Living Proof: A Naturalist Is No Stamp Collector

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On the basis of an obsession with ants, Edward O Wilson has become the most important scientist of the late 20th century. His work has created disciplines - ecology, sociobiology, biodiversity - that have become central to the emergence of biology as the dominant science of the age. And his poetic, intense writing points the way to a truly literary understanding of the scientific project. He evokes a scientific creation myth far more potent than anything dreamt of by the physicists. In the increasingly crowded landscape of science popularisers, Wilson is a giant among pygmies.

He is a naturalist. He observes nature in the desert and the rainforest rather than in the …