Edward O. Wilson was born in Birmingham, Alabama in 1929. Later he moved to the Mobile Bay Delta area where his attention turned to snakes. He eventually received a BS and MS from The University of Alabama and then his PhD from Harvard - all in biology.

More than just a biologist, E(ward) O. Wilson is the founder of sociobiology, a synthesis of standard biological principles with the inclusion of sociological concepts, implying that the science of biology would then try to take things from the more rudimentary level to try and explain human nature.

In general E.O.'s scientific career has been, when not focued on insects and other creepy crawlies, geared toward the unity of knowledge. To this end is his Pulitzer-prize winning book, Consilience (©1998; ISBN:0-679-76867-x). The book does a good job of showing how the sciences weave into and out of the humanities and social sciences from the prospective of a scientist. However, as a memeber of both the scientific and humanistic camps, I often find the conversation lop-sided and somewhat heavy-handed. The fact is though that E.O. is a scientist and firmly believes in the power of science to do all. This is for the reader to consider.

Other books by E.O. Wilson are:

* Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge

* Naturalist

* The Diversity of Life

* The Ants

* Biophilia

* On Human Nature

* Sociobiology: The New Synthesis

* The Insect Societies

describes him as a researcher from the endangered field of "birdsy-woodsy" biology. Indeed, Edward O. Wilson has gone through experiences that most other scientists have not gone through, perhaps giving him a position to synthesize knowledge. He grew up in the deeply religious Southeast and read the Bible two times. He merely matriculated at the , upon where the professor intrduced him to a book by , which sparked his interest in evolution and led his path to religious doubt (although he continues to respect religion). And this is what he does in his landmark book, named "Sociobiology - the new Synthesis". Throughout his life, he becomes an advocate of synthesis. This idea is carried on later on in his book . One might find it interesting that ants were his original field of research => and that with such a categorical research field, there had to be a synthesizer somewhere.

Interestingly enough, everything2.com is centered on one of E.O Wilson's ideas, directly or not. In his book , E.O Wilson identifies the need for a unit of culture for the reduction of the social sciences to the hard sciences. He calls this unit of culture the "node", and distinguishes the word from the Dawkinian neologism . The "node" is the smallest unit of culture, upon which higher orders of connections between nodes exist.

He happens to be one of the founders of one of the competing sects of neo-Darwinism. One of the sects consisted of the neo-Marxists and , the other of him, , and . While he is careful to distance himself from , he became a victim of highly charged attacks from neo-Marxist liberals.

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