>> Recorded Message: From the Library of Congress in Washington, DC: >> Please welcome Professor Edward O. Wilson. [ Applause ] >> Edward O. Wilson: Thank you. [ Background Noise ]. >> Thank you so much [inaudible]. And thank you all for coming. This has been a wonderful day for me. I'm sure it has been for you, if you could stand the Washington heat. [ Laughter ] >> I would, I think, most appropriately address the writing, and meaning, and the goals, that I had been writing a novel for the first time in my life. After the first book I wrote, after 43 years of non-fiction, more than 25 books, and after 42 years at Harvard, teaching undergraduates in science, its evolutionary [inaudible] biology, I decided to venture across the great boundary of the creative arts -- into the creative arts, and write a novel. I think it's a fairly rare thing for a scientist, particularly a lifelong scientist, to make that journey, to take that dare, to undergo that risk. Because more than one critic, most of them have been friendly, a critic has said, I risked a lot by doing that, and now I want to tell you why I did it. But first before I do, I'll tell you a broad outline of the -- give you a broad outline of that book, Anthill , published March of this year. The story is really basically a coming of age story of a young boy in Alabama, south Alabama, I guess, that part is autobiographical. And I should add right now that one of my reasons for writing it was, after being away from Alabama for 60 years where I grew up; I wanted to go home. I can't pick up and leave Harvard right away, so I take frequent visits there, and I decided to write and film, that's one of the motivations for writing it. And I have just finished a history of Mobile in collaboration with one of America's great photographers, Alex Harris [assumed spelling]. We will bring that out next year in which I celebrate, and also present very frank pictures in the history of Mobile from Desoto [assumed spelling] to the Oil Spill. I've enjoyed writing that, and that brought me back home. But one of the main reasons that I undertook to write this book was with Harper Lee in mind, and I incidentally recently was able to visit Harper in her home in Monroeville, not Nell Harper Lee, she does not see many visitors. But I managed to get in there. We had a wonderful talk. I had heard my -- just 50 years ago, she published, To Kill a Mockingbird , and it had an enormous impact, in part because it's an extraordinarily good book... [ Laughter ] >> ...and an extraordinarily good movie was made of it. But also it came at the cusp of the Civil Rights Movement. And it brought, in novelistic form, to vivid clarity what the difficulties were that faced the South, and its deep divisions. Now [inaudible] coming out of that. And now we have entered a new crisis of which southerners are only vaguely aware. And that crisis is the reckless destruction of their environment, of many of their expendable, nonexpendable, non-replaceable resources to be sure, including not least the water; but also the precious natural environments that they have inherited which include the species for species first where meter, the richest botanical environment in numbers of species of any place on the northern hemisphere. And I'll be not many of you know what that is. It's the picture plant logs that are sprinkled throughout the South, with as many as 70 species of plants all crowded together in one square meter, beating anything in a tropical rain forest. But the South has so much else in it: the great long leaf pine savannah that once covered 60% of the [inaudible] of the South, rich from one end of the Carolina's to the Texas in beauty and in variety of species, almost all cut down but now [inaudible]. So our young man growing up in southern Alabama discovers one of the remaining old growth patches of old long leaf pine savannah; and because he's a lonely kid, and he loves to roam in the woods, and because he comes in contact quite early with a mentor, a professor in ecology coming up from Florida State who's studying this patch scientifically, he becomes deeply bonded to that land. And then as he matures, to the idea of doing something to save this particular tract, and then other parts of the South so rapidly disappearing before a thoughtless onslaught of unplanned development. And so he does. And that's the major part of the book. It unfolds as our young Raphael Semmes Cody [assumed spelling], his mother named him after Admiral Raphael Semmes, the great naval hero of the Civil War. She does that partly because she's a social climber, or at least she's trying to get back at the highest levels in Mobile society, which includes the Mobile Semmes family, and she's married below her station, as a head strong young woman and now she realizes that she's not -- doesn't belong anymore exactly where she grew up, and she's trying to work her way back in. That's another -- that's a sub plot. But any rate, young Cody finds the way. He has to deal with the developers in a novel fashion, and in dealing with them, he had to go through law school first. And he finds a solution to [inaudible] beyond the juggernaut of development and combine goals of conservationists and of developers in a way to create a win-win situation, not a complete victory. He also has to deal with a radical right evangelical cult. It is now we get into the messy part of the -- the brutal part of the novel, and I won't go into that. I'll leave that for those of you interested to find out how it happens, and how it's resolved, in the course of this book. He has to study the treasure tract that he has become familiar with in more detail for his college honors work. And then he's introduced to the anthills. These are one of the many species of ants in this tract that have never been studied, and so we stepped out to do it -- and some might add are not just runny little specks running around at your feet, but they make up a two thirds of the biomass of all the insects. If you take the insects, all the insects of a region, of a plot, and weigh them, two thirds of that -- in other words this is an ant's world that we're living in, and it's been an ant's world for 150 billion years. They own the earth. Ants are among the little things that rule the world, so -- and they also have the most complex social behavior outside of human beings. So with little or young Raphael Semmes Cody, I take you into the world of the ants, and for the first time this full quarter of the book show you what ants really are doing, how they are organized, how they are communicating, and -- it's like studying society on another planet. And you get the first realistic view of these ants as they display to one another in tournaments, run colony against colony, like military squadrons or parades passing one another to demonstrate their strength when they go to war. It's all out in one, light's out the other. They come in epic dimension when you get down with them in cycles. Civilization after civilization speeded up to turn over two, three or five years, and I hope you like -- find that interesting. But now we really come to this matter of a red flag to my fellow southerners, namely now is the time to save what we have. I hope this is a message that can be seen as global too, because in the current environmental movement, we find success beginning -- we are turning green; it is a pastel green globally. But most of it is focused, and this is true of political life on -- a cynical environment on -- the depletion of natural resources, on evolution, on climate change. And so we know all those things, we do now, and we worry about them. But we have the neglected disproportionately the living environment, and the massive destruction going on of ecosystems, of species, many of them millions of years old. Each one exquisitely adapted to its environment. We're wiping them out without even in many cases knowing what they are. So I propose Wilson's Law modestly, Wilson's Law, and this has been mentioned in the New York Times; and I don't want to mention this in the presence of one of the forces of the Washington Post. But I would say that since it's been mentioned in the New York Times, Wilson's Law has, then it must be true. [ Laughter ] >> Well anyway, Wilson's Law says: If you save the living environment, our ecosystems, the best of life, you will automatically save the [inaudible] environment. Because you can't save the living environment unless you take those measures that make the physical environment sustainable. But if you save only the physical environment, and you ignore the living, then you ultimately will lose them both. So this is the message I take to my fellow southerners. I'm very active incidentally in their conservation movements down there, and I go and am gradually reasserting myself, and I'm using every method I can to sell the message. And I'm using the Billy Sunday [assumed spelling] method: lectures, books, [inaudible], letters, so on, and now the novel. Because ladies and gentleman, people respect nonfiction, but they read novels. [ Laughter ] >> So this is the Billy Sunday method. [ Laughter ] >> Do everything. Do whatever you can, give a little bit. And I chose Billy Sunday because I've had a record of Billy Sunday in the 1920's giving one of his great sermons, and I'm going to give it to you in his words, in his accent right now. [ In a thick southern accent ] >> Oh I hate him. I hate him so much, I'm going to fight it until I can't move my arms no more; and when I can't move my arms no more, then I'm going to bit him. And when all my teeth are gone, I'm going to gum him. [ Laughter ] [In normal tone of voice] >> So that is what I have been doing. [ Applause ] [ Laughter ] >> And that is why I dared cross from the safe havens of fact based non-fiction into the wild and wooly wilderness of the creative arts, and that novel. And I'd now love to take some questions or comments. Yes? >> Yes. Hello. I almost feel like I need to apologize for this question because it's of a highly personal nature. But I feel a real need to ask it, because I have the opportunity to have your presence. When you have someone like Steven Hawking, who, after a lifetime of exploring the field of astrophysics, seems to have decided that the idea of the existence of God is a fiction, not a non-fiction. I was wondering, after a lifetime in exploring the field of biology, what are your ideas on that issue? >> Edward O. Wilson: I'm a scientist who tries to base personal beliefs on fact, and on defensible theory. I think without any credit is one way or the other about his opinion, Mr. Hawkins has stepped outside the boundary and the clear responsibility of a well-known scientist. [ Applause ] >> Thank you. >> Ginger: Dr. Wilson, my name is Ginger. And hello from your friends at Triple A-S by the way. >> Edward O. Wilson: From where? >> Ginger: From Triple A-S. >> Edward O. Wilson: Oh. >> Ginger: Good to see you here. This is wonderful. You talked about all of your efforts to help save the physical environment in the South, and I was just curious how somebody could get involved in whatever you're doing if they wanted to. Is there an official organization or...? >> Edward O. Wilson: Yeah. That requires a rather lengthy answer but I -- let me just say -- pick your -- the geographic area you'd like to get involved in, and get directly involved in any one of them directly; and that would be one of the great global conservation organizations of which there are approximately four that I would recommend, but will not because of the possibility of [inaudible] comparison. But then of course there are also national ones, there are regional ones, and there are action groups within each community which are focusing directly, and with direct action on particular environmental problems: saving a last tract of some kind of precious woodland, a lake, or helping to protect a species that's right on the brink, and so on. There's [inaudible] opportunities, and I wish you well. We need you. [ Inaudible audience talking ] >> Edward O. Wilson: I'm -- Oh. I'm sorry. Yeah. I didn't realize there were two. Yes. >> My favorite book by you is, Biophilia and I was really struck when I read the book, about the deep connection that you talked about between the human race and nature, our great love for nature, and our deep connections to it. And because I'm a teacher, I wonder what you would say about how that should impact education, about teaching young people? >> Edward O. Wilson: I think that the idea -- you mentioned the word, Biophilia and that's now solidly routed in science. It's become a major study in areas of psychology and biology. There's also a basophilic architecture movement and -- so I think that would be an excellent -- if I were teaching at say, the secondary level, I would consider using the idea of basophilic, and what it means to the human mind and human history; I'd combine that with hands on work -- especially in the environment where you can actually go out and make actual discoveries. And that would be how I would -- that's how I personally would like to talk to young people, and to get them interested in science as well as the environment. Sir. >> I've enjoyed reading your writings for quite awhile. On the question of conservation, and a lot of other things, I've noticed that there's a lot of discussion out there about trying to do things on a grand scale, climate change, a lot of things like that with the fairly large, essentially, takings of natural lands through things like cities, suburbia, etc, I'm wondering -- I'd be interested in your opinions on how much all of us can actually do in our own little areas, like in our own lots then, and what the sum total of that could end up being, compared to, for example, a major national thing where it's unlikely a lot of this legislation will actually come to pass. But for example, planting native species instead of non-native lawns, a wide variety of things like that. >> Edward O. Wilson: Sir we know with increasing precision what needs to be done to save the environment and we know what big steps can be, and what little steps can be. And we further know that there's nothing more powerful than people becoming the boots on the ground and actually changing the policy at different levels, but including the levels where they are the most, can be the most effective. And as that proceeds [sound skips] the totality of our common effort [sound skips] huge amount will be achieved. But, in addition, we will be developing an electorate that puts the pressure upward into our political leaders to create the policy of legislation and the executive action that makes the big changes possible. We're close to the end. [ Applause ] >> Can I take one more question? Sorry about that. >> Dr. Wilson, I've been reading your books for quite a time. Your book that you co-authored of the ant I think is one of the high points of publishing in the past 30 years. But it was more the question of, are you and Catherine [sound skips] who came to the sciences the way you did, which is through just the love of the natural world and then working your way up into the formal science. I have one friend who's a professor, a biology teacher, and he came the same way as a farm boy. He sees less and less of that. [inaudible]. >> Edward O. Wilson: Well that's -- unfortunately we are -- our children are growing up farther and farther away from the direct content that imprints upon children. The [inaudible] and the great deep of pleasures of having involvement in the natural environment. Yet still quite a few do, and they are there in large numbers wishing, if the positions were open, that science and teaching and technology, and I think they will be opening, they really will come in, talented young people, with that kind of passion in large numbers. I'm going to quit at this point. I'm have to say that I have to run away, because I'm caught in a very tight flight schedule. So I'm going to run out of here, but I appreciate very much. [ Applause ] >> Recorded Message: This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress. Visit us at LOC.Gov.