Discurso de Aceptación de Edward O. Wilson
Ceremonia 2000 del Premio Kistler
Thank you so much. Mr. Kistler, Mr. Citron, Mr. Velamoor, other staff members of the Foundation For the Future, fellow symposiasts, guests, friends, colleagues, I was, of course, delighted, indeed overwhelmed to learn of this special recognition, to be the first Kistler Prize winner. I am very grateful to the Prize Committee for recommending me, and to Walter Kistler for his dream of creating the Foundation For the Future. I find it daunting to be in the spotlight in a group of scholars of this caliber, whose combined subject is nothing less than everything, for all time, into the past and future, and everywhere in space. For that reach of mind is, after all, the human destiny, is it not? The complete expression of the human spirit is to search and grasp, to admit no intrinsic boundary to the mind. If we fail to make that effort, if we fail to speak the truth as we see it, as a great many critics have said we should, then Homo sapiens would cheat its potential and very much so at its own risk.
Creo que innatamente tenemos la tendencia a pasar por alto gran parte de la información se he está considerando aquí, y que hemos tocado en estas presentaciones. La Fundación Para el Futuro reconoce la siguiente falla fundamental en la naturaleza humana: que cada persona está mentalmente encajonada en una cápsula espacio / tiempo muy pequeña y, por instinto, a la mayoría de la gente eso les gusta. Cuando se ponen todas las cápsulas de espacio / tiempo juntas, se crea un espacio vastamente más grande, especialmente en la cultura tecnocientífica. Pero en nuestra conciencia emocional e intelectual, día tras día y por la mayor parte de nuestras vidas, la vasta mayoría permanece confinada (peligrosamente confinada) a solamente una fracción diminuta de la cápsula de espacio / tiempo que comunalmente está disponible para todos nosotros.
That is what I would touch on in the following ten to fifteen minutes. Relax; this will be a brief presentation, compared with the two marathons that the organizers of the Foundation For the Future have put us symposiasts through the last two days. All fields, all points of view, being together to try to provide answers to some of the broadest and most important questions that face humanity, I felt as though I’d run a mile as fast as I possibly could and am still gasping for breath at the finish line.
Brevemente, quiero empezar con esta pregunta: ¿Por qué la gente elige encerrarse y prefiere las diversiones primarias del deporte, la política y la religión a las maravillas infinitas del mundo real? Su indiferencia relativa surge, creo, aparte de su amor por el deporte, la política y la religión, de lo profundo de la naturaleza humana. Evidentemente el cerebro humano evolucionó para consagrarse emocionalmente a solamente una pequeña parte de geografía, a una banda limitante de parientes, y dos o tres generaciones hacia el futuro. No mirar más allá, incluso aunque tengamos la capacidad para hacerlo, es elemental en un sentido darwiniano. Estamos innatamente inclinados a ignorar cualquier posibilidad distante que todavía no requiera examen, por más prometedora o amenazante que sea. La gente dice que es simple sentido común dejar de lado las eventualidades que están más allá del horizonte. ¿Por qué piensan así? ¿Por qué lo hacen? La razón, creo, es simple. Esta predisposición es una parte biológicamente incorporada de nuestra herencia paleolítica. Por cientos de milenios, los que trabajaban para ganancias de corto plazo en un pequeño círculo de parientes y amigos vivían más tiempo y dejaban más descendencia, incluso cuando —y ésta es la parte importante— su esfuerzo colectivo ponía en riesgo a sus descendientes.
En el neolítico, el ambiente comenzó a derrumbarse bajo ellos a medida que la agricultura se esparcía por el mundo. Los bosques fueron cortados, los acuíferos se secaron, el agua salada retrocedía, los diques fueron silted, demasiada gente luchaba por demasiado poca tierra arable, la inmigración y la guerra se intensificaron. Zona por zona, área por área, la humanidad siguió esparciéndose, convirtiendo más y más del ambiente natural. Cada cultura tecnológicamente más avanzada aplastaba o absorbía a las más retrasadas de sus vecinos, hasta que ahora el planteo íntegro está cerca de la saturación ambiental y ha llegado el momento de preguntar si, incluso con nuestro genio tecnológico y nuestra ilimitada energía, no hemos ido demasiado lejos.
Hence the timeliness of the Foundation For the Future.
The great dilemma of ethical reasoning stems from this conflict—between short-term values and values based on a vision of a more distant, transgenerational future. To select values of the near future, of one’s own tribe or country or family, is relatively easy. To select values for the distant future of the whole planet is also relatively easy. But to combine the two visions with passion, precision, solid knowledge, and reason is terribly difficult.
My own perception of how best to expand the space/time capsule of cultures, individual awareness, and ordinary discourse and thinking—widely shared, I know, by many at this symposium—is by deepening knowledge of two basic natures. First, human nature. Second, the nature of the free-living world of animals, plants, and microbes that exists apart from humanity, that gave rise to the human species, that creates an environment to which we are exquisitely adapted in body and spirit, and on which our existence ultimately depends. It is the linkage between the two natures, between biological wellsprings of the human culture and society on the one hand, and the environment in which we exist that presents the most vital intellectual challenge immediately before us.
Let me say a few words therefore about both. La idea de la naturaleza humana —una concepción tan vieja como la civilización occidental— está en el proceso de ser upgraded por la ciencia, particularmente las ciencias biológicas. Todo lo que sabemos sobre nosotros mismos como especie pivotea sobre la caracterización de la naturaleza humana, en otras palabras lo que nos hace humanos, con mayor objetividad y precisión. In the past, the intrinsic grasp of human nature has been the understanding of the creative arts; it’s been the underpinning of the social sciences; it’s been a beckoning mystery just beyond the reach of the natural sciences. To grasp human nature objectively and explore it to its depths scientifically and spell out the ramifications of that understanding would be to approach, if not obtain, the grail of scholarship and to fulfill the dreams of the great enlightenment of the 17th and 18th centuries.
Entonces, ¿qué es la naturaleza humana? Ésa es la cuestión central alrededor de la cual hemos bailado estos dos últimos días, así que permítanme intentarlo. ¿Cuál sera probablemente la definición objetiva que pueda proveer la ciencia acerca de la naturaleza humana? No los genes que prescriben la naturaleza humana. No los universales culturales como el tabú del incesto o los ritos de iniciación : son los productos de la naturaleza humana. En lugar de ello, la naturaleza humana son las reglas epigenéticas, las regularidades heredades del desarrollo mental. Estas reglas componen selectivamente a la naturaleza, nuestras tendencias o sesgos genéticos, y el modo en que nuestros sentidos perciben el mundo, con la codificación simbólica por la cual representamos el mundo en lo más profundo de nuestro cerebro, las opciones que se abren ante nosotros y las respuestas que encontramos son las más fáciles de de hacer y las más recompensadoras.
And to those who feel that these are so obvious as not to bear expatiation, let me assure you that when you move some distance from them and look at them against the behavior patterns and preferences of other organisms, then you will understand at once that human beings are very bizarre organisms—in ways that are beginning to come into focus at the physiological level, and even in a few cases at the genetic level. Las reglas epigenéticas, que son las predisposiciones heredades del desarrollo mental, alteran el modo en que vemos y en que clasificamos lingüísticamente el color. Nos convocan a evaluar la estética del diseño artístico de acuerdo con formas abstractas elementales y grados de complejidad. Nos conducen estas reglas epigenéticas a adquirir diferencialmente miedos y fobias concernientes a los peligros del ambiente, por ejemplo, respecto de víboras y alturas, peligros antiguos de la humanidad. En este último caso, no adquirimos fácilmente fobias a cuchillos, shocks eléctricos y automóviles, que causan la mayoría de los daños y muertes de hoy en día. En lugar de ello, estamos máximamente programados sensiblemente para aquellos antiguos peligros que los hombres y mujeres del paleolítico enfrentaron por un millar de generaciones. Las reglas epigenéticas nos conducen a comunicarnos por ciertas expresiones faciales y formas de lenguaje corporal que son universales para toda la humanidad, a formar vínculos con los infantes, a formar vínculos conyugales, y así en más, a través de una amplia gama de categorías de pensamiento y conducta. La mayoría de estas reglas son evidentemente muy antiguas, como el efecto Westermarck que causa evitación automática del incesto. Esta regle del desarrollo mental inhibe automáticamente la vinculación sexual entre personas estén estrechamente asociadas, como en la proximidad doméstica, durante los primeros 30 meses de vida de cualquiera de ellos. Ésta es evidentemente la razón por la cual evitamos el incesto sin pensar en ello. El efecto Westermarck se retrotrae millones de años, y es compartido por nuestros vecinos primates, esto es, los monos y apes, pero no por otros mamíferos.
Otras reglas epigenéticas, como los estadios del desarrollo lingüístico, son única y singularmente humanas y probablemente tienen solamente cientos de miles de años. Los investigadores recién ahora están comenzando a descubrir las reglas epigenéticas, igual que hace unos 70 años comenzaban apenas a descubrir las hormonas: uno, dos, tres por vez. A la naturaleza humana hay que descubrirla de ese modo, empíricamente, por experimentación , por múltiples medios de anàlisis, con muchas sorpresas, paso a paso, a medida que profundizamos y nos vamos acercando a la verdad. La base de la mente no puede ser investigada en profundidad por introspección. The philosophers took us as far as they possibly could by the 19th century. The physical basis of mind cannot be discovered by introspection any more than the function of the liver can be discovered by introspection, the citadel of mind, as Darwin observed, cannot be thus taken by direct assault.
Tres disciplinas biológicas están ahora involucradas en diferentes niveles en este nuevo abordaje. Han comenzado un desarrollo notablemente convergente y exponencialmente rápido para abordar el problema a medida que cambiamos de siglo. La primera es la neurociencia cognitiva de las ciencias del cerebro, que están mapeando la actividad del cerebro con exactitud creciente en el tiempo y espacio real. La genética humana, incluyendo la genética del comportamiento, provee el segundo abordaje. Pronto ser`´a coronada por el mapeo genómico completo de la herencia humana, lo que entonces permitirá una comprensión del ensamblaje del cerebro hasta el nivel de los genes. Finalmente, la biología evolutiva, incluyendo la sociobiología, que está rastreando los orígenes biológicos de la naturaleza humana, provee el tercer abordaje.
Such are the three disciplines that are building bridges from biology to the social sciences and to the humanities. From the opposite direction, the bridging disciplines also making fundamental contributions to objective understanding of human nature include cognitive psychology and biological anthropology. To an increasing degree, these disciplines from the social sciences are becoming consilient with the biology-borne disciplines. The agenda of the Foundation For the Future, if I understand it correctly and I think I do, is congenial to this way of studying the human condition.
Let me emphasize in response to the concern often expressed of critics who resist the naturalistic world view, that this mode of study does not reduce the human species to modules. It does not deny free will. It does not view Homo sapiens as just another animal. Quite the contrary. It portrays each person as a being of astonishing complexity and capacity. And the origin and future of the human species as the ultimate epic that we are attempting to unfold, read, and transmit as being beyond the wildest imaginings of the Old Testament writers. But it does not certify that anything else more than Homo sapiens as a biological species sprang from the special conditions of the planet and adapted to these conditions in a very fragile manner. That is a conception that should be kept foremost in mind in considering our relationship to the environment, and especially to the natural environment. That interpretation is, I believe, the key argument for a naturalistic conception of our relation to the planetary environment and to the rest of life.
So, let me offer a somewhat different take on the century just past from that usually given at recent millennial events and countless, sometimes stupefying presentations by the media. The 20th century was a time of spectacular scientific and technological advance, the freeing of the arts by an exuberant modernism, and the speed and spread of democracy and recognition of human rights. But it was also a dark and savage age of world wars, genocide, and totalitarian ideology left and right that came dangerously close to world domination. During all this tumult, humanity also managed collaterally to decimate the natural environment and draw down the nonrenewable resources of the planet with a reckless abandon, accelerating the erasure of entire ecosystems and extinction of thousands of million-year-old species. If Earth’s ability to support our growth is finite—and it is—we were too busy to notice. Now the new century is here, and we have started to wake from this delirium. We are increasingly post-ideological in temper, and we may be ready to settle down before we wreck the planet. It’s time to sort out Earth and calculate what it will take to provide a satisfying and sustainable life for everyone for the indefinite future.
The key humanitarian question for the 21st century is, in my opinion: How can we shift to a culture of permanence, not just for ourselves, but also for the biosphere that sustains us? The bottom line is very different from that generally arrived at by our leading economists and public philosophers. They have, as a rule, ignored the numbers that count. Consider the following: that the global population passed 6 billion, on its way to 8 billion or more by mid-century. Per capita, our fresh water and arable land are descending to levels that almost all natural-resource experts agree are unsustainable and increasingly risky.
The ecological footprint is defined as the amount of productive land and sea margin appropriated by each person on average in bits and pieces from around the world, for food, for water, for housing, energy, transportation, commerce, waste absorption, and government. For example, a bit of Saudi Arabia for each of us for oil, a bit of Costa Rica for each one of us for coffee, and so on, this ecological footprint is about one hectare (2-1/2 acres) in the developing world, but it is 9.6 hectares (24 acres)—ten times as much—in the United States. The footprint for the whole human species is 2.1 hectares (about five acres per person).
Here then is the reality of human wealth on the land and a big part of our future. With all the modern technoscientific advancement and promise aside, the natural resources of Earth are what we depend on. For every person in the world to reach present U.S. levels of consumption from existing technology would require four more planet Earths. The five billion people of the developing countries—80% of the world total—may never wish to reach that astonishing level of profligacy, but in trying to achieve at least a decent standard of living, these people, two billion of whom make three dollars a day or less, one billion of whom are classified still by the United Nations as living in absolute poverty with no sanitation and no certain food from one day to the next, have joined the industrialized countries in converting the last of the natural environment and pushing to extinction a large part of the planet’s biodiversity.
At the same time, humanity has become a geophysical force. We’ve driven atmospheric carbon dioxide to the highest levels in the last 200,000 years. We have unbalanced the nitrogen cycle, and we have forced the global warming that will eventually be bad news everywhere.
The wealth of the world, if judged solely by domestic product and per capita consumption, is rising, but if judged by the condition of the biosphere, upon which these conventional economic measures ultimately depend, it’s falling. The downward trend of the natural economy is plain to see in the databases of the World Bank and of the United Nations Development and Environment Program. Converted into the Living Planet Index of the Worldwide Fund for Nature as an annual aggregate measure, these data should serve as a sobering counterweight to Dow Jones and NASDAQ. From 1970 to 1995, the Living Planet Index fell 30%. This takes into account the condition of forests, freshwater, and marine systems. By the early 1990s, the decline had accelerated to an alarming 3% per year.
The deterioration of the biosphere is not a popular subject at economic conferences. For the great majority of corporate and political leaders, the extinction of animals, forests, and species—if they think about it at all—is only a deferrable externality in the economic reality of daily short-term life. And although the Creation itself is at stake, religious leaders seldom make more than passing mention of the problem. The fact remains that overpopulation and environmentally unplanned development are everywhere shrinking natural ecosystems and putting the diversity of life at risk. In the real, real world, governed by both the market and natural economies, all of life together is locked in a Cadmean struggle. Left unabated, the struggle will be lost, first by the biosphere, and then by us.
Therefore, we’ve entered the Century of the Environment, in which the future is usefully considered as a bottleneck. We must employ the best that we can bring to bear in science and technology and in moral reasoning to take us through that bottleneck. Science and technology, combined with a lack of self-understanding and an inability to penetrate the foundations of human nature and even decide who we are and where we might be going and what we are doing here, in other words our Paleolithic obstinacy, have brought us to where we are today. Now, science and technology, combined with foresight and moral courage, will see us through and out, while carrying as much of the rest of life with us as possible. That is the grandest possible heritage of the 21st century.
And that is why I believe that the mission of the Foundation For the Future is important, and why I am proud to be included as the first recipient of the Kistler Prize. I thank you again for this honor, your stimulating company, and the privilege of speaking to you tonight. Thank you.