Happy 80th birthday EO Wilson!

June 10, 2009

Every day that passes, I am more emotionally, spiritually, taken by the depth and beauty of understanding that science has given us in the last 400 years since its inception. I think often about how important the sciences, and the love of the sciences, are to our future as humans on this planet. My main interest in working on a TV show such as Time Warp is in its potential to help us all see the beauties that science can reveal. My inspiration in this wouldn't exist without guys like EO Wilson.

Today is EO Wilson's 80th birthday. Wilson began with research into ant behavior [and superorganism behavior], which later spread into studies of sociobiology, which attempts to show that social behaviors have evolved because of the evolutionary advantages those behaviors may have. In some sense, it says that 'human nature' is a real phenomenon - contrary to the previous belief that the mind starts as a blank slate.

Like many great science thinkers and writers, Wilson was led to these gigantic game-changing ideas based on very specific research done with ants. Wilson has ants and ant behavior, Dawkins has genetics, Sagan has astronomy. The greater success seems to come from very focused work in a specific field - after decades of this work, we see how these thinkers realized that their specific research resonated cosmically - that the patterns emerging in a very specific context, were indeed patterns reflected in many aspects of our universe.  The self-similarites inherent in the universe are mind-boggling indeed. And we'll never know where they will arise, without looking deeply enough into a specific topic to see how it abstracts.

Below is a video with EO Wilson. It's beautiful to see how the natural childhood passions, which I believe are inherent in all of us, when promoted and allowed to be set free, can continue forever - the curiosity that evolved in us over hundreds of millions of years, to allow us to better master our environments, wants to keep us kids throughout our lives. Our fears about the future can only stunt its growth. I am constantly inspired by people such as EO Wilson - if I can do anything on this show, it is to try to spread the passion that has been given to me through exposure to these people. It is contagious.