The Creation
E.O. Wilson
“More than
2 million tons of expired electronics are discarded in land fills each year,
making ewaste the fastest growing fraction of the municipal garbage
system. These castoffs account for
nearly 40 percent of the toxic heavy metals – like lead, cadmium, and mercury –
found in dumps.” Wired Magazine, Fall
2006.
E.O. Wilson
is an interesting contradiction. He was
brought up in a Southern Baptist household in rural Alabama and is now a Darwinian student of
evolutionary biology. He is a world
renowned entomologist whose area of specialization is ants and has been a
Harvard University Biology professor for 25 years. Two previous books have won this author the
Pulitzer Prize, “On Human Nature” in 1978 and “The Ants”, co-authored by Bert
Holldobler in 1990. “The Creation” is a letter to an unnamed pastor
(representing the religious or anti-evolutionist point of view) which lays out
a very scientific, dispassionate argument for preserving all of nature’s
species. He documents the dramatic peril
that living organisms currently face through citing current research. He emphatically states: “According to
estimates by a team of experts in 2004, climate changes alone, if left
unabated, could be the primary cause of extinction of a quarter of the species
of plants and animals on the land by mid-century.” He calls our times an “ecological Dark Age.” The author then laments the decline of the
Earth’s biodiversity from a purely scientific standpoint and points his finger
directly at one species responsible for this debacle: Homo Sapiens. “We are the giant meteorite of our time,
having begun the sixth mass extinction of Phanerozoic history. We are creating a less stable and interesting
place for our descendants to inherit.”
He then presents cogent arguments for reversing this trend citing, among
other items, medical and health reasons to preserve the Creation rather than
systematically destroy it.
Throughout
this fascinating and yet frightening book the author appeals to “the Pastor” in
religious terms. He discusses the quote
from Genesis in which God gives humans dominion over all of Earth’s other
species and expounds on how that caveat has been abused over time to allow us
to plunder our natural resources. The
concept that humans are a higher order of being on theological grounds has
sanctioned the exploitation of our co-inhabitors of the planet. The author considers this flawed
rationalization and blames it for what he describes as the “homogenization of
the Earth’s ecosystem”, or declining biodiversity. He appeals to the Pastor using his own
religious vocabulary. He calls on all
humans to be stewards of this great gift, the Creation. “The Creation is the greatest heritage other
than the reasoning mind itself ever provided to humanity”. On these grounds alone, the author reasons,
the Creation should be celebrated and preserved.
The last section
of the book discusses the differences between secular and religious
humanism. There is an interesting
harpooning of the concept of “Intelligent Design” as a default argument between
the religious and scientific communities.
The real value of “The Creation” though is in these last few important
pages of the book. In these E. O. Wilson
implores scientists and theologians to basically put aside their differences
and celebrate their similarities. Both
camps have solid reasons to preserve the environment and Earth’s biodiversity
despite differing bases for the same conclusions. He calls for a better educated populace in
the area of biology. He calls for “all
species inventories” to be undertaken so that we can more fully understand our
world. These inventories have already
been started in areas such as the Great
Smoky Mountains National Park
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