《社会征服地球》书评

Book review: ‘The Social Conquest of Earth,’ by Edward O. Wilson By Colin Woodard, Published: April 14 2012, Washington Post 评: 爱德华.O.威尔森的《社会征服地球》 作者：科林.伍达德，作家，《华盛顿邮报》书评撰稿人 What are we, where did we come from, and where are we going? 我们是什么，从何而来，又将往何处去？ For millennia, humans have been pondering these great questions and articulating responses in works of art, philosophical treatises and religious beliefs. We’ve fought wars over whose solution is most correct, persecuted promoters of heresy and celebrated sublime expressions of possible answers by painters, poets and preachers. No wonder, at stake is nothing less than the definition of the human condition. 一千年来人类一直在思考这几个重要的问题，并通过艺术作品、哲学论著和宗教信仰来述我们的回答。我们发动战争来决定谁的答案最正确，镇压推销异端邪说的人，并通过绘画、诗歌和传道士将可能的答案以庄严崇高的表达形式加以颂扬。也难怪，没有什么能比给人类的状况下定义更厉害攸关的事了。 In his new book, “The Social Conquest of Earth,” renowned scientist Edward O. Wilson sets out to answer these questions once and for all. Scientific advances of the past two decades, he argues, make it possible to solve the first two, providing the basis for a rethinking of the third. The result is an ambitious and thoroughly engaging work that’s certain to generate controversy within the walls of academia and without. 著名的科学家爱德华.O.威尔森在他的新书《社会征服地球》中对于这些问题提出了一次干脆彻底的回答。他在书中提出，过去二十年的科学进步使得我们有可能解决前两个问题，并为重新思考第三个问题提供了新的基础。而结果就是一部野心勃勃而又十分引人入胜的作品，而且必将在科学界的围城内外引发争议。 Wilson, 82, is a giant of science: the world’s leading expert on ants, the first researcher to recognize the existence of pheromones, the father of sociobiology, the author and co-author of two Pulitzer Prize-winning books (“On Human Nature” and “The Ants”) and a recipient of the Royal Swedish Academy’s Crafoord Prize, given in fields not covered by the Nobel Prize. 今年82岁的威尔森是一位科学巨擎：对蚂蚁研究的世界首席科学家，导致发现信息素存在的首位研究者，社会生物学之父，两本获得普利策奖的书籍（《人类本性》和《蚂蚁》）的作者和合著作者，同时还是瑞典皇家科学院克劳福德奖获得者，该奖专门针对诺贝尔奖没有涉及的其他科学领域的杰出人士颁奖。 A professor emeritus at Harvard, he has produced a body of work that has withstood scientific critics, including those who rejected his assertion that both animal and human social behavior is based on biological and evolutionary principles. (Activists dumped a pitcher of ice water on him during a 1978 meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.) Others rejected his prediction in “The Diversity of Life” (1992) that more than a quarter of all species on Earth would vanish by mid-century, but subsequent research has supported the notion that we are in the midst of the Earth’s sixth great extinction. 作为哈佛大学终生荣誉教授，他创造了大量的工作成果并经受住了科学界的批判家们的考验，包括那些拒绝接受他关于“动物和人类的社会习性都建立在生物学和进化论的原理基础之上”论断的人。（在1978年美国科学促进协会的一次会议上有激进分子在他身上倒了一大罐冰水）其他人则拒绝接受他在1992年的论著《生命的多样性》中提出的预言：到下世纪中期前地球上将有超过四分之一的物种灭绝。然而之后的研究支持了关于“我们正处于地球的第六次大规模生物灭绝期之中”的见解。 To build his latest argument, Wilson first sets about exploding an important theory of evolutionary biology that he once championed. The key to understanding the human condition is to understand how our species developed advanced social lives and the altruistic behaviors they require. If evolution is driven by the survival of the fittest — individual selection — how does one explain the self-sacrifice seen among the workers of an ant colony or a bee hive, or in the person who runs into a burning house to save a stranger? The current explanation — kin selection, or “inclusive fitness” — is that altruism evolved among closely related individuals as a way to ensure the survival of the shared portions of their genetic heritage. 为了搭建他最新的主张，威尔森首先探究了他曾经在其中独领风骚的进化生物学中的一项重要理论。要理解人类的状况的关键在于理解我们这个物种如何发展出了高度社会化生活及所需要的利他行为。如果进化依靠适者生存来驱动-即个体选择-那么要如何解释蚁巢和蜂巢中的工蚁工蜂，以及一个冲进着火的屋子去救一位陌生人的人身上所表现出的自我牺牲行为呢？目前的解释理论“亲缘选择说”或“内含适应性说”认为在高度关联的个体之间进化出利他主义来确保他们共同享有的那部分基因遗传能够继续存在。 But Wilson describes in considerable detail how the insect studies on which this theory was built have since been shown to be incorrect. (Many scientists in the field disagree, and dozens have denounced him in letters to the scholarly journals in which he first aired his critique.) 然而威尔森描述了大量的细节说明该学说所赖以为基础的相关昆虫研究是如何被证明是不正确的。（有许多该领域的科学家不同意其观点，数十人向首先发表他的批判文章的那家学术期刊去信对他进行抨击） Instead, Wilson argues that altruism is a result not of individual or kin selection, but of group selection. Charles Darwin himself proposed that a tribe that had many members willing to contribute to or sacrifice themselves for the common good “would be victorious over most other tribes.” Drawing on recent evidence from social psychology, archaeology and evolutionary biology, Wilson builds a compelling and multi-faceted case that Darwin was right. Species that have developed advanced social lives, or eusociality — certain bees, ants, termites and ourselves — have been staggeringly successful and extremely rare. 与之不同，威尔森提出利他主义不是个体选择或亲缘选择的产物，而是群体选择的结果。查理斯.达尔文本人提出一个拥有众多愿意为了集体利益而作出贡献或为之牺牲的成员的部落“将会胜过其他大多数部落”。威尔森从社会心理学、考古学和进化生物学中引用了一些近期的证据来组建一个压倒性的、多方面的论断：达尔文是对的。发展出高度发达的社会化生活的物种，或称为真社会体-包括一些蜂类、蚂蚁、白蚁和我们自己-勉勉强强算是成功的物种，而且种类还极为稀少。 “Our ancestors were one of only two dozen or so animal lines ever to evolve eusociality, the next major level of biological organization above the organismic,” Wilson writes. “There, group members across two or more generations stay together, cooperate, care for the young, and divide labor in a way favoring reproduction of some individuals over that in others.” “真社会体是在生物体个体之上的下一个主要生物学组织形式，在仅有的二十多个进化出真社会体的动物进化分支线中，我们祖先处于其中一条分支上。”威尔森写道。“在真社会体中，超过两代以上的群体成员共同生活在一起，共同照顾幼体，进行劳动分工，且分工会让部分个体相对于其他群体成员在繁殖时处于更有利地位。” Evolutionary competition among ants is best understood not at the individual level but at the level of the colony, a superorganism acting as an extension of the queen’s genome, waging a battle of fitness against other hives. For humans, Wilson argues, the situation is more complex. We’ve become genetically hard-wired to be tribal, to join groups “and, having joined, consider them superior to competing groups.” Our groups — tribes, societies, nations — compete with one another for dominance, but as individuals, we also compete for survival and reproduction within groups via individual selection. Selfish individuals might beat altruistic ones, but groups of altruists beat groups of selfish people. The human condition, Wilson concludes, is largely a product of the tension between the two impulses. 众所周知在蚂蚁中存在的进化竞争不是在个体与个体层面上，而是在集落与集落间这一水平上。一个超个体（指群居昆虫的群体，译者按）以蜂后（蚁后）的基因组的衍生形式存在，并和其他蜂巢（蚁巢）展开适应性的斗争。对于人类而言，威尔森认为情况要复杂的多。通过遗传基因上的内在联结使我们按族群聚居并加入各个群体“并且认为自己加入的那个群体要比其他一同竞争的群体更优越。”我们的群体-部落、社会、国家-互相竞争来夺取统治地位。然而作为个体我们同时也在群体内部通过个体选择的形式为了生存和繁殖而竞争。自利的个体可能会击败利他的那些个体，但利他者组成的群体将击败自利者组成的群体。威尔森总结道, 人类的状况大体上是这两股推动力之间的应力的产物。 “The dilemma of good and evil was created by multilevel selection, in which individual selection and group selection act together on the same individual, but largely in opposition to each other,” he writes. “Individual selection. . . shapes instincts in each member that are fundamentally selfish. . . . Group selection shapes instincts that tend to make individuals altruistic toward one another (but not toward members of other groups). Individual selection is responsible for much of what we call sin, while group selection is responsible for the greater part of virtue. Together they have created the conflict between the poorer and the better angels of our nature.” “善与恶之间的两难是由多层级自然选择所造成的，其中个体选择与群体选择共同作用于同一个个体之上，但却在很大程度上相互排斥。”他写道。“个体选择……强化每个群体成员本质上自利的本能……群体选择则强化个体的本能使其倾向于相互利他（但不对其他群体的成员）。个体选择要为大部分我们称为‘罪恶’的事物承担责任；而群体选择则承担着美德中的很大一部分。两者共同造就了在我们天性中好天使与坏天使之间的冲突。” Heady stuff, to be sure, and Wilson is just getting started. He builds a case for religion as a byproduct of human evolution, a mechanism for defining and uniting the tribe. As such, it has become “an unseen trap unavoidable during the biological history of our species,” facilitating submission not to God but “to no more than a tribe united by a creation myth.” Our species, Wilson says, deserves better, and he makes a case that morality and honor are also part of our peculiar evolutionary heritage and, thus, can stand on their own. 毫无疑问都是些让人大费脑筋的内容，而威尔森不过刚刚热身而已。他提出一个说法认为宗教是人类进化的一个副产品，是一个用来定义和团结部落的机制。作为这种机制，宗教成为“在我们这一物种的生物史上一个看不见也躲不过的陷阱，”用来促使并非对上帝神灵而是 “（成员）对一个通过造物神话来团结统一在一起的部落的服从”而已。威尔森在书中说道，我们这个物种应该得到（比宗教）更好的状况。他也举例指出道德和荣誉同样是我们特有的进化遗产，因此它们也可以依靠自身存在下去。 “A good first step for the liberation of humanity from the oppressive forms of tribalism would be to repudiate, respectfully, the claims of those in power who claim they speak for God, are a special representative of God, or have exclusive knowledge of God’s divine will,” he advises, and he includes in that group purveyors of “dogmatic political ideologies based on unchallengeable precepts, left and right.” Rounding out this view, he adds: “Their leaders may mean well. But humanity has suffered enough from grossly inaccurate history told by mistaken prophets.” “将人类从压迫性的部落制度中解放，好的第一步是对那些自称是上帝神灵的代言人、或上帝神灵的特别代表、或唯独知晓掌握上帝神灵的旨意的那些掌权者提出的各种要求在尊重的同时加以批判。”他在书中建议道，同时还把“基于不可置疑的，无论是左翼的还是右翼的，戒律基础之上的政治上的教条式意识形态”的“承包人们”也列入上述行列中。作为对这一观点的完善，他补充道：“他们的领袖或许是出于好意，但是人类因为谬误的先知们所说的那些非常不准确的历史已经遭受了足够多的苦难了。” Provocative, eloquent and unflinchingly forthright, Wilson remains true to form, producing a book that’s anything but dull and bound to receive plenty of attention from supporters and critics alike. 带有挑衅意味，雄辩，而且毫不妥协地直率，威尔森依旧实话实说，带来了一本绝对不会因为无趣且缩手缩脚而失去支持者与批判者们众多的目光的好书。