Review article
A NATURALIST IN A TECHNICAL SOCIETY: ENVIRONMENTAL IDEAS OF EDWARD O. WILSON
Tomislav Markus
Abstract
The author analyzes environmental, the founder of socio‐biology and one of more prominent evolutional biologists
during the last thirty years. The environmental crisis has been interpreted by Wilson as a theory of bio‐cultural discontinuity,
i.e. as a too large gap between our evolutional heritage and inadequate social environment. People are optimally
and genetically adapted to Pleistocene living conditions, in small tribal communities and wild organic environment,
and have big problems in adapting to essentially different conditions of (modern) civilisation. Wilson argues in favour
of developing anthropocentric and environmental ethics, which would acknowledge genetic foundations of human needs
for living organic world (biophilia) and recognise human evolutional continuity along with other species. Wilson’s
arguments are marked with deep inconsistency, because he, like many other evolutional biologists, tried to harmonize
darwinistic evolutionalism and liberal humanism. His endeavour to defend the myth of progress and to transform
evolutional theory into a quasi‐scientific myth on progress is the expression of ethnocentric prejudices. Wilson’s
environmental theory remains a significant contribution to modern environmental debates and is in contradiction with
the humanist orientation that supports the priority of cultural adaptation, and ignores biological continuity and genetic
foundation of human behaviour.
Keywords
Edward O. Wilson; darwinistic evolutionalism; theory of bio‐cultural discontinuity; environmental crisis; Pleistocene heritage; standard model of social disciplines
Hrčak ID:
9127
URI
Publication date:
20.12.2005.
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