Letters to a Young Scientist Read online

  LETTERS

  to a

  YOUNG SCIENTIST

  Edward O. Wilson

  Dedication

  To the memory of my mentors,

  Ralph L. Chermock and William L. Brown

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  PROLOGUE

  You Made the Right Choice

  I • THE PATH TO FOLLOW

  1. First Passion, Then Training

  2. Mathematics

  3. The Path to Follow

  II • THE CREATIVE PROCESS

  4. What Is Science?

  5. The Creative Process

  6. What It Takes

  7. Most Likely to Succeed

  8. I Never Changed

  9. Archetypes of the Scientific Mind

  10. Scientists as Explorers of the Universe

  III. A LIFE IN SCIENCE

  11. A Mentor and the Start of a Career

  12. The Grails of Field Biology

  13. A Celebration of Audacity

  14. Know Your Subject, Thoroughly

  IV. THEORY AND THE BIG PICTURE

  15. Science as Universal Knowledge

  16. Searching for New Worlds on Earth

  17. The Making of Theories

  18. Biological Theory on a Grand Scale

  19. Theory in the Real World

  V. TRUTH AND ETHICS

  20. The Scientific Ethic

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  PHOTOGRAPH CREDITS

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Also by Edward O. Wilson

  The foraminiferan Orbulina universa, a single-celled oceanic organism. Modified from photograph by Howard J. Spero, University of California, Davis.

  Prologue

  YOU MADE THE RIGHT CHOICE

  DEAR FRIEND,

  From half a century of teaching students and young professionals in science, I feel privileged and fortunate to have counseled many hundreds of talented and ambitious young people. As a result, I have gleaned a deep knowledge, indeed a philosophy, of what you need to know to succeed in science. I hope you will benefit from the thoughts and stories I will offer you in the letters to follow.

  First and foremost, I urge you to stay on the path you’ve chosen, and to travel on it as far as you can. The world needs you—badly. Humanity is now fully in the technoscientific age, and there is no turning back. Although its rate of increase varies among its many disciplines, scientific knowledge doubles every fifteen to twenty years. And so it has been since the 1600s, achieving a prodigious magnitude today. And like all unfettered exponential growth given enough time, it seems decade by decade to be ascending almost vertically. High technology runs at comparable pace alongside it. Science and technology, bound in tight symbiotic alliance, pervade every dimension of our lives. They hide no long-lasting secrets. They are open to everyone, everywhere. The Internet and all the other accouterments of digital technology have rendered communication global and instant. Soon all published knowledge in both science and the humanities will be available with a few keystrokes.

  In case this assessment seems a bit feverish (although I suspect it is not, really), I’ll provide an example of a quantum leap in which I was fortunate to play a role. It occurred in taxonomy, the classification of organisms, until recently a notoriously old-fashioned and sluggish discipline. Back in 1735, Carl Linnaeus, a Swedish naturalist who ranked with Isaac Newton as the best-known scientist of the eighteenth century, launched one of the most audacious research projects of all time. He proposed to discover and classify every kind of plant and animal on Earth. In 1759, to streamline the process, he began to give each species a double Latinized name, such as Canis familiaris for the domestic dog and Acer rubrum for the American red maple.

  Linnaeus had no idea, not even to the power of 10 (that is, whether 10,000, or 100,000, or 1,000,000), of the magnitude of his self-assigned task. He guessed that plant species, his specialty, would turn out to number around 10,000. The richness of the tropical regions were unknown to him. The number of known and classified plant species today is 310,000 and is expected to reach 350,000. When animals and fungi are added, the total number of species currently known is in excess of 1.9 million—and is expected to eventually reach 10 million or more. Of bacteria, the “dark matter” of living diversity, only about 10,000 kinds are currently known (in 2013), but the number is accelerating and is likely to add millions of species to the global roster. So, just as in Linnaeus’s time 250 years ago, most of life on Earth remains unknown.

  The still-deep pit of ignorance about biodiversity is a problem not just for specialists but for everyone. How are we all going to manage the planet and keep it sustainable if we know so little about it?

  Until recently, the solution seemed out of reach. Hardworking scientists have been able to add only about eighteen thousand new species each year. If this rate were to continue, it would take two centuries or longer to account for all of Earth’s biodiversity, a period nearly as long as that from the Linnaean initiative to the present time. What is the reason for this bottleneck? Until recently the problem was one of technology, and it appeared insoluble. For historical reasons, the great bulk of reference specimens and printed literature about them was confined to a relatively small number of museums, located in a few cities in Western Europe and North America. To conduct basic research on taxonomy, it was often necessary to visit these distant places. The only alternative was to arrange to have the specimens and literature mailed, always a time-consuming and risky operation.

  By the turn of the twenty-first century, biologists were looking for a technology that could somehow solve the problem. In 2003 I suggested what in retrospect seems the obvious solution: the creation of the online Encyclopedia of Life, which would include digitized, high-resolution photographs of reference specimens, with all information on each species, updated continuously. It was to be an open source, with new entries screened by “curators” expert in each group of species, such as centipedes, bark beetles, and conifers. The project was funded by 2005, and with the parallel Census of Marine Life, it has accelerated taxonomy, as well as those branches of biology dependent on accurate classification. At the time I write, over half the known species on Earth have been incorporated. The knowledge is available to anyone, anytime, anywhere, for free, at a keystroke (EOL.com).

  So swift do advances like this in biodiversity studies occur, so startling the twists and turns in every discipline, the future of the technoscientific revolution cannot be assayed for any branch of science even just a decade ahead. Of course, there will come a time when the exponential growth in discovery and cumulative knowledge must peak and level off. But that won’t matter to you. The revolution will continue for at least most of the twenty-first century, during which it will render the human condition radically different from what it is today. Traditional disciplines of research will metamorphose, by today’s standards, into barely recognizable forms. In the process they will spin off new fields of research—science-based technology, technology-based science, and industry based on technology and science. Eventually all of science will coalesce into a continuum of description and explanation through which any educated person can travel by guidelines of principles and laws.

  The introduction to science and scientific careers that I will give you in this series of letters is not traditional in form or tone. I mean it to be as personal as possible, using my experiences in research and teaching to provide a realistic image of the challenges and rewards you can expect as you pass through a life in science.

  I

  THE PATH

  to

  FOLLOW

  Merit badge
symbol for “Zoology” in 1940. Boy Scout Handbook, Boy Scouts of America, fourth edition (1940).

  One

  FIRST PASSION, THEN TRAINING

  I BELIEVE IT WILL HELP for me to start with this letter by telling you who I really am. This requires your going back with me to the summer of 1943, in the midst of the Second World War. I had just turned fourteen, and my hometown, the little city of Mobile, Alabama, had been largely taken over by the buildup of a wartime shipbuilding industry and military air base. Although I rode my bicycle around the streets of Mobile a couple of times as a potential emergency messenger, I remained oblivious to the great events occurring in the city and world. Instead, I spent a lot of my spare time—not required to be at school—earning merit badges in my quest to reach the Eagle rank in the Boy Scouts of America. Mostly, however, I explored nearby swamps and forests, collecting ants and butterflies. At home I attended to my menagerie of snakes and black widow spiders.

  Global war meant that very few young men were available to serve as counselors at nearby Boy Scout Camp Pushmataha. The recruiters, having heard of my extracurricular activities, had asked me, I assume in desperation, to serve as the nature counselor. I was, of course, delighted with the prospect of a free summer camp experience doing approximately what I most wanted to do anyway. But I arrived at Pushmataha woefully underaged and underprepared in much of anything but ants and butterflies. I was nervous. Would the other scouts, some older than I, laugh at what I had to offer? Then I had an inspiration: snakes. Most people are simultaneously frightened, riveted, and instinctively interested in snakes. It’s in the genes. I didn’t realize it at the time, but the south-central Gulf coast is home to the largest variety of snakes in North America, upward of forty species. So upon arrival I got some of the other campers to help me build some cages from wooden crates and window screen. Then I directed all residents of the camp to join me in a summer-long hunt for snakes whenever their regular schedules allowed.

  Thereafter, on an average of several times a day, the cry rang out from somewhere in the woods: Snake! Snake! All within hearing distance would rush to the spot, calling to others, while I, snake-wrangler-in-chief, was fetched.

  If nonvenomous, I would simply grab it. If venomous, I would first press it down just behind the head with a stick, roll the stick forward until its head was immobile, then grasp it by the neck and lift it up. I’d then identify it for the gathering circle of scouts and deliver what little I knew about the species (usually very little, but they knew less). Then we would walk to headquarters and deposit it in a cage for a residence of a week or so. I’d deliver short talks at our zoo, throw in something new I learned about local insects and other animals. (I scored zero on plants.) The summer rolled by pleasantly for me and my small army.

  The only thing that could interrupt this happy career was, of course, a snake. I have since learned that all snake specialists, scientists and amateurs alike, apparently get bitten at least once by a venomous snake. I was not to be an exception. Halfway through the summer I was cleaning out a cage that contained several pygmy rattlesnakes, a venomous but not deadly species. One coiled closer to my hand than I’d realized, suddenly uncoiled, and struck me on the left index finger. After first aid in a doctor’s office near the camp, which was too late to do any good, I was sent home to rest my swollen left hand and arm. Upon returning to Pushmataha a week later, I was instructed by the adult director of the camp, as I already had been by my parents, that I was to catch no more venomous snakes.

  At the end of the season, as we all prepared to leave, the director held a popularity poll. The campers, most of whom were assistant snake hunters, placed me second, just behind the chief counselor. I had found my life’s work. Although the goal was not yet clearly defined then in my adolescent mind, I was going to be a scientist—and a professor.

  Through high school I paid very little attention to my classes. Thanks to the relatively relaxed school systems of south Alabama in wartime, with overworked and distracted teachers, I got away with it. One memorable day at Mobile’s Murphy High School, I captured with a sweep of my hand and killed twenty houseflies, then lined them up on my desk for the next hour’s class to find. The following day the teacher, a young lady with considerable aplomb, congratulated me but kept a closer eye on me thereafter. That is all I remember, I am embarrassed to say, about my first year in high school.

  I arrived at the University of Alabama shortly after my seventeenth birthday, the first member of my family on either side to attend college. I had by this time shifted from snakes and flies to ants. Now determined to be an entomologist and work in the outdoors as much as possible, I kept up enough effort to make A’s. I found that not very difficult (it is, I’m told, very different today), but soaked up all the elementary and intermediate chemistry and biology available.

  Harvard University was similarly tolerant when I arrived as a Ph.D. student in 1951. I was considered a prodigy in field biology and entomology, and was allowed to make up the many gaps in general biology left from my happy days in Alabama. The momentum I built up in my southern childhood and at Harvard carried through to an appointment at Harvard as assistant professor. There followed more than six decades of fruitful work at this great university.

  I’ve told you my Pushmataha-to-Harvard story not to recommend my kind of eccentricity (although in the right circumstances it could be of advantage); and I disavow my casual approach to early formal education. I grew up in a different age. You, in contrast, are well into a different era, where opportunity is broader but more demanding.

  My confessional instead is intended to illustrate an important principle I’ve seen unfold in the careers of many successful scientists. It is quite simple: put passion ahead of training. Feel out in any way you can what you most want to do in science, or technology, or some other science-related profession. Obey that passion as long as it lasts. Feed it with the knowledge the mind needs to grow. Sample other subjects, acquire a general education in science, and be smart enough to switch to a greater love if one appears. But don’t just drift through courses in science hoping that love will come to you. Maybe it will, but don’t take the chance. As in other big choices in your life, there is too much at stake. Decision and hard work based on enduring passion will never fail you.

  Reconstructed path of the “Trojan” asteroid 2010 TK7, during 165 years, seen from outside Earth’s orbit. Modified from drawing. © Paul Wiegert, University of Western Ontario.

  Two

  MATHEMATICS

  LET ME MOVE ON quickly, and before everything else remaining, to a subject that is both a vital asset for and a potential barrier to your career: mathematics, the great bugbear for many would-be scientists. I mention this not to nag but to encourage and help. I mean in this letter to put you at ease. If you’re already well prepared—let us say you’ve picked up calculus and analytic geometry—if you like to solve puzzles, and if you think logarithms are a neat way to express variables across orders of magnitude, then good for you; your capability is a comfort to me. I won’t worry so much about you, at least not right away. But keep in mind that a strong mathematical background does not—I repeat, does not—guarantee success in science. I will return to this caveat later, so please stay focused. Actually, I have a lot more to say to math lovers in particular.

  If, on the other hand, you are a bit short in mathematical training, even very short, relax. You are far from alone in the community of scientists, and here is a professional secret to encourage you: many of the most successful scientists in the world today are mathematically no more than semiliterate. A metaphor will clarify the paradox in this statement. Where elite mathematicians often serve as architects of theory in the expanding realm of science, the remaining large majority of basic and applied scientists map the terrain, scout the frontier, cut the pathways, and raise the first buildings along the way. They define the problems that mathematicians, on occasion, may help solve. They think primarily in images and facts, and only marginal
ly in mathematics.

  You may think me foolhardy, but it’s been my habit to brush aside the fear of mathematics when talking to candidate scientists. During my decades of teaching biology at Harvard, I watched sadly as bright undergraduates turned away from the possibility of a scientific career, or even from nonrequired courses in the sciences, because they were afraid of failure in the math that might be required. Why should I care? Because such math-phobes deprive science of an immeasurable amount of sorely needed talent and deprive the many scientific disciplines of some of their most creative young people. This is a hemorrhage of brainpower we need to stanch.

  Now I will tell you how to ease your anxieties. Understand that mathematics is a language, ruled like verbal languages by its own grammar and system of logic. Any person with average quantitative intelligence who learns to read and write mathematics at an elementary level will have little difficulty understanding math-speak.

  Let me give you an example of the interplay of visual images and simple mathematical statements. I’ve chosen to reveal the undergirding of two relatively advanced disciplines in biology: population genetics and population ecology.

  Consider this interesting fact. You have (or had) 2 parents, 4 grandparents, 8 great-grandparents, and 16 great-great-grandparents. In other words, since each person has to have two parents, the number of your direct forebears doubles every generation. The mathematical summary is N = 2x. The parameter N is the number of a person’s ancestors x generations back in time. How many of your ancestors existed 10 generations ago? We don’t have to write out each generation in turn. Instead you can use N = 2x = 210, or, put the other way, 210 = N. So the answer is when x = 10 generations, you have N = 1,024 ancestors. Now reverse the timeline to forward and ask how many descendants you can expect to have 10 generations from now. The whole thing gets much more complicated in the case of descendants—we don’t really know how many children we will have—but to state the basic idea, it is all right to specify, in a way mathematicians often do, that each couple will have two surviving children and the length of the generations will be constant from one generation to the next. (Two children on average is not far from the actual rate in the United States today, and is close to the number 2.1, or 21 children for every 100 couples, needed to maintain a constant population size of native-born.) Then in 10 generations you will have 1,024 descendants.