Two Harvard rivals, fifty years on — E. O. Wilson and James Watson, with Robert Krulwich (Harvard, 9 Sept 2009)

Edward O. Wilson and James D. Watson · 2009 · 57:51 · ▶ Watch

Summary

The occasion. Harvard’s Museum of Natural History marked the 150th year of Darwin’s Origin by seating two men who arrived at Harvard in the 1950s, worked a floor apart, and for years “rarely spoke”. One studied “critters” (Wilson, ants, ecology, biodiversity). The other studied genes (Watson, the double helix, molecular biology). Krulwich sets the frame in one sentence: go back to “the bad old days” and then to “the brave new world”.

Three movements.

The old war (about). The two factions in the 1950s Harvard biology department: “the stamp collectors” (organismic and evolutionary biologists, per Watson’s label) against the new molecular biologists, who “landed in the biology department at Harvard like a group of aliens in Manhattan”. Wilson says Watson was an “avatar” of the new movement. Watson says he wanted “a critical mass of molecular biologists” and thought it a waste to give a tenured post to “an ecologist”. Wilson concedes, with a postscript: he too thought the department should recruit its own stars (Robert MacArthur). The war ends because the two fields merged: molecular tools came into evolution; molecular biologists went evolutionary.
How to do great science (about). Krulwich pushes on whether nice people can do world-class science. Watson: you need ambition, and “you have to have an enemy” (Krulwich quotes his student Capecchi). Wilson: “I have been blessed with brilliant enemies” (his own book line, read out by Krulwich), including the radical Left that attacked Sociobiology and once poured water on him. Both agree on goals: “great goals” (Watson, via Wilson’s story). They differ on how: Watson says avoid problems that cannot yet be cracked (the brain), and says databases will let young evolutionists peak at 25. Wilson says you need to be a naturalist who “inhabits the subject” and becomes “the world authority” on a group.
What next (about–end). Wilson’s novel Anthill and his assault on kin selection. What each would do at 21: Watson, neuroscience then systems; Wilson, microbial diversity (“like landing on an unknown planet”). The great problems: how cells became multicellular, why eukaryotes took so long. Watson on AI: “I’ll be dead before then”, and on his one goal: cure cancer this decade. Then the close: are our brains fit for the century? Wilson’s line, “paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technology”. Watson: pay smart people more. The two end on schooling, IQ, the self-domestication of humans, and whether America will “be like Argentina”.

Stance to note. Wilson is the synthesiser and the pessimist about humanity’s fit to its tools. Watson is the combative optimist about biomedical problem-solving who admits no patience for slow, uncrackable questions. They agree on ambition and on the value of the best people. They agree less than their warm tone suggests on method (model organism vs diversity) and on kin selection.

Factual slips and claims to treat with care (marked; checks from memory unless linked).

Wilson says ants and termites are “3%” of insect species but “80%” of insect numbers and biomass. These are his stock figures; the 80% figure is commonly quoted for insect individuals/biomass in the tropical canopy, not the whole planet†. Later in the same passage he says the first colonial insect appeared “in the Jurassic”. Fossil evidence puts the oldest ants in the early Cretaceous, and some termite-like colonial insects earlier†. Treat the geology as loose.

Watson says “Jacques Monod” wrote Chance and Necessity in 1971. The French edition is 1970; the English edition is 1971. Fine.

Watson says there is “no evidence” that IQ at 20 has risen over 80 years and that tests of general intelligence (“g”) have not gone up. This is contested. The Flynn effect (about 3 IQ points per decade in many countries through most of the 20th century) is well documented, though debated as to what it measures. A large Norwegian conscript study (Bratsberg and Rogeberg, PNAS 2018) found gains and then a reversal for cohorts born after about 1975, driven by environment, not genes (summary). So Krulwich’s premise has support, and Watson’s flat denial is too strong.

Watson’s remarks on Scots Highlanders and Chinese people “evolving” earlier or later and being “least violent” are ungrounded racial generalisations. They are the kind of remarks that later ended his career at Cold Spring Harbor (see idea 8). Do not use them as evidence.

Watson says the 1924 observation by Otto Warburg is now “understood” and that this could lead to curing cancer. Warburg’s aerobic glycolysis observation dates to the 1920s. “We understand it” is stronger than the literature supports (see idea 7).

Wilson (likely; the captions have no labels) attributes “teacher and learner alike fall asleep at their post if there is no enemy in the field” to John Stuart Mill. I could not find the exact sentence in Mill†.

Map — talking points

#	Point
1	Opening: 9/9/09, Darwin’s 150th, a “president who believes in science”
2	Krulwich’s bio, by the host
3	Krulwich introduces the two men: rivalry turned friendship
4	The two factions of the 1950s biology department. Stamp collectors vs molecular “aliens”
5	The tenure story: Wilson offered tenure, Harvard “forgot” Watson
6	Watson on needing a “critical mass” of molecular biologists, and anybody who would hire an ecologist
7	Harvard once asked “is there someone better in the world?” before tenure. Watson says it no longer does
8	Wilson’s postscript: Harvard should have hired its own stars (MacArthur) and rebuilt population biology
9	How the two fields merged: molecular tools into evolution, cell biologists going evolutionary
10	Can a gentle person do world-class science? “You have to have an enemy”
11	”Blessed with brilliant enemies”; the radical Left, the water at AAAS, Rush Limbaugh
12	Wilson’s alliance with evangelicals for conservation, and why
13	Should scientists try to be stars? Darwin simmering vs “why not shine?“
14	Problems that may need decades of staring (brain). “Great goals”
15	When scientists peak, by field. Philosophers “never”
16	Databases vs being a naturalist; two strategies of biology
17	The brain, fly memory genes, Crick’s “wasted” years
18	How they got friendly. “Our science has really come together”
19	Wilson’s novel Anthill and why fiction
20	What they’d do at 21: neuroscience (Watson), microbes (Wilson)
21	Putting things back together: synthesis, major transitions, why eukaryotes took so long
22	Cooperation and the attack on kin selection; ants and termites
23	Will computers outgrow biology? “I’ll be dead before then”
24	Watson: cure cancer this decade; Warburg; “dumb kid from the south side of Chicago”
25	Are our brains fit for the century? Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, godlike technology
26	Pay smart people more. IQ and the Flynn effect
27	Self-domestication: humans as gentler, “more like babies”
28	Teach people to disagree intelligently. America and Argentina
29	Krulwich’s close: the authors of The Double Helix and Naturalist

Putting it together

The mental model in one paragraph. Biology in 1950 split into a science of mechanism (molecules, led by Watson) and a science of history and diversity (organisms, led by Wilson). Each side thought the other was minor. The split was real, but it was a split of tools and questions, not of subject, and by 2009 the tools had merged: genomes are the main data of evolution, and molecular biologists ask evolutionary questions. The two men drew different lessons about how to do great science. Watson: pick a soluble big problem, back the best student, avoid decades-long stares. Wilson: become the world authority on a group and let its structure show you the problem. Both agreed on ambition, on rivalry as fuel, and on keeping the best people. Their forward look is about synthesis (how parts become wholes: cells to bodies to colonies to ecosystems), one concrete medical goal (cancer), and a worry about whether Pleistocene brains can run a high-tech planet. The most reliable parts of the hour are the stories of the 1950s and the method arguments. The least reliable are the throwaway claims about IQ, race and national fates.

Three tensions to keep open

Big goal or soluble problem? Wilson’s and Watson’s “great goals” are not the same as Medawar’s “soluble”. Where is the line between ambition and waste?
Gene-level accounting or group-level explanation? The kin-selection fight is not settled by the transcript, and the later literature still divides.
Fit brains or fit institutions? Wilson locates the danger in emotions; institutional economists locate the fix in rules. Both can be true.

Reading path

Start: Wilson, Naturalist (1994), the chapters on Harvard and the molecular wars. Watson, The Double Helix (1968). Ernst Mayr, “Cause and Effect in Biology” (Science, 1961), eight pages.
Then: Medawar, Advice to a Young Scientist. Hamming, “You and Your Research”. Hölldobler and Wilson, The Superorganism (2008). Maynard Smith and Szathmáry, The Major Transitions in Evolution.
Deeper: Hamilton (1964); Nowak, Tarnita and Wilson (2010) then Abbot et al. (2011) and Birch and Okasha (2015). Segerstråle, Defenders of the Truth. Wilson, The Creation (2006). Wrangham, The Goodness Paradox (2019). Dorkenwald et al., fly connectome (Nature, 2024).

Sources used for the framing facts. Event details: Harvard Museum of Natural History announcement; Harvard Gazette report; Harvard Magazine; Harvard Crimson. (Read as search snippets; the full articles were not opened for this page.) No online video of the event was found, so the video title, channel and upload date are unverified.

Part 1 — Before you read

Key terms

Organismic and evolutionary biology (OEB). The study of whole organisms, populations, species, ecosystems and their history. Harvard’s department name. Compare “natural history” in the older sense. Watson’s rude label for it in the 1950s: “stamp collecting”.
Molecular biology. Explaining life by the structure and chemistry of molecules (DNA, RNA, proteins). The new field of the 1950s, which won most of the century’s prizes.
Population biology. Wilson’s name for the quantitative, model-driven evolutionary biology he wanted Harvard to hire for. Robert MacArthur and Wilson’s Theory of Island Biogeography (1967) is the flagship.
Biodiversity. The variety of life at gene, species and ecosystem level. Wilson helped make the word public (the 1986 Washington forum, published as BioDiversity in 1988)†.
Sociobiology. Wilson’s 1975 book name and field: the biological basis of social behaviour in all animals including humans. Its human chapter drew the fire described.
Kin selection / inclusive fitness. W. D. Hamilton’s 1964 idea that a gene can spread by helping relatives who carry copies of it. The standard account of why an ant worker raises her sister’s young. Wilson attacks it.
Eusociality. The highest level of animal social organisation: overlapping generations, cooperative care of young, and a sterile or non-reproducing worker caste. Ants, termites, some bees and wasps, naked mole-rats.
Superorganism. A colony that functions as one organism. Wilson and Hölldobler’s book The Superorganism (2008) is the late statement.
Prokaryotes / eukaryotes. Prokaryotes: bacteria and archaea, cells without a nucleus. Eukaryotes: cells with a nucleus and organelles (all animals, plants, fungi). Watson would study the first; Wilson asks why eukaryotes took so long.
Model organism. A species chosen because it is easy to study and answers a general question (E. coli, the fruit fly, the mouse, the nematode). Wilson’s contrast: the molecular biologist picks the organism to fit the problem; the evolutionist picks the group and finds the problem.
Consilience. Wilson’s word for the unity of knowledge (1998). Nothing in this talk uses it, but the line “our science has really come together” is its small-scale version. Another page in this folder covers his 2010 Prather lecture on it.
Great transitions. The “major transitions in evolution” framework: replicators to cells, prokaryotes to eukaryotes, single cells to multicellular bodies, bodies to societies. Wilson names “cells, to multi-cell organisms, to superorganisms, to ecosystems”.
Flynn effect. The rise in average raw IQ scores across the 20th century, then its reversal in some countries. Raised.
Self-domestication. The idea that humans, like dogs and the Russian farm-fox lines, were selected for reduced reactive aggression and kept juvenile traits (neoteny). Krulwich’s point.

People named (a reading list)

Person	Why they come up	Start with
Charles Darwin	The occasion (150 years of Origin). Krulwich’s “simmered” example	On the Origin of Species (1859); his autobiography for the delay
Francis Crick	Watson’s partner. Spent about 40 years on “uncrackable” problems, says Watson	What Mad Pursuit (1988); The Astonishing Hypothesis (1994)
Robert MacArthur	The ecologist Wilson says Harvard should have hired. Died in 1972 at 42	MacArthur & Wilson, Island Biogeography (1967)
Mario Capecchi	Watson’s ex-student. “You have to have an enemy”. Nobel 2007 (gene targeting)	His Nobel lecture
Norton Zinder	Rival lab head at Rockefeller	Obituaries; Zinder & Lederberg on phage transduction
Jacques Monod	Chance and Necessity: the two ends of biology are the brain and the origin of life	Chance and Necessity (Eng. 1971)
Otto Warburg	The cancer-metabolism observation, 1920s	Vander Heiden, Cantley & Thompson, Science 2009
Jeff Lichtman and Joshua Sanes	Harvard neuroscientists who “tag neurons” in colours (Brainbow)	Livet et al., Nature 2007
John Stuart Mill	Wilson’s (loosely sourced) quote on enemies	On Liberty (1859)
Bert Hölldobler	Wilson’s co-author on The Ants (Pulitzer)	The Ants (1990); The Superorganism (2008)
Steven Spielberg	Krulwich’s joke about honorary knighthoods	(none)

The speakers’ own frames

Wilson is the biologist of diversity: ants first, then biodiversity, then conservation, then a new unification of knowledge. He is also the Sociobiology (1975) and On Human Nature (1978) author, and the man whose critics on the Left attacked him in the late 1970s. By 2009 he was writing The Creation (2006) to recruit religious Americans to conservation, and about to publish a novel, Anthill (2010). He has just started to attack kin selection with Martin Nowak’s group (published 2010).

Watson is the biologist of molecules who built Cold Spring Harbor into a research powerhouse and led the early Human Genome Project. His Double Helix (1968) is a classic of candid science writing. His personal style is blunt to the point of rudeness, and he says so himself.

Krulwich is a journalist, not a biologist. He is the necessary third voice: he reads each man his own old words (“You said about Fred Smith’s nomination…”, “this is the opening sentence of one of the chapters…”) and makes them defend them. He plays the sceptic of the “fast and bright” culture and also the optimist about human gentleness.

The current debate (2009 to 2026)

Watson has died. James Watson died in early November 2025, aged 97, at a hospice on Long Island, per widely syndicated reports. He had been ostracised by much of the scientific community after his later remarks on genetics and race (ABC affiliate report, Irish Times). Wilson died on 26 December 2021, aged 92 (NPR affiliate). So this conversation is the record of two men, both now gone, in good humour.
The kin-selection fight Wilson announces became one of the loudest fights in evolutionary biology. Nowak, Tarnita and Wilson published “The evolution of eusociality” in Nature (Aug 2010), arguing inclusive fitness theory had produced only meagre results. A reply signed by 137 social-evolution researchers (Abbot et al., Nature 2011) said the paper misread the theory and the evidence (Nature reply page, Birch and Okasha 2015). Most working biologists sided with Hamilton’s framework; the philosophical question of what the theory explains is still open (see idea 5).
The fly connectome Watson mentions as in four years in Taiwan was finished by others. The complete adult fruit-fly connectome (about 139,000 neurons and 54.5 million connections) appeared in Nature in October 2024, from the FlyWire consortium, with human proofreaders checking machine segmentation (NIH summary, Scientific American). Watson’s timetable was optimistic by about a decade, and the project shows his claim “you might actually have to wait until the complete anatomy” being tested.
Computers and biology. Watson said “I don’t think computers will cure cancer”. Since then, machine learning predicted protein structures (AlphaFold, CASP14 in 2020; Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2024 to Hassabis, Jumper and Baker)†. That is not “curing cancer”, but it shows his dismissal of computers was narrower than the field’s history proved.
Flynn effect. See the slip box: gains in the 20th century, then reversal in several countries (Norwegian study summary).
Biodiversity. Wilson’s “Half-Earth” proposal (2016) is the sequel to what he starts here: protect half the planet’s land and sea to save most species†. The conservation-with-evangelicals alliance has partly happened (“creation care”) but has not tilted US national politics as he hoped.

The ideas

Wilson and Watson talked for an hour to an audience that knew the stories. Nine families of ideas run under the conversation. Most are never named on stage.

 TWO CULTURES OF BIOLOGY ───────┐              ┌───── SOCIOLOGY OF SCIENTIFIC AMBITION
 Mayr (how/why) · Delbrück ·    │              │      Merton (priority) · Medawar ·
 Dobzhansky · Mayr vs Watson    ▼              ▼      Hamming · Simonton (age & peak)
                         ┌───────────────────────────────┐
 MODEL ORGANISM  ──────► │  WILSON & WATSON, 9 SEPT 2009 │ ◄────── SOCIAL EVOLUTION
 vs DIVERSITY            │  "looking back, looking       │         Wheeler · Hamilton ·
 Krogh · Woese · Margulis│   forward"                    │         Trivers · Maynard Smith
                         └───────────────────────────────┘         · Nowak-Tarnita-Wilson
                           ▲            ▲            ▲
   THE SOCIOBIOLOGY WAR    │  SCIENCE & │            │  THE HUMAN ANIMAL
   Gould · Lewontin ·      │  RELIGION  │            │  mismatch · domestication ·
   Segerstråle             │  Gould ·   │            │  Flynn · "cost disease"
                           │  creation  │
                           │  care      │   BIG PROBLEMS: brain · origin of life · cancer

Where each school of thought is covered:

Two cultures of biology — how and why: idea 1
The sociology of scientific ambition — priority, enemies, and when you peak: idea 2
Model organism or diversity — two strategies of doing biology: idea 5
Social evolution — from the superorganism to the attack on kin selection: idea 6
The sociobiology war — Wilson and “brilliant enemies”: idea 2
Science and religion — the Creation alliance: idea 3
The human animal — mismatch, self-domestication, intelligence, and their misuse: idea 8
The big problems — brain, origin of life, cancer, synthesis: idea 5
Institutions of excellence — pay, tenure and “the world’s best”: idea 8

1. The old war: stamp collectors, aliens and a forgotten tenure

In short. Wilson and Watson retell the old Harvard fight between two kinds of biologist. Wilson calls his side the organismic and evolutionary biologists, whom Watson called stamp collectors. The molecular biologists landed like aliens in Manhattan. Watson says he wanted a critical mass of molecular biologists, and he stands by his remark that Harvard should not waste a tenured position on an ecologist.

🎙 In the talk. Krulwich asks for “the two factions”. Wilson names them: the organismic and evolutionary biologists, “the stamp collectors” (Watson’s label for them), and the new molecular biologists, who “landed in the biology department at Harvard like a group of aliens in Manhattan”. Watson was “a young avatar of this movement”. Wilson was called by Stanford and Harvard moved fast; “they forgot to do it for Watson”. Watson tells a version in which an ad hoc committee recommended both men, and the department “wanted to know me better before they did”. A dean (McGeorge Bundy, per the captions) warned the chair that the biology department “would have difficulty getting future appointments unless they acted on me”.

Watson’s side: his aim was “a critical mass of molecular biologists at Harvard”. He says the result was “rather mediocre compromises”, not Wilson, “I’m just saying that’s my belief”. He confirms he “reputedly made the remark” that Harvard “should not waste a tenured position on an ecologist”, and when Krulwich quotes “Anybody would hire an ecologist is out of his mind” he replies “Well, I think I was right”. His reason: ecology was not very intellectually demanding and “smart people did not go into ecology”, with Robert MacArthur as the tragic exception.

Wilson’s side: he agrees on reflection that molecular biology was the future, and adds that the right move was to recruit “the coming stars in organismic and evolutionary biology”, “Robert MacArthur right away”, and build “population biology” as a foundation “comparable to molecular, organic, natural products”. Over the years “bright people did appear increasingly” in his side. The two fields then traded tools: “the armamentarium of methods and ideas” came out of molecular biology, and the evolutionists moved “down to include molecular data, especially DNA” while “the molecular cell biologists started going evolutionary”.

Watson adds one grievance that is about Harvard, not him: tenure once required showing nobody better existed in the world; “Now Harvard doesn’t ask that any more”, and “how can you be the world’s best university unless you have the world’s best faculty”.

📚 Added context

This is a standard story of mid-century biology, told by its two principals. The molecular side saw a field about to be transformed (the code was cracked in the 1960s). The organismic side saw a lab-based style that dismissed whole-organism science. Wilson’s Naturalist (1994) is his written account; Watson’s is in The Double Helix and Genes, Girls and Gamow (see Roots).
“Stamp collecting” has a famous source. The line often attributed to Ernest Rutherford (“All science is either physics or stamp collecting”) belongs to physics’ contempt for description†. Watson applies the same contempt to natural history.
Both sides were partly right, in a way the talk states. Watson was right about the future of molecular biology (the genome, the tools). Wilson was right that evolutionary biology, with MacArthur’s models, was about to become a quantitative science. By 2009 the proof was visible: genomes are the main data of evolution.
Who had the better of the argument? The Gazette’s report says Wilson conceded on reflection that Watson “was right” and that molecular and cell biology needed to grow, while Watson agreed the field’s unity left nothing to fight over (Harvard Gazette; snippet only, article not read in full). That reading is generous to Watson. The transcript shows Wilson also making his postscript.
Tenure as a data point about institutions. The “ad hoc committee” and “is there anyone better in the world” rule are examples of an institutional design for talent. Watson’s complaint is about the standard falling, which is easy to say and hard to test.
Watson’s “ecologist” jibe also reads differently today. Ecology became central to climate, conservation and ecosystem science. Watson later accepted this (“I’m much more interested in what Ed does”).

📚 Roots: Two cultures of biology — how and why

The problem. “Biology” in 1950 was two enterprises with different questions. One asks how does it work (mechanism: molecules, cells, physiology). The other asks why is it this way (history, adaptation, diversity). The Harvard fight in the first half of the talk is this split in one department.

The point. The first twenty minutes are a living example of Mayr’s two questions. Watson’s “stamp collectors” jab and Wilson’s “aliens in Manhattan” reply are the same dispute, told with the roles swapped. Wilson’s postscript and the merger he describes say that the two questions finally share tools.

The chain of thinkers

Claude Bernard, Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine (1865). The case for the laboratory: control the conditions, test one cause. This is the ancestor of the “reductionist” side.
The natural history tradition (Linnaeus, Cuvier, Humboldt, Darwin, Wallace). Observe, collect, compare, classify. Wilson’s “collecting bugs and classifying” belongs here. Darwin was a collector first, which matters for Watson’s “stamp collectors” taunt.
Max Delbrück and the phage group; Erwin Schrödinger, What Is Life? (1944). Physicists enter biology looking for a “hereditary code-script” in an “aperiodic crystal”. This brought the style Watson came from: choose the simplest system (phage, then bacteria) and ask the sharpest question. Watson trained under Salvador Luria, a Delbrück associate.
Watson and Crick (1953), then the “central dogma” (Crick, 1958) and the genetic code (1960s). Genes are DNA; DNA is read into RNA into protein. In ten years biology gained a language and a physical explanation. The sense of triumph explains Watson’s confidence at Harvard.
Ernst Mayr, “Cause and Effect in Biology” (Science, 1961). The reply from the other side. Mayr separates proximate causes (how a trait works in this organism) from ultimate causes (why natural selection built it). Both are legitimate. Molecular biology answers proximate questions; evolutionary biology answers ultimate ones. Mayr and Watson clashed in person (Mayr is Wilson’s senior colleague at Harvard’s MCZ)†.
Theodosius Dobzhansky, “Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution” (1973). The reconciliation slogan. Wilson’s own later view is a practical version: molecular data becomes the method of evolutionary biology.
E. O. Wilson, Naturalist (1994). His memoir chapters on the molecular wars at Harvard. Watson’s Double Helix (1968) and later Genes, Girls and Gamow (2001) and Avoid Boring People (2007), which Krulwich names, give the other side. Reading both on the same events is the best way to see the two faces of one conflict. (Titles from the talk and memory; contents not checked line by line.)

Worth knowing. Harvard’s biology split into two departments in the late 1960s: Molecular and Cellular Biology (MCB) and Organismic and Evolutionary Biology (OEB). That is the department name Krulwich reads out for Wilson. (†) So the “peace” the speakers claim in 2009 is a peace between two separate houses.

Where others push back.

“Mediocre compromises” and “not very demanding”. Ecologists respond that field ecology is hard because the variables cannot be controlled. Mathematical ecology (MacArthur, Levins, Hubbell) is demanding by any standard.
Mayr’s complaint (Roots). Molecular biology answered proximate questions and some molecular biologists treated them as the whole of biology. The “stamp collectors” jibe is an instance.
Counter-memory. Neither man’s story is neutral. Each tells it as a comedy in which he is the victim of the other’s bad judgement.

What they leave out. The women and the technicians who did much of the work in both traditions. Wilson says “they were men then”, and moves on. Also the money: this is also a story of space, funding and appointments (who got the lines), which the stories only touch (“a strong dean”).

Check yourself

State the proximate/ultimate distinction and say which side of the 1950s fight each was on.
What did each man concede in the end, according to the transcript?
Why does Watson say Harvard no longer asks the “better in the world” question, and why would that matter for a university’s quality?

2. Enemies, ambition and stars

In short. Krulwich asks whether a gentle person can do world-class science. Watson says you have to be assertive and want to be there first, and both men value enemies. Watson cites his own book: “I have been blessed with brilliant enemies”. Wilson says he was physically attacked over an idea after his book Sociobiology, and he learned from critics because he needed to know what they were saying.

🎙 In the talk. Krulwich asks whether “a gentle person” can do world-class science. One of them (likely Watson) answers with a joke: “Jesus would not have succeeded”, and says seriously “you have to be somewhat assertive. You have to want to be there first”. Krulwich reads Mario Capecchi, Watson’s ex-student: “You have to have an enemy”, “it doesn’t matter if the enemy is real or not”, it keeps postdocs working. Watson says it “works with boys anyways” and that his group was competing against Norton Zinder’s lab at Rockefeller and “won most of the time”.

Krulwich then reads a line from Watson’s own book: “I have been blessed with brilliant enemies”. Watson (the transcript has the answer without labels; it matches Watson’s memoir) ties this to a line he attributes to John Stuart Mill: teacher and learner “fall asleep at their post if there is no enemy in the field”.

The turn to Wilson: his enemies were “the radical Left” who “believed ideals like there’s biological human nature were outrageous”. “I was physically attacked”, with water dumped on him at an AAAS meeting, and “I loved it because I knew I was making history”. “I was the only scientist in modern times to be physically attacked because of an idea”. The attack lasted “for several years after the publication of my book, ‘Sociobiology’“. His method: critics “were using arguments that were ridiculous. But you needed to know what they were”. Watson adds: “I began really to come close to Ed because I hated Ed’s enemies”.

On being a star, Wilson (or Watson; the lines run together) says it is “better to be bright than dim”. Krulwich presses with Darwin: “he simmered and simmered”. The reply: “The moment he heard of Wallace, he immediately published”, and “he had the advantage of being born very rich” against “I had the advantage of being born very poor”.

📚 Added context

Priority and enemies (Roots). Merton explains why rivalry is rational: credit goes to the first. Darwin’s case supports Merton: he published when Wallace’s letter arrived (1858), after about twenty years of delay. Why Darwin waited is still discussed (fear of the religious reaction, the need for evidence, ill health, his wife’s faith). Wilson’s mention of “Emma” is the family-reason version.
Capecchi’s claim as folk psychology. The idea that a lab needs an external opponent is an old management claim (an “out-group” raises cohesion). Studies of research teams find competition can raise effort but cut data sharing; the best evidence is mixed†. Capecchi’s own life (orphaned in Italy, raised partly on the street) is a reason to read the line as a survivor’s.
Mill’s actual argument. In On Liberty, Mill says a view never challenged becomes “dead dogma, not a living truth”. Wilson’s “enemy” is a useful opponent, not a hatred. I did not find the sentence Wilson quotes in Mill†.
Wilson’s water incident. Reported at the 1978 AAAS meeting in Washington by contemporaries, and discussed in Segerstråle’s history (Roots). It is a reminder that scientific ideas about human nature carry political weight, and that physical protest against a speaker was then a novelty.
Stars and ambition. Zuckerman’s study of laureates (Roots) shows that big labs train stars through authorship and mentoring, which fits Krulwich’s remark that Watson “took your name off papers”. The cost: a “star system” concentrates credit and resources. Contemporary critics (the “Matthew effect”, Merton 1968) show how credit flows to those already famous.
Watson’s own enemies. The Double Helix is a document of rivalry (Pauling, Franklin and her colleagues at King’s). The Rosalind Franklin episode has been criticised for years as a case where ambition crossed into misuse of data (the Photo 51 story). The talk does not mention it.

📚 Roots: The sociology of scientific ambition — priority, enemies, and when you peak

The problem. Krulwich asks whether science rewards the competitive. The sociology of science has an answer.

The point. Everything Krulwich calls “the Marines culture” is in Merton: credit for priority makes rivalry rational. Wilson’s addition is that a good enemy is useful because it forces you to answer.

Robert K. Merton, “Priorities in Scientific Discovery” (1957) and “Singletons and Multiples” (1961). Science rewards being first. Credit is the currency, so priority fights are normal and intense, not a defect. Discoveries are usually “multiples”: several people reach them at about the same time. Merton’s point: this is why scientists fear being scooped, and why Darwin published at once when Wallace’s letter came (Wilson says so).
Harriet Zuckerman, Scientific Elite (1977). She interviewed US Nobel laureates. They tended to train under earlier laureates, picked big problems, and got ambitious young people to write papers as lead authors. This matches Krulwich’s remark that Watson “took his name off papers and made them into stars”.
John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (1859). The argument that truth needs opponents, because an unchallenged opinion decays into a dead dogma. Wilson attaches this idea to “enemies”. I could not confirm the exact sentence he cites†.
Peter Medawar, Advice to a Young Scientist (1979) and The Art of the Soluble (1967). “Science is the art of the soluble.” Medawar tells young scientists to pick problems they can crack: a good scientist is not one who tackles the biggest problem but the biggest soluble one. This is Watson’s position (“not all problems are crackable”) and clashes with “pick a real big one”.
Richard Hamming, “You and Your Research” (1986 talk). “If you do not work on an important problem, it’s unlikely you’ll do important work.” But he adds that important means an attack is in sight. Hamming sits between Wilson’s “great goals” and Medawar’s “soluble”.
Age and achievement. Harvey Lehman (Age and Achievement, 1953) and, later, Dean Keith Simonton’s work found that creative peaks come earlier in maths and theoretical physics than in the observational and historical fields. Wilson’s ranking (mathematician at 17, physicist late 20s, molecular biologist late 30s, evolutionary biologist late 40s, philosophers “never”) is a joking version of this. Benjamin Jones (2009) argued that the age at which major work is done has risen over the 20th century as the knowledge burden grew†.
The “enemy” as a method. Capecchi’s “you have to have an enemy” is a leadership claim, not a law. Alternative lab cultures (cooperative, mentorship-heavy labs) also produce top work. The 2009 audience laughed because the claim was told as a joke about “boys”.

📚 Roots: The sociobiology war — Wilson and “brilliant enemies”

The problem. Wilson says he was “physically attacked because of an idea”. What was the idea and who was angry?

The book. Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (1975). Twenty-six chapters on animal societies, and a last chapter that applied the same logic to humans.
The reaction. The Sociobiology Study Group (a Boston-area collective including Harvard’s Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin, plus Ruth Hubbard and others) published a letter in the New York Review of Books (Nov 1975) accusing the book of biological determinism and of echoing past ideologies of race and sex. At the 1978 AAAS meeting in Washington, a protester poured water on Wilson’s head while chanting; this is the incident he recalls†.
The argument over substance. Lewontin, Rose and Kamin, Not in Our Genes (1984): the “politics of human nature”. Wilson’s reply: On Human Nature (1978, Pulitzer 1979, which Krulwich lists). Ullica Segerstråle’s Defenders of the Truth (2000) is the fairest history; she argues the sides spoke past each other because of different views of what a scientific explanation must be.
Later vindication and limits. Behavioural ecology and evolutionary psychology grew into respected fields. Critics still argue that human cultural variation limits the explanatory power of genes.
Watson on his own side. Watson’s remark, “I began really to come close to Ed because I hated Ed’s enemies”, is a rare declaration of solidarity. It is also an echo of Watson’s long history of strong dislikes. The comparison to Rush Limbaugh is an offhand political aside (Wilson is saying: study your opponent’s best arguments even when they are poor). Note it is about method, not about politics.

Why it matters here. The war explains what Wilson means by “enemies”. It also marks a difference between the two men: Watson sought rivals to win a race; Wilson’s enemies came to him with an ideology.

Where others push back.

Collaborative science. Many large discoveries (the Human Genome Project, CERN, LIGO) came from cooperation under a common goal. Watson ran the early Human Genome Project (Krulwich says so), which is a cooperative case.
Gender and culture. “It works with boys anyways” names a gender limit. Studies on lab climate show combative styles select against some good scientists.
Rivalry costs. Secrecy, rushed papers, and retractions follow priority races. The claim “enemies help” needs the cost side.

What they leave out. The difference between intellectual enemies (Wilson’s critics) and competitor enemies (Zinder’s lab). They treat both as the same thing, “enemies”, and so draw one lesson from two kinds of conflict.

Check yourself

Separate the two kinds of “enemy” in this section. Which does Mill’s argument support?
Why did Darwin publish at once when he heard of Wallace? What does Merton’s “multiples” idea say about that?
What does Krulwich’s “why flash when you can simmer” ask, and how did they answer?

3. Allies of convenience: Wilson and the evangelicals

In short. Wilson says he turned to evangelicals because the core of environmental supporters was too small to save species now. He notes that 75% of people are religious and 42% evangelical. He argues the US is on a knife edge, and that conservation must come up from the bottom as a transcendent issue. In The Creation he addresses a Southern Baptist minister, and he says it has worked in part.

🎙 In the talk. Krulwich notes that Wilson has “gone and done a preacher’s tour”, speaking to churches about biodiversity while being “semi-comfortable with biblical references”. Wilson’s answer starts with himself: “being a southerner and raised as an evangelical before I became a non-believer”. The problem he saw: “we weren’t getting it across to the people that we have to save species now” and the core of environmental supporters was too small. “The mass of people were not interested”. He asked who the others were: “They are the religious. 75% are religious. 42% are evangelicals”.

His political theory: the US is on “a knife edge” in presidential elections and “they will not respond to issues like conservation unless it comes up from the bottom”. So: “treat conservation as a transcendent issue”. In The Creation he addresses an imagined Southern Baptist minister, and says “we have huge differences in our world views” but “if we got together as friends on this one issue” they “could do wonders”. “It has worked in part”, including a visit with Mormon leadership.

📚 Added context

Wilson’s own source: the church of his youth. He was raised Southern Baptist in Alabama and left the faith as a young man, a story told in Naturalist (1994). That gives him the credibility he says he needs.
The alliance had earlier forms. Evangelical groups ran creation-care campaigns from the 1990s; the Evangelical Climate Initiative (2006) was the largest; Wilson’s The Creation (2006) came out the same year (Roots).
A boundary, not a merger. Wilson does not ask them to change belief: “just didn’t worry about all that other stuff”. This is an overlapping consensus in Rawls’s phrase: different reasons, same policy. Philosophers call it pragmatic pluralism.
Is it manipulative? Wilson uses the word “transcendent” for a non-believer’s goal. Critics on both sides can read it as using religion for ends the religious would not share. Wilson’s reply would be that the species-protection goal is shared, and the reasons are not his business.
Did it work? Moderately. Conservation as a bipartisan issue survived for habitat (Endangered Species Act supporters in both parties, hunting and fishing groups). Climate hardened into a partisan identity, which cut the alliance short on the larger problem (Roots).
His later line. Wilson later developed this into the “Half-Earth” argument and the Encyclopedia of Life (he mentions the TED prize). This talk is an early statement of his coalition thinking†.

📚 Roots: Science and religion — the Creation alliance

The problem. Why would a non-believer address evangelicals about conservation, and does it work?

Lynn White Jr., “The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis” (Science, 1967). Accused Western Christianity of a dominion-over-nature ethic. This is the old story that religious believers and conservationists are opponents.
Stephen Jay Gould, “Non-Overlapping Magisteria” (1997). Science covers the empirical, religion the moral. A truce, not an alliance.
Creation care. Within US evangelicalism, an environmental stream grew from the 1990s: the Evangelical Environmental Network (“What Would Jesus Drive?”, 2002), the Evangelical Climate Initiative (2006). Wilson’s The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth (2006) is a letter to a Southern Baptist pastor. He says the book works “in part”.
Wilson’s numbers. He says 75% of Americans are religious and 42% evangelical. Definitions matter: polls count “born again” Christians in the low 40% range, but “evangelical” by denomination is lower (about a quarter of adults in Pew’s 2007 survey)†. The strategic point (a large bloc) survives either figure.
The strategy. Wilson’s theory of political change is bottom-up: “they will not respond to issues like conservation unless it comes up from the bottom”. He wants conservation to be a “transcendent issue”.
What happened next. Evangelical support for conservation exists but is divided, and climate change became a partisan marker in the US. A 2010s Pew series on religion and climate shows that white evangelicals remain the least likely group to see climate change as a major threat†. So the alliance helped on species protection more than on climate policy.

Why Krulwich raises it. He wonders whether Wilson, who fights sharp battles, can “hang with” opponents. Wilson’s answer is the opposite of the “enemy” doctrine: choose your enemies by what you need. The two doctrines coexist.

Where others push back.

Secular allies. Some environmentalists dislike dressing conservation in religion and prefer science and economics.
Religious critics. Some believers argue for stewardship on their own theology and see Wilson’s “transcendent” as a borrowed term.
Old tension. Wilson wrote elsewhere that religion is a product of evolved human tendencies. Working with believers does not reduce that disagreement; it sets it aside. The talk does not discuss this.

What he leaves out. Evidence that the strategy worked beyond anecdote, and the strongest religious objection. Also the cost: evangelical alliances in US politics come with other commitments (on evolution teaching, for instance), which Wilson does not mention in this passage.

Check yourself

State Wilson’s theory of political change in one sentence. Why does he think the religious are the key?
What is the difference between asking people to agree on beliefs and asking them to agree on one issue?
Name one reason the alliance might work for species protection and fail for climate.

4. Great goals, uncrackable problems — how to choose what to work on

In short. They disagree on how to pick a problem. Wilson says Watson told him that great science means great goals, and you only need to make one original discovery, so pick a big one. Watson thinks databases will let evolutionary biologists peak at about 25. Wilson does not believe it, since you have to be a good naturalist and inhabit the subject.

🎙 In the talk. Krulwich says Wilson in the 1950s wanted the best people on important, “ripe for experiment” problems, and asks “why do you think that scientists should try to be stars?“. They disagree on the brain. Krulwich asks whether some problems “might just take 30, 40, 50 years of simply staring”. The sharp reply: “You should star some other place” and “I think it’s pretty boring”.

Wilson tells the Cold Spring Harbor story: he asked Watson “what is great science?” and Watson answered “immediately without pausing at all— great goals”. Wilson’s gloss: “you don’t deserve to be called a scientist unless you have made on original discovery”, and “you only need to make one”. Therefore “you might as well pick a real big one”. He then gives the peak-age joke: mathematicians at 17, physicists late 20s, molecular biologists late 30s, evolutionary biologists late 40s, and “I like to add philosophers, never”.

Watson disagrees about the future: databases will let evolutionary biologists “peak at about 25” because “you just look at other people’s data”. Wilson: “Jim, I don’t believe that one at all”. “To be really good in evolutionary biology, you have to be a good naturalist. And you have to inhabit the subject”.

Krulwich quotes Watson’s recent line, “I caution young scientists from taking on brain-based behaviors whose essences may be uncrackable over the foreseeable future” and asks if he is “too fast”. Watson cites fly memory genes at Cold Spring Harbor, “about 50 different genes”, and says the field may need “the complete anatomy of the fly’s brain” first. His analogy: “Until you knew two-dimensional structure of DNA, you couldn’t do the three-dimensional”. Then Crick: “he wasted his time”, because “he had a goal bigger than the facts to think with”. Watson adds that Crick had a house in La Jolla and a white Mercedes, and that “as a scientist, I’ve accomplished a lot more than Francis”.

📚 Added context

Soluble problems (idea 2). Medawar’s “art of the soluble” and Hamming’s “important problem with an attack in sight” are Watson’s position in other words. The risk is the opposite error: avoid anything hard and you only solve what the current tools allow.
Is a 40-year wait wasted? Examples cut both ways. Mendel’s work waited decades. The structure of DNA depended on X-ray crystallography reaching the right resolution. On the other side, general relativity and the early brain-and-consciousness work were not “wasted” even before tools. Watson’s rule (wait for the facts) fits experimental sciences more than theoretical ones.
Crick’s brain years. Crick moved to neuroscience in 1976 at the Salk Institute and kept at it to his death in 2004. He and Christof Koch proposed searching for neural correlates of consciousness; the programme became a mainstream area in the 2000s. That is arguable vindication of the “uncrackable” bet, though no consensus theory has emerged†.
The databases claim. Watson predicted in 2009 that big data would make young evolutionists peak early. In genomics this proved partly right: much recent work reuses public data. But the bottleneck moved to interpretation and field knowledge, as Wilson says.
The peak-age joke has data behind it. Simonton’s work finds peaks in mid-career for most fields; for theoretical physics and mathematics, earlier (idea 2). Jones’s “burden of knowledge” paper (2009) shows ages at great achievement rising through the 20th century.
Which brain problem? Fly memory genes (the Benzer/Tully tradition, idea 5) are one route; Lichtman and Sanes’s Brainbow is another (imaging). The fly connectome, finished in 2024 by the FlyWire consortium, turned Watson’s “wait for the anatomy” into reality, and the field then used it to simulate fly circuits (NIH summary).
“Great goals” as strategy. A Wilson-style rule: pick a big domain, become the authority, and let the problem emerge; a Watson-style rule: pick a big question where a technique is ripe. These are different rules that both call themselves “great goals”.

Where others push back.

Survivorship. Great goals are praised because winners chose them. Many who chose big goals produced nothing.
The “one discovery” rule understates most science, which is incremental and cumulative. Kuhn’s “normal science” describes what most good scientists do.
Watson on Crick is partly personal. Watson’s remarks about the car, the house and “a lot of girls” show rivalry, not argument. Treat as an anecdote.

What they leave out. Failure rates, the role of luck and the role of teams. Also who pays for a 40-year bet: Crick had tenure at a rich institute. A young scientist today may not.

Check yourself

State Watson’s rule and Wilson’s rule for choosing a problem. Where do they actually disagree?
Is Watson’s DNA analogy (“two-dimensional before three-dimensional”) an argument for waiting or for something else?
What would count as evidence that Crick’s last 40 years were “wasted”?

5. Two strategies of biology — and what they would do at 21

In short. Wilson contrasts the two strategies. The molecular biologist finds the species suited to a problem, while the evolutionary biologist picks a group and becomes its world authority. At 21, Watson would study how the brain works and Wilson would study the unknown world of microbes. Wilson expects the future of biology to be synthesis, such as the long transitions from cells to organisms to superorganisms.

🎙 In the talk. Wilson draws the contrast: for the molecular and cell biologist “for every problem there’s a species ideally suited to its solution”; the evolutionary biologist works the other way and picks a group “to become the world authority”. “And then you will see the great problem you can solve with it”.

Asked what they would do at 21, Watson says: “I would try to understand really how the brain works”, via synaptic cell biology for a PhD and then systems. Wilson cites Monod’s two ends, “the brain to create consciousness” and “the origin of life”, and says he would not go there. He would go “into microbiology … the virtually unknown world of the prokaryotes”. “I would go back to diversity where virtually everything is unknown, except instead of ants, I would be studying germs”. “Just like landing on an unknown planet”.

Krulwich then proposes a reunification: after a century of finding “the essential building blocks”, “like Humpty Dumpty, we’re trying to pull things back together again”. Wilson agrees: “a lot of biology in the future is going to be synthesis”, “the great transitions from cells, to multi-cell organisms, to superorganisms, to ecosystems”. Each step took “100 million years or more”. The puzzle: “why did we have hundreds of millions of years of bacteria … before the first eukaryotic cell”, “one of the great remaining problems of science”.

📚 Added context

Krogh’s principle and its inverse (Roots). The molecular choice and the evolutionist’s choice are two sampling strategies: choose the case that makes the experiment easy, or choose the group and let it set the question.
Why microbes are the “unknown planet”. Most microbial species have never been cultured; the tree of life is mostly microbial; metagenomics (Roots) now samples the diversity directly. Wilson’s statement is a fair summary of the state of the field in 2009 and still largely holds, with large-scale sequencing efforts (the Earth Microbiome Project, from 2010)† filling in the map.
A small irony. Watson, who started with phage and bacteria, now wants the brain. Wilson, who spent his life on ants, wants bacteria. Each wants the other’s kind of unknown.
Eukaryote origin. The leading account (Margulis and later work) says a merger of an archaeon with a bacterium produced the first eukaryote, a rare event rather than a gradual one. Nick Lane’s work argues energy limits (mitochondria) explain why complex cells arose once. This is the sort of “tipping point” Krulwich asks about; Wilson says “we don’t know what happened or why it took so long”.
Major transitions and “cooperation” (idea 6). Wilson’s transitions list is the Maynard Smith–Szathmáry list. The links between the 1990s theory and his 2009 interest in eusociality is that each transition needs cooperation to beat conflict.
Reunification in practice. Systems biology, synthetic biology and evolutionary genomics are efforts at “putting things back together”. Watson’s own later interest in cancer as a systems failure (idea 7) is another.

📚 Roots: Model organism or diversity — two strategies of doing biology

The problem. At Wilson names the two strategies. This is one of the best summaries of biology’s method choice in the talk.

August Krogh’s principle (1929). “For a large number of problems there will be some animal of choice, or a few such animals, on which it can be most conveniently studied.” This is the model organism logic. Wilson’s “for every problem there’s a species ideally suited” is a paraphrase.
The great model organisms. Drosophila (T. H. Morgan, 1910s), E. coli and phage (Delbrück/Luria, 1940s), C. elegans (Sydney Brenner, 1960s), the mouse, Arabidopsis, zebrafish. Jacques Monod’s remark that what is true of E. coli is true of the elephant is the strongest form of the idea (attribution from memory)†.
The inversion Wilson describes. Evolutionary biologists work “the opposite” way: pick a group (ants, orchids, cichlids), master it, and let it show you the problem. Wilson’s advice to a graduate student is to “become the world authority”. The best example is his own life: ants gave him island biogeography, pheromones, caste theory and the superorganism.
Carl Woese, the three domains (1977, 1990). Ribosomal RNA sequencing showed that bacteria are not one group: there are two prokaryotic domains, Bacteria and Archaea, with eukaryotes a third. This is why Wilson says the prokaryote world is “virtually unknown” and “just like landing on an unknown planet”.
Lynn Margulis, endosymbiosis (1967 onward). Mitochondria and chloroplasts descend from engulfed bacteria. The origin of the eukaryotic cell was a merger, not a gradual upgrade. That is relevant to Wilson’s “great remaining problem” about why eukaryotes took so long.
Microbial ecology and metagenomics. Norman Pace’s cultivation-free surveys (1980s onward), then Craig Venter’s Sargasso Sea sequencing (2004). Most microbes cannot be cultured; the diversity is mostly genetic. This is what makes the “unknown planet” claim literally right: the great majority of microbial lineages are known only from DNA. Cold Spring Harbor and the later Human Microbiome Project (2007 on) sit in this line†.

The deeper point. Model-organism science buys depth and comparability at the price of generality. Diversity-first science buys generality at the price of control. Wilson wants both, and says the merger is happening because DNA sequences can now be compared across all of life.

📚 Roots: The big problems — brain, origin of life, cancer, synthesis

The problem. Krulwich asks: what would you tackle at 21? The answers map each man’s idea of progress.

Monod’s two ends. Jacques Monod, Chance and Necessity (1970): the future problems of biology lie at its extremes: consciousness and the origin of life. The origin-of-life side: Miller-Urey (1952), the RNA world (Gilbert, 1986; Joyce, Szostak), hydrothermal-vent hypotheses (Lane, Martin). The consciousness side: Crick and Koch’s search for neural correlates (1990s on).
Crick’s later career. Francis Crick left DNA for the brain in the late 1970s; The Astonishing Hypothesis (1994) argued consciousness could be studied as neural activity; his last paper, on the claustrum, appeared after his death in 2004†. Watson calls this “wasting time”. A fair reading: Crick helped legitimise a field that others later worked in.
The brain and the connectome. C. elegans’ 302 neurons were mapped by White, Brenner et al. in 1986. Brainbow (Livet et al., 2007, Lichtman and Sanes at Harvard) labelled neurons in many colours, which Krulwich mentions. The fly memory genes at Cold Spring Harbor trace to Seymour Benzer’s mutants (dunce, rutabaga) and Tim Tully’s lab†. The finished fruit-fly connectome came in 2024 (see Part 1).
Cancer as a metabolic disease. Otto Warburg observed in the 1920s that tumour cells ferment glucose to lactate even with oxygen (“aerobic glycolysis”). It was long set aside, then revived. Vander Heiden, Cantley and Thompson (Science, 2009) reviewed “Understanding the Warburg effect”, which matches Watson’s mention of work “over in the medical school” (Lewis Cantley’s lab was Harvard-affiliated)†. Whether the effect is cause or consequence of cancer is still debated.
The national frame. Nixon’s National Cancer Act of 1971 launched the “War on Cancer”; the 2016 Cancer Moonshot is the later version. Watson’s own history: he opposed some of the cancer-virus funding in the 1970s and wrote critical op-eds†. In the talk he makes his plea: let’s try to cure it this decade, 2010–2020. By 2020 cancer deaths were falling slowly but cancer was not cured.
Synthesis and transitions. Wilson’s picture: after a century of tearing things apart, the work of the next one is putting them together, and a critical mass of information leads to “the break where it can go”. Compare Monod’s extreme ends with Wilson’s middle: the transitions between levels.

Why this matters. Watson and Wilson give two models of progress. Watson: wait for the technique, then strike the soluble problem with the best student. Wilson: master a domain and let its structure show the problem.

Where others push back.

Model organisms still win on tractability. Without E. coli and the fly, no one would know the genetic code or the memory genes. The “pick a group and wait for the problem” method is slow and hard to fund.
The biodiversity route risks cataloguing. Watson says of the microbe plan, “you’re cataloging everything that’s there. And maybe if you’re lucky, you’ll find some nice rules”. It is the old stamp-collecting charge in a new place.

What they leave out. Ecology and evolution of microbes in communities (the microbiome was beginning to be a major field in 2007–09). Also the big missing term: computation. Neither names bioinformatics, although Wilson’s “critical mass of information” is its logic.

Check yourself

Explain Wilson’s inversion of the model-organism strategy with a concrete example.
Why does Wilson choose microbes? Why does Watson choose brains?
What is the “great remaining problem” Wilson names, and why is it hard to study?

6. Cooperation and the attack on kin selection

In short. Wilson says he is now attacking the traditional theory of kin selection, which has ruled for 40 years without getting us much. His hook is that ants and termites are 3% of insect species but 80% of individuals and biomass. When colonies appeared, they took over the world. Watson says it is interesting but he would not go near it.

🎙 In the talk. Krulwich asks about “explaining cooperation generally”. Wilson: “That’s what I’m working on now … I’ve been conducting an assault on the traditional theory of kin selection, which has ruled for the last 40 years and hasn’t gotten us much at all in 40 years of theory”. Krulwich restates the theory: a sterile ant works for her sister because of “this genetic attachment to the sister”. Wilson: “we’re looking at it in a wholly new way”.

The empirical hook: “when ants and termites came into existence … they took over the world”. Ants and termites are “3% of the species of insects” but “80% of the numbers of individuals and biomass”. Solitary insects ruled “for hundreds of millions of years until finally in the Jurassic, the first insect that could make colonies organized like that made their appearance”. “And when they appeared, they took over the world”. The danger: “it might be insolvable at least over a long period of time”. Watson: “I can see it’s interesting. But I wouldn’t go near it”.

📚 Added context

What Hamilton’s rule says (Roots). A gene for helping spreads if relatedness times benefit exceeds cost. The haplodiploid twist (sisters share 75%) was the classic explanation for why eusociality evolved repeatedly in the Hymenoptera.
What the 2010 paper argued. Nowak, Tarnita and Wilson said eusociality arises first from ecological conditions (a defensible, valuable nest) and individual-level selection; relatedness follows from nest-sharing in family groups rather than driving it.
The answer. Abbot et al. (137 signatories, 2011) held that the critique misses the general theory; many biologists also pointed to evidence from comparative work: eusociality tends to originate in species with lifelong monogamy (Hughes et al., Science 2008), which fits kin-selection logic†. The dispute continues in philosophy of biology (Birch and Okasha 2015).
Why Wilson cares. The superorganism idea needs group-level selection to be real. If the colony is a unit of selection, kin selection’s focus on genes inside individuals looks incomplete. This is a long-standing disagreement of Wilson with the gene-centred tradition (Williams, Dawkins).
The 80% figure. Colony insects dominate by number in many habitats. Studies of tropical canopy find ants making up a large share of arthropod biomass (Fittkau and Klinge’s Amazonian estimate, 1973)†. Wilson’s global sentence is rhetorical.
Timeline. Fossil ants date to the Cretaceous, about 100–140 million years ago; Wilson says “Jurassic” (see the slip box). The claim “solitary insects … for hundreds of millions of years” is right in spirit: insects are far older than ants.
Why Watson will not go near it. Watson’s rule (idea 4): avoid problems that may be “insolvable”. Wilson’s rule: master a group. The ant–termite question is exactly the kind of problem each rule treats differently.

The problem. Darwin’s “special difficulty”: a sterile worker ant leaves no offspring. How can natural selection favour that? The talk gives one answer (kin selection) and Wilson’s dissent.

The point. At Wilson gives his evidence for importance: ants and termites dominate insect biomass. That shows why the problem matters. It does not by itself say which theory is right. Krulwich lets the point through unchallenged; Watson says he “wouldn’t go near it”.

Darwin, Origin (1859), chapter on instinct. Neuter insects are a “special difficulty” for his theory. He suggests selection can act on the family that produces them.
William Morton Wheeler, “The ant colony as an organism” (1911). The superorganism. Wilson’s intellectual ancestor at Harvard.
W. D. Hamilton, “The Genetical Evolution of Social Behaviour” (1964). Hamilton’s rule: a gene for helping spreads if r × B > C (relatedness times the benefit to the recipient exceeds the cost to the actor). Hamilton noted that in the Hymenoptera (ants, bees, wasps), where males are haploid, sisters share 75% of their genes, which could explain why sterile female workers evolved so often. This is the idea Krulwich summarises: “all those babies will be kind of like her genes”.
Robert Trivers and Hare (1976). Tested the haplodiploidy idea with colony sex ratios. Results mixed; worker-queen conflict over investment is real.
Wilson, Sociobiology (1975). Gave kin selection its biggest platform. Wilson was a champion of Hamilton’s theory for thirty years, which makes his reversal notable.
Maynard Smith and Szathmáry, The Major Transitions in Evolution (1995). The framework Wilson uses: replicators → chromosomes → cells → eukaryotes → multicellular bodies → colonies. Each time, formerly independent units give up independence. Eusociality is one such transition.
D. S. Wilson and E. O. Wilson, “Rethinking the theoretical foundation of sociobiology” (Quarterly Review of Biology, 2007). The first public move back to multilevel selection: selection acts on groups as well as individuals. David Sloan Wilson is not related to E. O.
Nowak, Tarnita and E. O. Wilson, “The evolution of eusociality” (Nature, 2010). The “assault” he names as in progress. Their argument: relatedness is a consequence, not a cause, of eusociality; ecological pre-conditions (a defensible nest) and standard population genetics suffice.
Abbot et al., Nature 2011. 137 researchers answered that inclusive fitness and population genetics are mathematically equivalent in general form, and that the critique attacks specific models (reply and context). Richard Dawkins’ review of Wilson’s later book, The Social Conquest of Earth (2012), was harsh†.
Where it stands. The majority view is that Hamilton’s framework survives. The minority view (and the useful lesson) is that “kin selection” is used loosely, sometimes as a general statistical accounting tool and sometimes as a causal story about relatedness, and that the first does not prove the second. Philosophers such as Birch and Okasha (2015) treat this as an open question of what the theory explains (overview).

Where others push back.

Mathematical equivalence. Critics say kin selection and Wilson’s multilevel selection are two accountings of the same maths, so the dispute is partly verbal. Wilson’s side says the explanation differs, not the accounting.
Evidence for relatedness. Genomic comparisons of eusocial lineages (Kapheim et al., 2015, bees)† have mixed implications for both views.
Reputation cost. Wilson was seen as attacking the theory he had once promoted, and his later book The Social Conquest of Earth (2012) was widely criticised by evolutionary theorists†.

What he leaves out. The positive part: what the new model predicts that the old does not. In this hour he describes only the aim (“a wholly new way”), not the model.

Check yourself

Explain why haplodiploidy once looked like a neat answer for ants.
State, in one sentence each, Wilson’s 2010 view and the 2011 reply.
What does the “80% of individuals and biomass” figure show, and what does it not show?

7. Curing cancer and the silicon creatures

In short. Watson says he will be dead before machines and life forms meld, so it is not worth thinking about. What he wants is to cure cancer this decade, 2010 to 2020, and not wait another ten years on government grants. He says we now understand cancer metabolism from Warburg’s 1924 observation but have not used it. He describes himself as a dumb kid from Chicago who has to prove he is not dumb every day.

🎙 In the talk. Krulwich asks about people who say “computers are going to get smarter and smarter” so that “life forms and machines will begin to meld” and “machines will learn how to make baby machines”. Watson: “I’ll be dead before then. So I’m not— it’s not worth me thinking about it”. Is it dumb or implausible? “I don’t think computers will cure cancer”.

What he wants instead: a piece in “the Times” whose title was changed; his title “Cure Cancer Today, Not Tomorrow”. The proposal: “let’s try to cure it this decade between 2010 and 2020 and not wait another 10 years just getting government grants”. He gave a course on cancer at Harvard in 1959 “because I was interested in it and thought I had an idea. But it wasn’t really we didn’t know enough”. Now, “50 years after that course”, there is “wonderful work done over in the medical school” that “simplifies enormous insight as to the observationa of Otto Warburg in 1924— aerobic glycolysis in cancer”. “I think we understand it. We haven’t used this understanding to cure cancer. Why not cure cancer?“.

Then the self-portrait: “I like really being heroic goals done by a dumb kid from the south side of Chicago— why not?”; he agrees he’s a dumb kid “who kind of has a hunch that he’s not dumb and just has to prove it every day”, and “I’ve got fight and show that I can still outwhip my brain”.

📚 Added context

What happened to the 2010–2020 goal. Cancer was not cured. Age-adjusted US cancer death rates have fallen (about a third since 1991, per American Cancer Society reporting)†, because of less smoking, earlier detection and targeted and immune therapies. Watson’s own title (“Cure Cancer Today”) recalls Nixon’s 1971 “war” and the 2016 Moonshot.
The Warburg effect. Tumour cells use glucose differently, even with oxygen. The effect is real and drives imaging (FDG-PET scans use it). Whether metabolism is a cause of cancer, or a feature of rapid growth, is still debated. A 2009 Science review is the likely source of the Harvard work Watson means (idea 5; from memory). His “we understand it” runs ahead of the field.
Watson’s view of computers. Cancer is a disease of the genome and of cells, so he expected progress from biology, not computing. Over the next decade, computational tools did much: tumour sequencing at scale, drug-response prediction, and structure prediction (AlphaFold). None cured cancer, but “computers won’t help” is the weaker half of his claim (from memory on AlphaFold dates)†.
Singularity talk. Krulwich’s question reflects the Kurzweil/Vinge ideas then popular (Kurzweil, The Singularity Is Near, 2005; Vinge 1993; I. J. Good’s “intelligence explosion”, 1965). Watson dodges rather than argues. The 2020s debate over advanced AI makes the question sharper than in 2009. It is not answered here.
The motivation. Watson links the goal to his own record: this is an old man’s last project and a reminder that the Human Genome Project began as a “big goal” argued against sceptics.

Where others push back.

“Decade goals” and funding. Cancer is many diseases. A single goal date invites overpromising, and the 1970s war on cancer is the standard example.
Reductionist hope. Some oncologists argue the metabolic and genetic pictures are necessary but not sufficient, and that tumour evolution (resistance) is the real barrier.
Computers and biology. Many biologists hold that computation is now central, and Watson’s dismissal reads as the old molecular-vs-other tension in a new place.

What he leaves out. The cost of delay: Watson wants to stop “getting government grants” and “see whether you can do it”. How the shift would be funded or judged is not stated.

Check yourself

What is the Warburg effect, and why is it not by itself a cure?
Compare “I’ll be dead before then” with Wilson’s long-term thinking on biodiversity. What does each show about their time horizons?
What would Watson need to be right that computers cannot help with cancer?

8. Are our brains fit for the century? Emotions, pay, intelligence and gentleness

In short. Can brains formed by walking apes handle global problems? Wilson says we have paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions and godlike technology, which is dangerous. He wants the big questions philosophers abandoned answered: where we come from, who we are and where we are going. Watson’s answer is to pay smart people more, because intelligence is more limiting now that problems are harder.

🎙 In the talk. Krulwich’s question: we face “pollution problems and global warming problems and perhaps extinction problems”, yet “we have brains that were largely formed by walking apes” who “think locally” with “great feeling” and cannot abstract easily. Do we have what it takes to get through the next 100 years?

Wilson: “I think we will if we are honest enough and if we’re smart enough”. Then his formula: “we have paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technology”. “It’s terrifically dangerous. It’s now approaching a point of crisis overall”. The remedy: “until we answer those huge questions of philosophy that the philosophers abandoned a couple of generations ago— where do we come from, who are we, and where are we going”.

Watson’s answer is different: “I just think we should give higher salaries to smart people”; “intelligence is much more limiting than it was in the past because the problems are harder”. He proposed to the then president-elect (Harvard’s incoming president, per context) that arts and sciences faculty be paid like the business school; “I did not get a response”.

Krulwich raises IQ gains; Watson: “People mature faster. But there’s no evidence that the IQ at age 20 is any different”, and “the components of the IQ tests which measure g … that hasn’t gone up”.

Krulwich’s gentler counter-picture: humans have become “gentler”, like dogs and the Russian foxes. Watson: “we’ve evolved to be more like babies … so that we play instead of kill”. Krulwich’s cartoon: “the Popeyes ganged up against the Blutos … and the Popeyes gradually became Alan Alda”. One of them (the captions do not say which; it reads like Wilson) warns against too much agreeableness: “Sometimes you’ve got to say this is just crap and go your own way”. A university should give people “enough knowledge so that they know enough to disagree intelligently”. Then the Argentina remark and Krulwich’s close.

📚 Added context

Mismatch (Roots). The “paleolithic/medieval/godlike” formula is a slogan, not a theory; as a diagnosis it is common to evolutionary psychology and to risk research. The rhetorical force comes from the order: biology (slowest), institutions (slow), technology (fast).
What counts as a “medieval” institution? Wilson probably means national governments, religions and universities built for slower change. The sentence does not say which fix he prefers. His answer is philosophical (self-understanding), not institutional.
Why philosophy “abandoned” the big questions. The usual story: with the rise of analytic philosophy and specialised science, “Where do we come from?” went to science. Wilson’s Consilience (1998) argues the sciences and humanities should reunite to answer it. See the other Wilson pages in this folder.
Pay and talent. The economics (Roots): winner-take-all markets and Baumol’s cost disease. Raising academic pay is feasible but would face the market logic Watson himself notes (“businesses is what drives our country”).
IQ. The Flynn effect is real, gains were bigger on abstract and fluid tasks than on knowledge tasks, and the trend has reversed in several rich countries (Roots). Watson’s “kids grow faster” does not fit data on adult conscripts.
Self-domestication and gentleness (Roots). Evidence from foxes, dogs and bonobos is good; for humans it is plausible and contested.
The race remarks. See Roots: the lines on Scots and Chinese are not grounded and should be set aside.
Mill again. “Disagree intelligently” is Mill’s idea in a modern sentence: the benefit of an education is learning to hold a view against a good opponent.

📚 Roots: The human animal — mismatch, self-domestication, intelligence, and their misuse

The problem. The last quarter of the talk asks whether evolved brains can manage global risks. Four literatures sit behind it.

The point. The first half of the final question is Wilson’s. The second half becomes a loose chat in which the two use cartoon evolution (“the Scots evolved late”). Notice the shift: when the topic is a problem, both are careful; when it is a joke, they speak casually, and the casual remarks are the weakest in the hour.

Evolutionary mismatch. Barkow, Cosmides and Tooby, The Adapted Mind (1992): the mind was shaped by Pleistocene problems, so modern environments can misfire. Wilson’s line “paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technology” is a compressed version, and a common Wilson talking point (the same sentence appears in his later writing)†.
Why abstract risks are hard to feel. Daniel Gilbert’s essay on climate (2006): threats that lack a villain, a visible moment and an immediate time frame do not trigger alarm. Paul Slovic’s work on risk perception and “psychic numbing”. Elke Weber’s “finite pool of worry”†. Krulwich’s “we think locally. We think with great feeling” is this research in plain words.
Self-domestication. Belyaev’s Russian fox experiment (from 1959): selecting foxes for tameness produced floppy ears, piebald coats and juvenile behaviour. Richard Wrangham, The Goodness Paradox (2019) argues humans selected against reactive aggression by collectively killing bullies, which matches Krulwich’s cartoon: “the Popeyes ganged up against the Blutos”. Neoteny (keeping juvenile traits) goes back to Bolk (1926) and Gould (1977). Watson: “we’ve evolved to be more like babies”. The picture is plausible and debated. Brian Hare’s work on dogs and bonobos is the experimental strand.
Intelligence. The Flynn effect (James Flynn, 1984, 1987): IQ raw scores rise across generations in many countries. Flynn himself argued the gains were not gains in general intelligence but in abstract, “scientific” thinking. Watson cites “g”. The evidence on whether gains load on g is mixed. The Norwegian reversal (study summary) shows the trend is environmental.
The misuse. Watson’s later statements linked intelligence to race. In October 2007 he told the Sunday Times that he was “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa” because “all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours — whereas all the testing says not really”. He was suspended and then retired as chancellor of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory; in 2019 his honorary titles were withdrawn after a TV documentary†. The same man here says “the Chinese … the least violent”. These are the generalisations that the genetics of populations does not support, and the reason he is remembered with a split verdict. This page records them as not endorsed.

📚 Roots: Institutions of excellence — pay, tenure and “the world’s best”

The problem. Both men end by criticising how universities choose and pay people.

Harvard’s “ad hoc committee”. In Watson’s day, tenure decisions went to outside committees asking whether anyone better existed in the world. This is the “world’s best” principle. Watson says it has lapsed. Whether true now is not something this talk can answer†.
Pay. Watson proposes that the Faculty of Arts and Sciences be paid like the business school. The economics: William Baumol’s “cost disease” (1966) says wages in sectors with slow productivity growth (teaching, performance) rise with the economy-wide wage but without output gains. Robert Frank and Philip Cook, The Winner-Take-All Society (1995), explain why a few earn so much more than slightly weaker rivals. Watson wants the winner-take-all logic extended to scientists.
Argentina. Wilson’s analogy: Argentina was among the world’s richest economies before 1914 and then fell behind. The decline is standard in economic history (Maddison’s data; Alan Taylor’s work), and the causes debated include trade, politics, and institutions. Wilson’s joke ties it to firing “smart biology professors”, which is a joke, not an argument.
Disagreement as an educated skill. Wilson’s last note: a university should give people “enough knowledge so that they know enough to disagree intelligently”. Compare John Stuart Mill again: no enemies, no learning.

Where others push back.

“Brains are the problem” vs “institutions are the problem.” Political scientists (Ostrom) show people solve commons problems with well-designed institutions, even with unchanged brains.
“Smart people” is not a policy. Higher pay may attract talent, but problems such as climate are about coordination and interests, not raw intelligence.
IQ and the “problems are harder” claim. Whether problems have become harder, or only more numerous and more connected, is open.
Argentina. The analogy mixes causes (trade, politics, policy). A joke cannot carry an economic argument.

What they leave out. Politics. In an hour that opens on a “president who believes in science”, neither speaker says how a better-educated or better-paid elite would translate into policy. Also, climate and extinction are named, but neither says what to do.

Check yourself

Break Wilson’s three-part formula into its parts. Which part changes fastest?
Why might Watson’s pay proposal fail even if he is right about talent?
Which claims in this section are tested by data, and which are jokes?

Q&A

(Add questions and answers here only if worth keeping.)

About the source and how this page was made

Speaker: Edward O. Wilson and James D. Watson (moderator Robert Krulwich)

Event: “Looking Back, Looking Forward: A Conversation with James D. Watson and Edward O. Wilson”, Harvard Museum of Natural History public lecture, Sanders Theatre, Harvard

Date: 2009-09-09 (the host says “the ninth day of the ninth month of the ninth year”; the Harvard Museum of Natural History listing gives 9 Sept 2009, 5:30 pm)

Uploaded: 2014-10-14

Length: 57:51 (transcript end; caption timing)

Channel: Harvard Museum of Natural History

Video: Looking Back Looking Forward: A Conversation with James D Watson and Edward O Wilson

A correction to the brief. The task note for this page guessed the event was “the ninth day of the Obama presidency” (late Jan 2009) and that the second man was Krulwich. Both guesses are wrong. The host says it is “the ninth day of the ninth month of the ninth year of the 21st century”, which is 9 September 2009. The second speaker is James D. Watson (co-discoverer of the DNA double helix). Robert Krulwich is the moderator. The line “most inventive network reporter in television … makes dismal science swing” is the host’s introduction of Krulwich.

Speakers

Label Who Role How sure
Host Not named in the captions. A Harvard Museum of Natural History staff member (the museum ran the event) Opens the evening, introduces Krulwich Name unknown. Role: high
Krulwich Robert Krulwich, science correspondent at NPR (also ABC, PBS, Radiolab) Moderator. Introduces both men and asks most questions High. The host names him and reads his career. The Harvard Gazette and Harvard Magazine also name him
Wilson Edward O. Wilson, Pellegrino University Research Professor, Harvard; ant biologist, sociobiologist, conservationist Speaker High. Named by Krulwich
Watson James D. Watson, Nobel laureate (1962), co-discoverer of the DNA structure; then at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Speaker High. Named by Krulwich
Audience About 1,000 people in Sanders Theatre (per the Harvard Crimson) Laugh and applaud. No audience question is captured. Krulwich says “then I’ll invite questions”, but the captions end with thanks and no Q&A Medium

Caption warnings (important).

There are no speaker labels. The captions run the voices together. I assigned lines to Wilson or Watson from content (who is being asked, who tells which story). Where an attribution rests on inference I say “likely”. The reliable anchors are: Krulwich’s questions begin with “Jim…”/“Ed…”; Wilson is the Southerner, the ant scientist, the author of The Creation and Anthill; Watson is the Double Helix author, the Cold Spring Harbor man, and the one who talks about curing cancer.

Corrections used on this page: “Nirenberg Prize” is probably the Nierenberg Prize; “23 most influential” is probably 25 (Time 25 Most Influential Americans, 1996); “ides” = ideas; “Apostrophic” is probably apostrophized (addressed as if present); “Book of Creation” = Wilson’s 2006 book The Creation; “George Bundy” = McGeorge Bundy (then dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences); “Fred Smith” is probably the Harvard ecologist Frederick E. Smith†; “Paleodictyopterans” is a real extinct insect order (Palaeodictyoptera); “a Charlie Rose moment” refers to the TV interviewer.

Krulwich’s intro says Watson became an honorary knight “in 1971”. That looks wrong. From memory, Watson’s honorary KBE came around 2002 and Spielberg’s in 2001†. Treat the year as a caption or speech error.

Factual slips by the speakers are collected in the box below the Summary.

🎙 marks what the speaker says. 📚 marks added background and the wider debate, not the speaker’s claim. † marks background from general knowledge that was not checked against a source.

Talks

Two Harvard rivals, fifty years on — E. O. Wilson and James Watson, with Robert Krulwich (Harvard, 9 Sept 2009)

Summary

Map — talking points

Putting it together

Part 1 — Before you read

Key terms

People named (a reading list)

The speakers’ own frames

The current debate (2009 to 2026)

The ideas

1. The old war: stamp collectors, aliens and a forgotten tenure

📚 Roots: Two cultures of biology — how and why

2. Enemies, ambition and stars

📚 Roots: The sociology of scientific ambition — priority, enemies, and when you peak

📚 Roots: The sociobiology war — Wilson and “brilliant enemies”

3. Allies of convenience: Wilson and the evangelicals

📚 Roots: Science and religion — the Creation alliance

4. Great goals, uncrackable problems — how to choose what to work on

5. Two strategies of biology — and what they would do at 21

📚 Roots: Model organism or diversity — two strategies of doing biology

📚 Roots: The big problems — brain, origin of life, cancer, synthesis

6. Cooperation and the attack on kin selection

7. Curing cancer and the silicon creatures

8. Are our brains fit for the century? Emotions, pay, intelligence and gentleness

📚 Roots: The human animal — mismatch, self-domestication, intelligence, and their misuse

📚 Roots: Institutions of excellence — pay, tenure and “the world’s best”

Q&A

Table of Contents

Label	Who	Role	How sure
Host	Not named in the captions. A Harvard Museum of Natural History staff member (the museum ran the event)	Opens the evening, introduces Krulwich	Name unknown. Role: high
Krulwich	Robert Krulwich, science correspondent at NPR (also ABC, PBS, Radiolab)	Moderator. Introduces both men and asks most questions	High. The host names him and reads his career. The Harvard Gazette and Harvard Magazine also name him
Wilson	Edward O. Wilson, Pellegrino University Research Professor, Harvard; ant biologist, sociobiologist, conservationist	Speaker	High. Named by Krulwich
Watson	James D. Watson, Nobel laureate (1962), co-discoverer of the DNA structure; then at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory	Speaker	High. Named by Krulwich
Audience	About 1,000 people in Sanders Theatre (per the Harvard Crimson)	Laugh and applaud. No audience question is captured. Krulwich says “then I’ll invite questions”, but the captions end with thanks and no Q&A	Medium

Talks

Two Harvard rivals, fifty years on — E. O. Wilson and James Watson, with Robert Krulwich (Harvard, 9 Sept 2009)

Summary

Map — talking points

Putting it together

Part 1 — Before you read

Key terms

People named (a reading list)

The speakers’ own frames

The current debate (2009 to 2026)

The ideas

1. The old war: stamp collectors, aliens and a forgotten tenure

📚 Roots: Two cultures of biology — how and why

2. Enemies, ambition and stars

📚 Roots: The sociology of scientific ambition — priority, enemies, and when you peak

📚 Roots: The sociobiology war — Wilson and “brilliant enemies”

3. Allies of convenience: Wilson and the evangelicals

📚 Roots: Science and religion — the Creation alliance

4. Great goals, uncrackable problems — how to choose what to work on

5. Two strategies of biology — and what they would do at 21

📚 Roots: Model organism or diversity — two strategies of doing biology

📚 Roots: The big problems — brain, origin of life, cancer, synthesis

6. Cooperation and the attack on kin selection

📚 Roots: Social evolution — from the superorganism to the attack on kin selection

7. Curing cancer and the silicon creatures

8. Are our brains fit for the century? Emotions, pay, intelligence and gentleness

📚 Roots: The human animal — mismatch, self-domestication, intelligence, and their misuse

📚 Roots: Institutions of excellence — pay, tenure and “the world’s best”

Q&A

Table of Contents