Environmental reawakening is key change

Wilson movie biography prompts discussion of future naturalists

By Alvin Powell

Harvard News Office

Society’s recent environmental reawakening is likely an enduring shift in attitudes toward humankind’s relationship with the world around it, Pellegrino University Professor Emeritus Edward O. Wilson said Monday night (Dec. 10).

Wilson acknowledged that the view was an optimistic, personal one, but it was echoed by another panelist who joined Wilson at the Science Center Monday. Pediatrician T. Berry Brazelton, clinical professor of pediatrics emeritus, said society has reached a tipping point where the prevailing anti-environmental view of the past few years is finally changing.

Brazelton and Wilson spoke at a retrospective on Wilson’s life and prospective look at creating future naturalists hosted by the Harvard Museum of Natural History. The event featured the New England premiere of Neil Patterson’s biographical movie about Wilson’s life, titled “Naturalist.” The movie’s television premiere is scheduled for Earth Day next spring on the public television program “Nova.”

Following the movie, Wilson, Brazelton, and Harvard junior Anna Marie Chen spoke about how to inspire a new generation of naturalists during a talk moderated by Museum of Comparative Zoology Director James Hanken, the Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology.

In both the film and the talk afterward, Wilson, 78, showed his continuing enthusiasm for his exploration of the Earth’s biodiversity. In response to a question, Wilson said he wishes he had another 50 years to continue his work.

The movie was a 30-minute museum version of the longer production that will be shown on television.

The movie details how Wilson became interested in entomology, through which he became interested in broader questions about biology. As a boy in Alabama, Wilson roamed the woods near his home, getting to know the forests’ different inhabitants. A freak fishing accident damaged the sight in one eye, an occurrence that steered Wilson toward the study of invertebrates, specifically ants.

During his career, Wilson filled in many gaps in science’s understanding of ants, including their use of chemicals to communicate. Wilson used the insights he gained to make broader conclusions about the nature of life.

Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the current increase in global extinctions, Wilson said in the film, is how little we know about life on Earth. With about 1.8 million species described, humans have named just a fraction of the species on Earth, estimated at between 10 million and 100 million, 99 percent of which are smaller than the eye can see.

“It’s like being a doctor and trying to diagnose an illness but only knowing 10 percent of the organs in the body,” Wilson said in the film.

If he had it to do all over again, Wilson said, he’d be a microbial ecologist, studying microscopic life in its natural habitat.

Chen, the president of the Organismic and Evolutionary Biology Undergraduates Group, said she was inspired to pursue her interest in the natural world by her parents, particularly her father, an engineer who answered her many questions about the world around her. A native of San Diego, she spent time examining life in tide pools along the California coast, and also often visited the San Diego Zoo.

Chen said her interactions with Harvard faculty, especially Jonathan Losos and his course on lizards of the Caribbean, have just inspired her to push further into the field.

“I constantly get re-excited about science,” Chen said.

Both Brazelton and Wilson said that it’s essential that parents convey their own passion for nature to their children to get them inspired about the world around them. Brazelton decried violent video games and what he called the overprogramming of today’s youth, saying what’s missing is time to explore and grow curious about the natural world.

“We need to rethink what we’re doing,” Brazelton said.

The movie detailed Wilson’s current efforts to inspire people about the world around him. One effort entails “bio blitzes” in which groups of people converge on a single location — the film showed one in New York’s Central Park — to document as many species as possible in 24 hours. A second is an online “encyclopedia of life,” launched last spring that over the next 10 years aims to create a multimedia page for all 1.8 million known species on Earth.

alvin_powell@harvard.edu