150 pages. This is E. O. Wilson at his best; revealing deep history and the origins of humanity simply and elegantly. In doing so, he gives us an alternative to the usual explanations of humankind that have been “enslaved by religious and political dogma.” In this short but profound book, Wilson astutely describes how natural selection has likely driven the evolution of eusocial species, or societies, including our own. And, as he notes, the evolution of language, science, and philosophical thought has made humans the de facto stewards of the biosphere; but, “can we muster the moral intelligence to fulfill this role?” R.C. Brusca (author of "In the Land of the Feathered Serpent. A Novel" and a dozen other books)

Genesis: the deep origin of societies.Edward O. Wilson2019Liveright Pub. Co. (W.W. Norton & Co.)153 pp$15.88Reviewed by Clara B. Jones, Ph.D.Social evolution is an important topic of investigation by behavioral ecologists and evolutionary biologists. The two categories of sociality, cooperation and altruism (Hamilton 1964), have arisen infrequently across animal groups because, in propitious environmental regimes, group-level coordination and control is usually derailed by “cheaters” who fail to comply with group norms. As Wilson pointed out in 1971, groups of cooperators and altruists characterize the most “successful” (i.e., widely distributed) extant terrestrial taxa—social insects and humans. In his new book, Genesis [sic], the entomologist, America's premier social biologist, assesses the emergence of eusociality, the highest social “grade” (Wilson 1971). Perhaps the primary contribution of this brief book is that Wilson classifies humans as eusocial, a system characterized by overlap of generations, cooperative brood-care, and non-reproductive "helpers." If Wilson is correct, humans would be classified, "primitively" eusocial (Wilson, 1971), since most human "helpers" (except post-menopausal females or other sterile persons) are expected to be "totipotent"—"helpers" capable of independent reproduction, able to reverse their non-reproductive status. Members of permanently sterile “castes,” are labeled, “advanced” eusocial (Wilson, 1971), and Wilson's treatments in this book suggest to me that he might be inclined to label permanently non-reproductive human groups as “caste”-like.The first five chapters of Genesis include limited explications of some topics (e.g., “multi-level” selection, “phenotypic plasticity”). Wilson clearly explains that the conceptual frameworks of Genesis are Maynard Smith & Szathmáry's (1995) classic treatment of “major transitions of evolution,” as well as, “multi-level” and “group selection,” terms used interchangeably. In Chapter 6, Wilson appears to be primarily interested in proffering a defense for Charles Darwin's explanation for the evolution of sterile castes—an argument based on group selection which Wilson defines as follows: "...within groups, selfish individuals win against altruists, but groups of altruists beat groups of selfish individuals" [attributed to David Sloan Wilson]. Here and throughout the book, Wilson fails to incorporate the ecological literature showing, for example, that intragroup competition is generally stronger than intergroup competition or that behavioral ecologists have, since the early 1990s, advanced general criteria for the evolution of cooperative groups (Emlen 1982) and of eusociality (e.g., Crespi 1994; also see, Choe & Crespi 1997). More specifically, Wilson fails to cite other researchers who have advanced the idea that humans are eusocial (e.g., Foster & Ratnieks 2005, Jones 2011, Crespi 2014). Nonetheless, combined with related studies (e.g., Emlen 1982, Emlen 1984, Hrdy 2011), there seems to be an expanding literature justifying systematic and quantitative investigation of eusociality in humans, in particular, and in vertebrates, broadly, including, standardization of terminology, experiments, and modeling (e.g., “agent-based” modeling). For an early, published paper that might generate ideas for these future projects, Lotka (1928) is suggested.The final chapter (7), titled, “The human story,” reviews “transitions” to eusociality across apes, from chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), as well as, bonobos (P. paniscus) continuing to Australopithecus and the Homo line. Unlike other chapters, this one emphasizes the importance of ecological factors (habitat) for the evolution of social mechanisms among hominids and their ancestors, and Wilson endorses the “social brain hypothesis” as well as the importance of fire for the “rapid evolution” of large brains and the facilitation of group-life, respectively—as well as, their consequent adaptations. Interestingly, in this chapter (p 114), the author compares human eusociality to other social mammals, in particular, African wild dogs, demonstrating that he is prepared to classify “other mammal species,” eusocial, in addition to the social mole rats.Wilson does not dismiss “kin selection;” but, he holds that “multi-level” or “group” selection is the primary driver of the route to eusociality, behind which kin effects may follow. Most social biologists are certain to be surprised to read Wilson's claims that "Hamilton's Rule" suffers "fatal weaknesses" and is no longer "useful." Wilson does not support these flippant statements with mainstream literature about which there is wide consensus in favor of Hamilton's Rule, and nowhere in his text does he assess assumptions underlying considerations of differential benefits to recipients of social behavior (cooperation or altruism) or differential costs to "donors," terms subsumed in Hamilton's Rule (see, for example, Bourke 2011, Marshall 2015). Related to this, Wilson all but completely avoids optimality [cost-benefit] thinking, and social biologists will, I think, find his explication of group selection obfuscating when applied to genetics, including the assertion that population geneticists have shown the verity of group selection. Nonetheless, researchers, including, evolutionary psychologists, human biologists, and anthropologists, will derive many testable hypotheses from Wilson's claims, among the more provocative of them, the statement that division of labor by human professional categories is evidence of eusociality and group selection. I am led to wonder if some human guilds might be characterized by high r (coefficient of relationship), a possibility that would be easy to test.In service to economy, organization, and clarity, Genesis might have been more wisely presented as a "tight" technical paper rather than a manifesto in book form, though Wilson deserves to be applauded for advancing bold ideas, for insisting that human social behavior be subjected to the same analyses that we apply to non-human animals, and that, ultimately, evolutionary explanations will need to be "gene-centered," a long-standing hallmark of Wilson's approach (e.g., Wilson 1975) and that of the heralded evolutionary biologist, Robert Trivers (see Trivers 1985). I recommend this creative and controversial text to specialists, students, and the general audience. It will raise many questions, stimulate thought, and, hopefully, generate conversations and research about variations in human socio-sexual units, as well as, the origins and evolution, the causes and consequences, of group life across all vertebrates.ReferencesBourke AFG (2011) Principles of social evolution. Oxford University Press, Oxford.Choe JC, Crespi BJ (1997) The evolution of social behavior in insects and arachnids. Cambridge University Press, London.Crespi BJ (1994) Three conditions for the evolution of eusociality: are they sufficient? Insectes Sociaux 41(4): 395-400.Crespi BJ (2014) The insectan apes. Human Nature 25(1): 6-27.Emlen ST (1982) The evolution of helping I: an ecological constraints model. American Naturalist 119: 29-39.Emlen ST (1984) Cooperative breeding in birds and mammals. Pp 305-339 in Behavioral ecology an evolutionary approach, 2nd ed. (JR Krebs, NB Davies, eds.). Sinauer, Sunderland, MA.Foster KR, Ratnieks FLW (2005) A new eusocial vertebrate? Trends in Ecology and Evolution 20(7): 363-364.Hamilton WD (1964) The genetical evolution of social behavior. Journal of Theoretical Biology 7: 1-52.Hrdy SB (2011) Mothers and others. Belknap-Harvard.Jones CB (2011). Are humans cooperative breeders? A call for research. Archives of Sexual Behavior 40(3): 479-481.Lotka AJ (1928) Sterility in American marriages. PNAS 14(1): 99-108.Marshall JAR (2015) Social evolution and inclusive fitness theory: an introduction. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ.Maynard Smith J, Szathmáry E (1995) The major transitions of evolution. W.H. Freeman Spektrum, New York.Trivers RL (1985) Social evolution. Benjamin-Cummings Pub. Co., San Francisco.Wilson EO (1971) The insect societies. Belknap/Harvard, Cambridge, MA.----(1975) Sociobiology. Belknap/Harvard, Cambridge, MA.Clara B. Jones is a retired behavioral ecologist living in Silver Spring, MD (USA). Among other works, she is author of The evolution of mammalian sociality in an ecological perspective (2014, Springer, NY).