Tag Archives: E.O. Wilson

The Deeper Meaning of the Anthropocene

TheSublime1938

Last year when I wrote a review of E.O. Wilson’s book The Meaning of Human Existence I felt sure it would be the then 85  year old’s last major work. I was wrong having underestimated Professor Wilson’s already impressive intellectual stamina. Perhaps his latest book Half-Earth: Our Planet’s Fight for Life  is indeed his last, the final book that concludes the trilogy of The Social Conquest of Earth and the Meaning of Human Existence. This has less to do with his mental staying power ,which I will not make the mistake of underestimating again, than because it’s hard to imagine what might follow Half Earth, for with it Wilson has less started a conversation than attempted to launch a crusade.

The argument Wilson makes in Half Earth isn’t all that difficult to understand, and for those who are concerned with the health of the planet, and especially the well being of the flora and fauna with which we share the earth, might initially be hard to disagree with. Powerfully, Wilson reminds us that we are at the beginning of the sixth great extinction a mass death of species on par with other great dyings such as the one that killed the dinosaurs.

The difference between the mass extinction of our own time when compared to those that occurred in the past is that rather than being the consequence of mindless processes like a meteor strike or bacteria breathing poison, it is the result of the actions of a species that actually knows what it is doing- that is us. Wilson’s answer to the crisis we are causing is apparent in the very title of his book. He is urging us to declare half of the earth’s surface a wildlife preserve where large scale human settlement and development will be prohibited.

Any polemic such as the one Wilson has written requires an enemy, but rather than a take aim at the capitlist/industrial system, or the aspiration to endless consumption, Wilson’s enemy is a relatively new and yet to be influential movement within environmentalism that aims to normalize our perspective on the natural world.

Despite the fact he that definitely has a political and ideological target with which he takes umbrage being a scientist rather than a philosopher he fails to clearly define what exactly it is. Instead he labels anyone who holds doubts about the major assumptions of the environmental movement as believers in the “Anthropocene”- the idea that human beings have become so technologically powerful that we now constitute a geological force.
The problem with this is that Wilson’s beef is really only with a small subset of people who believe in the Anthropocene, indeed, Wilson himself seems to believe in it, which shows you just how confused his argument is.

The subset he opposes would include thinkers like Emma Marris or Jedediah Purdy who have been arguing that we need to untangle ourselves from ideas about nature that we inherited from 19th century romanticism. These concepts regarding the purity of the natural as opposed to the artificiality of the man made- the idea that not only is humanity distinct from nature but that anything caused by our agency is somehow unnatural- are now both ubiquitous and have become the subject of increasing doubts.

While mass extinction is certainly real and constitutes an enormous tragedy, it does not necessarily follow that the best way to counter such extinction is to declare half of the earth off limits to humans. Much better for both human and animal welfare would be to make the human artifice more compatible with the needs of wildlife. Though the idea of a pure, wild and natural place free from human impact, and above all dark and quiet, is one I certainly understand and find attractive, our desire that it exist is certainly much less a matter of environmental science than a particular type of spiritual desire.

As Daniel Duane pointed out in a recent New York Times article the places we deem to be the most natural, that is the national parks, which have been put aside for the very purpose of preserving wilderness, are instead among the most human- managed landscapes on earth. And technology, though it can never lead to complete mastery, makes this nature increasingly easy to manage:

More and more, though, as we humans devour habitat, and as hardworking biologists — thank heaven — use the best tools available to protect whatever wild creatures remain, we approach that perhaps inevitable time when every predator-prey interaction, every live birth and every death in every species supported by the terrestrial biosphere, will be monitored and manipulated by the human hive mind.

Yet even were we to adopt Wilson’s half earth proposal whole cloth we would still face scenarios where we will want to act against the dictates of nature. There are, for instance , good arguments to intervene on behalf of, say, bats whose populations have been decimated by the white nose fungus or great apes who are threatened extinction as a consequence of viral infections. Where and why such interventions occur are more than merely scientific questions ,and they arise not from the human desire to undo the damage we have done, but from the damage nature inflicts upon herself.

From the opposite angle, climate change will not respect any artificial borders we establish between the natural and the human worlds. It seem clear that we have a moral duty to limit the suffering nature experiences as a consequence of our action or inaction. We are in the midst of discovering the burden of our moral responsibility. Perhaps this discovery points to a need to expand the moral boundaries of the Anthropocene itself.

Rather than abandoning or merely continuing to narrowly apply the idea of the Anthropocene to the environment alone, maybe we should extend it to embrace other aspects of human agency that have expanded since the birth of the modern world. For what has happened, especially since the industrial revolution, is that areas previously outside the human ability to effect through action have come increasingly not so much under our control as our ability to influence, both for good and ill.

It’s not just nature that is now shaped by our choices, that has become a matter of moral and political dispute, but poverty and hunger, along with disease. Some even now interpret death itself in moral and political terms. With his half earth proposal Wilson wants to do away with a world where the state of the biosphere has become a matter of moral and political dispute. This dismissal of human political capacity and rights seems to run like a red thread through Wilson’s thinking, and ends, as I have pointed out elsewhere, in treating human like animals in a game preserve.

Indeed, the American ideal of wilderness as an edenic world unsullied by the hands of man that Wilson wants to see over half the earth has had negative political consequences even in the richest of nations. The recent violent standoff in Oregon emerged out of the resentments of a West where the federal government owns nearly 50 percent of the land. Such resentments have made the West, which might culturally lean much differently, a bulwark of the political right. As Robert Fletcher and Bram Büscher have argued in Aeon Wilson’s prescription could result in grave injustices in the developing world against native peoples in the same way the demands of environmentalists for wilderness stripped of humans resulted in the violent expulsion of Native Americans from large swaths of the American West.

Eden, it seems, refuses to be reestablished despite our best efforts and intentions. Welcome to the Fall.

 

Edward O. Wilson’s Dull Paradise

Garden of Eden

In all sincerity I have to admit that there is much I admire about the biologist Edward O. Wilson. I can only pray that not only should I live into my 80’s, but still possess the intellectual stamina to write what are at least thought provoking books when I get there. I also wish I still have the balls to write a book with the title of Wilson’s latest- The Meaning of Human Existence, for publishing with an appellation like that would mean I wasn’t afraid I would disappoint my readers, and Wilson did indeed leave me wondering if the whole thing was worth the effort.

Nevertheless,  I think Wilson opened up an important alternative future that is seldom discussed here- namely what if we aimed not at a supposedly brighter, so-called post-human future but to keep things the same? Well, there would be some changes, no extremes of human poverty, along with the restoration of much of the natural environment to its pre-industrial revolution health. Still, we ourselves would aim to stay largely the same human beings who emerged some 100,000 years ago- flaws and all.

Wilson calls this admittedly conservative vision paradise, and I’ve seen his eyes light up like a child contemplating Christmas when using the word in interviews. Another point that might be of interest to this audience is who he largely blames for keeping us from entering this Shangri-la; archaic religions and their “creation stories.”

I have to admit that I find the idea of trying to preserve humanity as it is a valid alternative future. After all, “evolve or die” isn’t really the way nature works. Typically the “goal” of evolution is to find a “design” that works and then stick with it for as long as possible. Since we now dominate the entire planet and our numbers out-rival by a long way any other large animal it seems hard to assert that we need a major, and likely risky, upgrade. Here’s Wilson making the case:

While I am at it, I hereby cast a vote for existential conservatism, the preservation of biological human nature as a sacred trust. We are doing very well in terms of science and technology. Let’s agree to keep that up, and move both along even faster. But let’s also promote the humanities, that which makes us human, and not use science to mess around with the wellspring of this, the absolute and unique potential of the human future. (60)

It’s an idea that rings true to my inner Edmund Burke, and sounds simple, doesn’t it? And on reflection it would be, if human beings were bison, blue whales, or gray wolves. Indeed, I think Wilson has drawn this idea of human preservation from his lifetime of very laudable work on biodiversity. Yet had he reflected upon why efforts at preservation fail when they do he would have realized that the problem isn’t the wildlife itself, but the human beings who don’t share the same value system going in the opposite direction. That is, humans, though we are certainly animals, aren’t wildlife, in the sense that we take destiny into our own hands, even if doing so is sometimes for the worse. Wilson seems to think that it’s quite a short step from asserting it as a goal to gaining universal assent to the “preservation of biological human nature as a sacred trust”, the problem is there is no widespread agreement over what human nature even is, and then, even if you had such agreement, how in the world do you go about enforcing it for the minority who refuse to adhere to it? How far should we be willing to go to prevent persons from willingly crossing some line that defines what a human being is? And where exactly is that line in the first place? Wilson thinks we’re near the end of the argument when we only just took our seat at the debate.

Strange thing is the very people who would likely naturally lean towards the kind of biological conservatism that Wilson hopes “we” will ultimately choose are the sorts of traditionally religious persons he thinks are at the root of most of our conflicts. Here again is Wilson:

Religious warriors are not an anomaly. It is a mistake to classify believers of a particular religious and dogmatic religion-like ideologies into two groups, moderates versus extremists. The true cause of hatred and religious violence is faith versus faith, an outward expression of the ancient instinct of tribalism. Faith is the one thing that makes otherwise good people do bad things. (154)

For Wilson, a religious groups “defines itself foremost by its creation story, the supernatural narrative that explains how human beings came into existence.” (151)  The trouble with this is that it’s not even superficially true. Three of the world’s religions that have been busy killing one another over the last millennium – Judaism, Christianity and Islam all have the same creation story. Wilson knows a hell of a lot more about ants and evolution then he does about religion or even world history. And while religion is certainly the root of some of our tribalism, which I agree is the deep and perennial human problem, it’s far from the only source, and very few of our tribal conflicts have anything to do with the fight between human beings over our origins in the deep past. How about class conflict? Or racial conflict? Or nationalist conflicts when the two sides profess the not only the exact same religion but the exact same sect- such as the current fight between the two Christian Orthodox nations of Russia and Ukraine? If China and Japan someday go to war it will not be a horrifying replay of the Scopes Monkey Trial.

For a book called The Meaning of Human Existence Wilson’s ideas have very little explanatory power when it comes to anything other than our biological origins, and some quite questionable ideas regarding the origins of our capacity for violence. That is, the book lacks depth, and because of this I found it, well… dull.

Nowhere was I more hopeful that Wilson would have something interesting and different to say than when it came to the question of extraterrestrial life. Here we have one of the world’s greatest living biologists, a man who had spent a lifetime studying ants as an alternative route to the kinds of eusociality possessed only by humans, the naked mole rat, and a handful of insects. Here was a scientists who was clearly passionate about preserving the amazing diversity of life on our small planet.

Yet Wilson’s E.T.s are land dwellers, relatively large, biologically audiovisual, “their head is distinct, big, and located up front” (115) they have moderate teeth and jaws, they have a high social intelligence, and “a small number of free locomotory appendages, levered for maximum strength with stiff internal or external skeletons composed of hinged segments (as by human elbows and knees), and with at least one pair of which are terminated by digits with pulpy tips used for sensitive touch and grasping. “ (116)

In other words they are little green men.

What I had hoped was the Wilson would have used his deep knowledge of biology to imagine alternative paths to technological civilization. Couldn’t he have imagined a hive-like species that evolves in tandem with its own technological advancement? Or maybe some larger form of insect like animal which doesn’t just have an instinctive repertoire of things that it builds, but constantly improves upon its own designs, and explores the space of possible technologies? Or aquatic species that develop something like civilization through the use of sea-herding and ocean farming? How about species that communicate not audio-visually but through electrical impulses the way our computers do?

After all, nature on earth is pretty weird. There’s not just us, but termites that build air conditioned skyscrapers (at least from their view), whales which have culturally specific songs, and strange little things that eat and excrete electrons. One might guess that life elsewhere will be even weirder. Perhaps my problem with The Meaning of Human Existence is that it just wasn’t weird enough not just to capture the worlds of tomorrow and elsewhere- but the one we’re living in right now.

 

Republic of Insects


There is a scene in Plato’s socratic dialogue, Phaedo, in which Socrates and a handful of his followers are discussing reincarnation. Phaedo, by way of explanation, is a moving dialogue which discusses the topic of immortality. Part of what makes it so moving is that it occurs on the eve of Socrates’ execution by the Athenian democracy for practicing a form of philosophy that many Athenians felt was a threat to their very existence: questioning its gods, its morality, its way of life.

In the scene discussing reincarnation, Socrates is trying to argue that where the soul of an individual finds itself in the next life is directly tied to its virtue, or lack of virtue, practiced in its’ prior life. Classic karma: human beings who practice virtue, but not philosophy, during their lives will have the happiest of lives to follow of all but the philosophers. He defines the happiest life this way:

Socrates: “I suppose the happiest people, and those that reach the best destination, are the ones who have cultivated the goodness of an ordinary citizen, so-called ‘temperance’ and ‘justice’, which is acquired by habit and practice without the aid of philosophy and reason”.

Cebes: “How are they the happiest?”

Socrates: “Because they will probably pass into some kind of social and disciplined creature like bees, wasps, and ants; or even back into the human race again, becoming decent citizens.” (141) [emphasis added].

The fact that Socrates thinks the better part of humanity, again excluding the philosophers, who he thinks will get off the wheel of birth-death-rebirth permanently, will find themselves in the bodies of bees, wasps, or ants and not what we would more likely consider a more noble animal- say lions, or wolves, or some such thing, probably strikes most of us as odd. Maybe Socrates is having a little fun at Cebes expense, we might ask?  After all, why in the world would any good person, even if they weren’t a philosopher, want to live the life of an ant?

One person who might understand what Socrates (or Plato speaking for Socrates) was getting at, who might even want to, if only for a brief period of time, actually live the life of an ant (who in fact did, imaginatively, in a section of his novel, Anthill) is the famed biologist, E.O. Wilson, who has made the study of ants and other social insects his life passion.  But Wilson is not merely “the king of the ants” .

Wilson is a public intellectual of the first order bringing the findings of the biological sciences to a general readership since the late 1960s. A scientist with a deep respect for the arts, he has tried to bridge the gap between science and the humanities (Consilience), and science and religion (The Creation).

He has also not been without controversy, being the founder of the field of sociobiology that attempts to explain human behavior from the standpoint of genetics and evolution (Sociobiology & On Human Nature).  The effort to explain human behavior in terms of biology, which Wilson helped start back in the 1970s, quite rightly, engendered a period of spirited opposition given the horrors that had emerged from the Nazi embrace of biological and evolutionary theories regarding the nature and future of humanity only a generation before. In our own day, these debates appear to be largely forgotten, and sociobiology has proven able to hold its own against less biologically inclined schools of social thought. Wilson’s latest book, The Social Conquest of Earth, however, might have the unintended result of reigniting these controversies, and leads one to doubt if the dangers implicit in socio-biological thinking are not as potent as ever.

At 83, Wilson’s, Social Conquest, may be his last major work. Its ambition certainly makes it seem that way, for in his book, he not only offers a major (and controversial) revision of the theory of evolution, he sets out to explain humanity itself- its culture, religion, art, and good and evil duality- all within the context of his new evolutionary theory.

What he did not intend was to give us insight into the meaning of Utopia, especially the earliest and most powerful Utopia ever conceived- Plato’s Republic. With Utopia being one of the subjects with which this blog is mostly concerned, I will ultimately focus on that, but let me begin by explaining what Wilson was definitely trying to say with his Social Conquest.

This, with some simplifications, is the way Wilson tells his story: Socio-biologists have, since the beginning, attempted to explain animal, and much more so, human behavior, in reference to evolution. They were able to make great strides, but one problem kept popping up, the problem of “goodness”, or better, they had no ironclad way to explain why goodness, or to use the fancier phrase- altruism- was so prevalent in the natural world. To state the matter crudely:  If everything in nature was supposed to be about passing on genes, then why, do people help others when there is no clear reproductive benefit in doing so? Why do firemen rush into burning buildings to save children who are not their own?

Many socio-biologists thought they had the solution when they came up with an idea called “kin-selection”. The idea is that people help others because they share identical genes, or that such aid somehow contributes to passing on their genes. The firefighter seems to risk his own reproductive future, but is actually trying to save it because the children in the burning building are really his nieces and nephews. If they are not, in fact, his nieces and nephews perhaps he is “confused”: his idea that he should save them a kind of hold over from the period in history when human societies were so small that any children he knew would have likely been close relatives.

The problem for socio-biologists is that, although the theory seemed to hold up pretty well for almost all animal behavior, (cute pictures of mother dogs raising tiger cubs aside) there were a lot more anomalies to the theory of kin-selection than just the case of brave firefighters when it came to human beings. To give just a short list of examples: how does one explain any war above the tribal level,  or celibate classes such as priests, or homosexuality? Shouldn’t there be pretty strong evolutionary pressure for individuals to distinguish between who is a relative and who is not, and only sacrifice their own reproductive future for the former? Socio-biologists kept tying themselves in knots trying to explain why human beings just didn’t seem to act like the theory of kin-selection said they should act. Wilson, thinks he has figured out how to untie these knots, and he has done it, no surprises, by looking at bugs.

Things is, in addition to human beings, who socio-biologists had a devil of a time fitting into their model of kin-selection, there is a very small group of insects who similarly resisted explanation under that same model. These insects who resisted explanation under the theory of kin-selection are the so-called eusocial insects. In terms of insect species they are a mere handful among millions and are largely composed of the: ants, termites, bees, and wasps (which, with the exception of termites, are exactly the “social and disciplined” insects Plato seems to hold as analogous to humans in his Phaedo.) Though only a small number in terms of species, their biomass is rivaled only by us human beings.

What makes eusocial insects so unique is not only that these insects live in colonies, but that the vast majority of their colonies’ populations foregoes any sort of reproduction at all. Instead, individuals devote themselves to the survival and “prosperity” of the colony as a whole: something that not only throws those the kin-selection crowd for a loop, but appears impossible under the theory of evolution as currently understood.

Wilson thinks he has found the solution to this conundrum, and in the process to have uncovered the root of human nature as well. His solution is something called group-selection. The long and short of it is that eusocial groups are under evolutionary pressure to develop altruism internally and competition externally. Species that have obtained a high level of internal altruism are poised for a remarkable level of complexity, and scale. (If you doubt it just take a look at the Leaf Cutter Ant). More of their collection of genes survive, and therefore, while any particular “individual” is likely to take a reproductive hit by belonging to such a group, in the aggregate more genes survive.  Eusociality is, therefore, an extremely effective evolutionary strategy. The reason it is so rare is that it takes a very peculiar evolutionary path to reach it because it flies against the grain of the standard evolutionary imperative for the individual to reproduce at all costs. Wilson claims that we humans too are one of those rare species that exhibit this quality of eusociality.

In his Social Conquest, Wilson lays two parallel journeys followed through what he describes as an “evolutionary maze” to reach the improbable state of eusociality by both the social insects and ourselves. I will not go into the details, but needless to say, Wilson sees the same forces of group selection he identifies in the eusocial insects to be going on in us. Human groups do better against other human groups if their members are less selfish towards one another and willing to sacrifice even to the point of surrendering the opportunity to reproduce- for instance someone willing to risk their life, before having children, in war.

But, if Wilson proposes that we are restrained, even to the point of sainthood to those of our “tribe”,  he holds it is a moral free-for-all outside because we are evolutionarily wired to be aggressive against outsiders, for here our evolutionary, individualistic imperatives take precedence. Wilson sees these contrary pulls as the origin of the angel/demon duality that appears a defining feature of the human condition.

Wilson writes in The Social Conquest :

The dilemma of good and evil was created by multilevel selection, in which individual selection and group selection act together on the same individual but largely in opposition to each other. …

Group selection shapes instincts that tend to make individuals altruistic towards one another (but not towards members of other groups). Individual selection is responsible for much of what we call sin, while group selection is responsible for the greater part of virtue. Together they have created the conflict between the poorer and better angels of our nature. (241)

Here I think we can see some of Wilson’s Baptist upbringing shinning through. I have multiple objections to this reading of human morality, not the least of which is that most sins are committed against people we know. Bad husbands beat their wives, not the women in a neighboring village etc. Nor, is there mention at all in Wilson’s book that his theory is opposed by the majority of socio-biologists and is thus scientifically controversial.  But I will set these moral and scientific objections aside for I think Wilson has provided us with a very important window into the idea of Utopia, so let me continue with that.

There is no mention of Plato in The Social Conquest, nor does the word Utopia occur even once, though, both, certainly should. Plato, as I will try to show anticipates Wilson’s Eusocial theory by 2,500 or so years, and in turn has placed the conflict between “group and individual selection” at the heart of the Utopian tradition from its very inception.

To provoke flashbacks of your Philosophy 101 course in college; Plato’s Republic lays out the structure of what Plato believed to be the perfect state. Now, in what follows, I do not want to suggest that the Republic is merely some piece of ancient entomology projected onto human society- I am well aware that the Republic is much, much more than that. I am merely pointing out that Plato wants to resolve something like the eusociality/individual Selection conflict that Wilson draws our attention to. More than that, Plato wants to solve it once and for all and make the new society unchangeable, like a bug frozen in amber.  To identify and solve this problem Plato had many models available, and as the Phaedo quote above makes clear, one of these models Plato had on hand was an entomological one, and he even used it directly in the Republic as I will show in a minute.

The Republic imagines a three tiered society composed of philosopher-rulers, the Guardians, the military, Auxiliaries, and under them a much larger producer class which will contain artisans, farmers and the like. While it is unclear what exact arrangement obtains for the producing class, Plato achieves almost perfect eusociality for his Guardians/Auxiliaries (who because Guardians emerge from the Auxiliaries the two can be treated as one in most respects).

Individual selection, that is the tendency for individuals to chose in favor of the reproduction of themselves and their own genes, is completely stripped from the Guardians/Auxiliary class through the control of breeding- that is, the mates of  Guardians/Auxiliaries are chosen based on social rules and regulations for breeding the healthiest offspring- not based on the individual’s choice of or ability to win a mate. The genetic origin of children are hidden from the Guardians/Auxiliaries, so that they will not show particular favor to their own offspring, and private property among the Guardians/Auxiliaries is eliminated, again, so this class is discouraged from following individualistic ends.

This extremely cohesive eusocial class of Guardians/Auxiliaries sits on top of a much larger producer class, much like the queen sits atop an insect colony. It is clear that the survival/propagation of the Guardians is the main purpose of Plato’s social arrangement,
just as the insect queen is protected and provided for by warrior and worker insects.

Plato severely limits the size of ideal state, which leads one to wonder what will happen if the producer class grows too large as long as we assume that their breeding too is not regulated by the Guardians? The idea of the danger of “drones” is found throughout the Republic– indeed Plato characterizes the disintegration of the non-ideal state as a growth in the population of human drones. (Drones are insect members of a hive that contribute nothing to the hives’ overall well- being, indeed can attack and destroy the hive from which they get their sustenance.)  We can get an idea for what Plato’s Guardians/Auxiliaries will do with human drones who get too numerous, fail to produce, or engage in criminal behavior/rebellion in his advice to the statesman:

…. and the State-physician, or legislator, must get rid of them, just as the bee-master keeps the drones out of the hive (Republic, 507).

In my reading of it when the producers get too numerous, or when some producers refuse to work or rebel they will be expelled from the Republic, and one can expect that if for some reason they can’t be expelled they would likely face an even worse fate.

The eusociality which Plato discovered, perhaps in part by looking at the social organization of insects, has been a hallmark of many Utopias ever since. But one is left to wonder whether Plato, and now Wilson, have really articulated something true about the human societies or merely found an example, in the world of insects, of the kinds of perfectly hierarchical and harmonious societies they wish human beings lived in, and in the process imagined us as more like insects than is actually the case.

One should never forget that democracy effectively murdered Plato’s friend and mentor, and thus became the target of revenge for an unparalleled genius able to articulate compelling visions of its opposite. Wilson, for all his genteel reasonableness in a world of fanatical hotheads appears to be no fan of democracy. Writing to second the views of the mathematical theorist Herbert A. Simon, Wilson states in The Social Conquest:

…hierarchies work better than unorganized assemblages and that they are easier for their rulers to understand and manage.  Put another way, you cannot expect success if assembly-line workers vote at executive conferences or enlisted men plan military campaigns” (99)

Such a statement might not amount to any kind of anti-democratic claim against Wilson, after all, even the most participatory form of democracy ever known, Plato’s Athens, thought experts should direct certain areas of human life, though they judged areas where true expertise existed, and thus should be deferred to, to be quite limited. But, given that the word “democracy” appears not even once in The Social Conquest, given that Wilson only mentions ancient Athens in the context of their brutal massacre of the Milesians, we might reasonably start to have our doubts.

Accusations that Wilson was misapplying what he had learned from his thoughtful gaze into the alien world of insects onto the much more complex society of human beings, and by such  simplifications was implicitly providing a naturalistic justification for the most insidious, if not necessarily most brutal, forms of hierarchical control and oppression, are nothing new and have been around since the 1970s.

Sadly, what may very well be Wilson’s last great work has done nothing to dispel such suspicions.

* Explanation for the picture above: According to Greek Mythology the Myrmidons (or “ant-people”, also “ants-nest”. ), according to one legend, were a people created when Zeus took the form of an ant and seduced the Princess Phthia. The Myrmidons were a fierce warrior-people, and their name later came to mean “a loyal follower, especially one who executes orders without question, protest, or pity – unquestioning followers.”

The illustration above is a science-fiction style rendering of a Myrmidon by the artist Russell M. Hossain.