Subject: Wilson on Biophilia
Date: Mar 21 15:40:26 1995
From: Dennis Paulson - dpaulson at ups.edu


>Date: Tue, 21 Mar 1995 14:58:58 +0600
>Sender: bene at straylight.tamu.edu
>From: CHRIS SOLLOWAY 202-260-3008 <SOLLOWAY.CHRIS at epamail.epa.gov>
>To: Multiple recipients of list <bene at straylight.tamu.edu>
>
>/* Written 2:54 PM Jan 11, 1995 by livingearth in igc:loe.transcript */
>
>(Theme music up and under)
>
>CURWOOD: This is Living on Earth. I'm Steve Curwood.
>
>(Running water, bird song)
>
>CURWOOD: The pleasure of flowers. The fear of the dark.
>These are such universal human responses that it's hard to
>think that science would need to explain them. But there is
>growing scientific interest in the idea that responses to
>nature have been passed down through human evolution. That
>they are embedded in our genes. Edward O. Wilson:
>
>WILSON: Sure, everybody likes nature. They will travel
>hundreds of miles just to stand on a seashore and see a
>sunset. They will crowd into national parks after traveling
>other hundreds of miles and so on. They have this powerful
>attraction. If not that, then they must go fishing; they
>must go hunting, or its equivalent, bird-watching and the
>like. This is an extremely important part of human life.
>And I believe then the specificity of this tells us a great
>deal about who we are as a species, and what we really need
>from the world around us.
>
>CURWOOD: Edward O. Wilson is a Harvard biologist and a 2-
>time Pulitzer Prize winner. Fifteen years ago he coined the
>term biophilia to describe his theory that we as humans, in
>fact, all life forms, have a natural need to respond to
>other life forms. We all share the same basic system of
>genetic codes, whether we're lowly bacteria, majestic oak
>trees, or brilliant mathematicians. And we evolve together
>in ecosystems. So, Professor Wilson says, it's only natural
>that we should have a built-in relationship to other parts
>of the living world. Attractions and fears which are far
>stronger than those evoked by our own creations.
>
>(Orchestral music)
>
>CURWOOD: You scan your local front page as you hustle to get
>ready for work. A fiery car crash has killed a married
>couple and left their 2 children clinging to life in a
>hospital. How horrible, you think, as you rush out the door
>and into your own car. You don't have a second thought
>about getting in and heading out onto the freeway. There's
>no impulsive fear at the sight of the potentially deadly
>machine, or the sound of its revving engine, though more
>than 100 people are killed in car crashes in the US every
>day. But as you turn to back out of your driveway and
>glance at the back shelf, you gasp in horror and freeze at
>the sight of a giant spider. After composing yourself for a
>second or two, you look more closely and notice that it's
>not moving. Still closer inspection makes you feel quite
>stupid; it's made of plastic. A joke left by your kids.
>
>WILSON: It's a remarkable fact that we have the propensity
>to develop phobias, meaning deep, autonomic, averse
>response. Cold sweats. Panic. The inability to shed them
>with therapy. For the ancient naturally, natural enemies of
>humankind, for example, people readily develop phobias,
>deep, aversive responses to snakes, to running water, to
>closed spaces, to heights, to spiders, and to dogs, but not
>to the dangers that actually surround us in modern, urban
>civilization. Not the knives, not the guns, and not to
>electric sockets or speeding automobiles.
>
>CURWOOD: Professor Wilson says primitive responses are
>logical, because the human brain evolved in a world of
>plants and animals. Not a world of machines and asphalt.
>And compared to the hundreds of thousands of years humans
>have forged on Earth, it's been just a blink of an eye since
>agriculture and industry began to separate us from the rest
>of the natural world. Still, he says, it's a tough idea to
>embrace. Especially tough, perhaps, for scientists.
>
>(Human ululation; sounds spooky and meditative at once)
>
>WILSON: Biophilia is very much related to emotions, and
>furthermore, to emotions that are very ancient and not
>easily expressed because they fall outside this sphere of
>social intercourse. And therefore very difficult to put
>into words.
>
>CURWOOD: For Professor Wilson, the question gets to the
>heart of what it means to be human. Are we a part of
>nature? Or do our intellectual, cultural, and technical
>capabilities place us beyond nature? He says the question
>is crucial today because so many plants, animals, and
>natural places are disappearing, never to return.
>
>WILSON: There are 2 fundamentally different, even polar
>views of humanity's place in the world. One of them has us
>as being completely freed from nature, and therefore any
>world that we make that could be moderately comfortable and
>interesting in, then that might be free of nature, is
>humanity's destiny. We make our own destiny. The other
>very different view is that we are part of nature, that our
>mind has evolved, so as to be affiliated closely with the
>remainder of life and dependent upon certain configurations
>of it and an abundance of it and a great variety of it.
>That, that type of response to nature was of great survival
>value through the hundreds of thousands of years of human
>evolution, and it cannot be erased by concrete buildings and
>high tech. So that is the question before us today. Which
>of those 2 human species are we?
>
>(Aaron Copland's Appalachian Spring)
>
>CURWOOD: The spring breeze rustles the new leaves and fills
>the air with a sweet, unmistakable scent. A group of early
>humans scans the area, committing the location of the
>flowering trees to memory. They know that where there are
>flowers now, there are likely to be fruits or nuts in
>another few months. This is a place to remember. Another
>group of modern humans is also eager to capture a memory of
>such a place. They spill off a tour bus. Cameras are
>clicking; it's just the right time to get pictures of the
>famous cherry blossoms along the tidal basin in their
>nation's capitol. Professor Wilson says it just makes
>sense, really. We call it instinct when a dog chases a cat.
>But the very qualities which we like to think separate us
>from other animals Q reason and enlightenment Q often cause
>us not to recognize our own instincts. Steven Kellert is a
>professor of environmental studies at Yale University, who
>recently edited a book of essays on biophilia with Professor
>Wilson.
>
>KELLERT: It's a type of predisposition, if you will, a
>genetic tendency which are greatly influenced by human
>experience, culture, and in effect learning, and in the
>absence of cultural and experiential support it can become
>atrophied and stunted.
>
>CURWOOD: Isn't this something that people have known and
>written about for centuries?
>
>KELLERT: I think so. I think that we've intuitively
>recognized it to a large degree, certainly poets and
>philosophers have been very articulate and persuasive and
>profound in extolling the way in which humans derive
>emotional and intellectual sustenance from their
>relationship to nature. But I think that we haven't
>demonstrated it, particularly in a scientific way. I think
>we also haven't identified the full range of ways in which
>we derive benefit from nature, from our aesthetic
>appreciation of nature, which we often think of as a
>cultured or cultivated trait rather than something that has
>a biological basis.
>
>(Music with percussion, rattles, drums)
>
>CURWOOD: A herd of gazelles grazes peacefully on an African
>plain. Some of the graceful, slender animals catch a break
>from the blazing tropical sun under a grove of trees.
>Others seem to be drinking from a small pond: a rare find if
>it's really there. Suddenly, almost as one, their heads
>snap up. Their ears twitch. Their noses tests the soft
>breeze. Another minute, and the herd is racing away, a
>cloud of horns, flanks and tails flying across the
>landscape.
>
>(Birdsong, crickets)
>
>CURWOOD: To tourists watching from afar through high-powered
>binoculars, it's a once in a lifetime experience: the
>natural world at its most glorious and untamed. To a small
>band of their ancestors crossing the plain 5,000 generations
>before, it's also a meaningful experience. If they can
>catch one of the gazelles they'll eat for a couple of days.
>Even if they don't, the herd provides crucial information
>about the environment. It says water is here, and their
>placid grazing at first indicated that the area was safe: no
>lions or other predators around. And then their sudden
>flight also warned the relatively unprotected humans to be
>on guard for a possible threat.
>
>(Percussive music returns)
>
>CURWOOD: So, not only did other animals and plants give
>humans food and materials, they also told us about resources
>and threats in our surroundings. The early humans that
>learn these lessons well were favored for survival.
>Professor Wilson says we carry these ancient lessons with us
>today, in our near-universal human desires to have contact
>with certain animals, foods, even landscapes.
>
>WILSON: The reason why is very much a question of evolution.
>The prevailing idea is that humanity evolved in savannah,
>park land, along the edge of water, with bunches of trees
>available for retreat but with an open prospect all around
>to see potential food, game, and enemies. So it is not
>unreasonable to suppose that we have very strong residue of
>that type of preference alive within us today. And here we
>have something that does run across cultures from Babylon to
>MesoAmerica, back to the formal gardens of Europe and on to
>the exquisite gardens of old China and Japan, where we find
>people typically building small or sometimes large houses
>that serve as retreats, surrounded by vegetation, and
>looking out over swards with beautifully arranged trees and
>ponds, or lakes. And to, in many cases, animals, from
>peacocks to cattle and horses. And so this appears to be a
>configuration which arises many times.
>
>CURWOOD: Some might say that these are just nice things that
>you described. Well of course, it's obvious that people
>like some water and some trees, but that doesn't mean it's
>biophilia or some scientific theory.
>
>WILSON: Yes. What is pleasant to people, what they accept
>and what they have been drawn to all their lives seems
>perfectly obvious, so what's the need of an explanation?
>This is the same category of why is sugar sweet? And that
>might seem to be a trivial question, quite pointless. Until
>we come to related issues, such as why do people so like
>fat? Well, these are the very foods that were scarcest and
>highest in caloric value, so why do we like sweets and fat?
>There's a reason, very likely, in our evolutionary history.
>
>(Meditative music)
>
>CURWOOD: Okay, the biophilia hypothesis. What does it mean
>for us as humans?
>
>WILSON: It's very important to us for several reasons.
>First of all, it tells us something about who we are as a
>human species. It is potentially a very important part of
>human history, what I call deep history. That is, genetic
>history. And then the question is of fundamental importance
>in conservation. If it is true that humanity makes itself
>completely, that we are capable of living happily and fully
>developed as human beings in a world of steel and stone, or
>out there in satellites colonizing space, if we're capable
>of that, of finding our fulfillment in other ways that has
>nothing to do with a living world, then the argument might
>be made for getting rid of most of the rest of life, at
>least most of the variety of life. Most of the natural
>ecosystems. On the other hand, if we do have this biophilic
>nature deep within us, which I believe is the case, then we
>are committing a tragic mistake from our own selfish point
>of view in disposing the rest of life and not paying more
>attention to the conservation of living forms. So as to
>give the maximum potential for aesthetic and psychological
>development and a healthy life for our descendants.
>
>CURWOOD: Edward O. Wilson, University Professor at Harvard,
>and editor, along with Steven Kellert, of the new Island
>Press book of essays, The Biophilia Hypothesis.
>
>Do you agree? Is there a biophilia response in humans?
>Call our listener comment line at 1-800-218-9988. That's 1-
>800-218-9988.
>
>(music fades out)
>
>===============================================================
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Dennis Paulson, Director phone: (206) 756-3798
Slater Museum of Natural History fax: (206) 756-3352
University of Puget Sound e-mail: dpaulson at ups.edu
Tacoma, WA 98416