WE ARE ALL DESIGNISTS NOW:

Evolution: Darwin's city: David Sloan Wilson is using the lens of evolution to understand life in the struggling city of Binghamton, New York. Next, he wants to improve it. (Emma Marris, 6/08/11, Nature)

Differences in prosociality, Wilson thought, should produce measurable outcomes — if not in reproductive success, perhaps in happiness, crime rates, neighbourhood tidiness or even the degree of community feeling expressed in the density of holiday decorations. "I really wanted to see a map of altruism," he says. "I saw it in my mind." And with a frisson of excitement, he realized that his models and experiments offered clues about how to intervene, how to structure real-world groups to favour prosociality. "Now is the implementation phase." Evolutionary theory, Wilson decided, will improve life in Binghamton.

He now spends his days in church basements, government meeting rooms, street corners and scrubby city parks. He is involved in projects to build playgrounds, install urban gardens, reinvent schools, create neighbourhood associations and document the religious life of the city, among others. Wilson thrives on his hectic schedule, but it is hard to measure his success. Publications are sparse, in part because dealing with communities and local government is time-consuming. And the nitty-gritty practical details often swamp the theory; the people with whom he collaborates sometimes have trouble working out what his projects have to do with evolution.

At the Lost Dog, I ask city planner and frequent collaborator Tarik Abdelazim whether he understands why an academic scientist is taking such a proactive interest in the city. He leans against the bar, glass of wine in hand, and addresses Wilson. "I know you talk about 'prosociality', but how that connects to our good friend Darwin, I don't know."

Fellow biologists are also bemused. According to Wilson's former graduate student Dan O'Brien, now a biologist at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, many have reacted to Wilson's work with "a mixture of intrigue and distance". That, says O'Brien, "is because he's not doing biology anymore. He's entered into a sort of evolutionary social sciences." Wilson has acquired the language of community organizing and joined, supported and partially funded a slew of improvement schemes, raising the question of whether he is too close to his research.

Darwinism is virtually defined by its proponents failure to understand the theory.

Posted by oj at June 16, 2011 6:27 AM
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