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F o r A SCIENTIST THERE IS THE ACT OF STUDYING LIFE favor? How would one best survive and reproduce in
and the process of living it, and I have never wanted these conditions? In short, I signed on to a system of
the one to overwhelm the other. Yet that is exactly thought that allowed me to study life and live it,
what a life devoted to science will tempt you intoa sometimes very intensively.
life of studying and, otherwise, not much living. Yes,
you may have a family and a few good friends, but Early Scientific Stirrings
most scientists embrace a sedentary life, often solitary When I was 12 years old I knew I wanted to be a sci
and intensely internal. You concentrate on experi entist because it was obvious upon inspection (this
ments and theory and perpetual reading. Your small was 1955) that none of the other intellectual areas
area of study is the focus of your life and it is a focus history, religion, English literature or the social so-
you share with only a few others. Of course, that is not called sciencesprovided much hope of actual,
to say you dont have your chances for exciting social sustained intellectual advance. Initially I was at
interaction. Deep in the bowels of Harvards Museum tracted to astronomy, with the vastness and beauty of
of Comparative Zoology, with row after row of speci space and the billions of years it had been forming. I
mens along long, dark corridors, occasionally a beetle got a telescope, read Hoyles standard Astronomy text,
specialist turns, grabs a gall midge freak and for one and came up with the bi-stellar hypothesis for the
wild moment, there is both socio-sexual congress and origin of the solar system.
a melding of lives based on biology itself. He will study I liked that astronomy was a science. These peo
beetles, she gall midges, side by side around the ple were not fooling around. They measured things
world. No competition, only complementation. and did so carefully. They tested assertions against
This kind of life never appealed to me. I was an data, and were capable of changing either, and they
out-breeder by nature, raised in a diplomats home. continually attempted to improve the precision of
Foreign countries and languages were part of my up their measurements. When Einsteins theory that
bringing. Since my father served in Europe, I walked gravity bent light was tested by the apparent change
through more cathedrals, museums and art galleries in place of a background star during an eclipse we
than was healthy for any child. I had no interest had dramatic evidence, measured with great preci
whatsoever in European culture, nor in the academic sion, of exactly how much that bend was. But astron
disciplines based on them, but I did know five for omy was not a discipline you could pursue in the 8th
eign languages and enjoyed meeting people in their grade, so I soon turned to mathematics.
own land, speaking their language, learning about My father happened to have a large number of
their area of expertise. math books and out of sheer boredom one day I
When I finally found my intellectual home in picked out one entitled Differential Calculus. I was 13
evolutionary biology, it offered me exactly the right and it took me two months to master the book. It
kind of foreign travelin the rural, the bush, the ex then took me two more to master the book next to it,
otic and the wild. Third world, not First. Evolution Integral Calculus. It was a thrill to see that the algebra
ary biology would take me around the world. And it I knew could generate fields with real predictive and
would show me how to carve knowledge from every analytic power. That was only part of the beauty of
thing I experienced in these travels with a single, mathematics, and its scientific twin: you could learn
very general logicwhat would natural selection the whole thing from the bottom up. That is, if you
superior to polytheism? Bill would say, what do you mer student of Mayrs. The visit with Ernst Mayr was
know about polytheism, or for that matter monothe meant to reinforce this conviction and to offer me help
ism? You assume monotheism is superior because it along the way. Mayr was a short man, with a clear,
presumes to have a single order to the world, a single piercing gaze and a warm countenance. After an initial
unifying logic and force, but what does this force discussion, Ernst told me that it was not at all impossi
represent? Bill taught me that polytheistic religions ble to become a biologist at my age and with my lack
often had a better attitude toward nature than did of background. Where would you like to do your
the monotheistic ones. In Amerindian religions, graduate work? Ernst asked. I suggested that it would
there were spirits of the forest, of the canopy, of the be nice to work with Konrad Lorenz. No! Ernst said.
deep woods, of the gurgling spring, and each cap Hes too Austrian for you, too authoritarian. Who
tured aspects unique to these ecological zones. For else? I suggested that it might be a good idea to work
someone like Bill, who had literally lived 15 to 20 with Niko Tinbergen. No," Ernst said, less emphati
years of his life in the woods, these distinctions were cally. He is only repeating now in the 60s what he al
so much closer to his own view than that emerging ready showed in the 50s. Where else? It was clearly
from monotheism, which basically boiled down to a time for some fresh input, so I asked him, What
form of species-advantage reasoning. would you suggest? Ernst then flung his arms in a
On another occasion, Bill and I were discussing short arc and said in his German accent, What about
racial prejudice and the possible biological compo Haaarvard? Dum-kopf, I thought, striking the side of
nents thereof, and he said to me, Bob, once youve my head with my hand. Harvard indeed!
learned to think of a herring gull as an equal, the rest The first class I ever audited in biology couldnt
is easy. What a welcome approach to the problem, es have been better. It was a graduate course taught in
pecially from within biology. We are all living organ 1966 by Ernst Mayr and George Gaylord Simpson,
ismsmake discriminatory comments about others at the famous vertebrate paleontologist, who was quite
your own risk. In Bills view, it was always better to try a spectacle himself. A short man, but much softer-
to see the world from the view of the other creature. looking than Mayr, he wore thick glasses and his
eyes often seemed to shake, along with his hands. Yet
The Greatest when he stood up to speak, he spoke in clean, clear
American Evolutionist I Ever Met paragraphs, no editing required. At times one felt
Ernst Mayr was the greatest U.S. evolutionist I ever there should be someone at his side chiseling his
met, possessing a very broad and deep knowledge words into stone, so well were they chosen.
of almost all of biology. He had also perhaps the I remember one memorable discussion involving
strongest phenotype of any organism I have ever met. Mayr and Simpson and sickle cell anemia. After vari
He lived to be 100 and published more books after age ous parts of the evolutionary story had been reviewed
90 than most scientists do in a lifetime, and not trivial the frequency of the sickling gene in natural popula
ones either. He was strong in character, personality, tions being associated with the spread of malariathey
and mode of expression. had occasion to refer to the molecular mechanism by
I first met Ernst Mayr in the spring of 1966, in his which the sickling gene worked. I believe it was Simp
office at the Museum of Harvards Comparative Zool son who referred to a paper that had just come out in a
ogy. I was brought to him by Bill Drury, himself a for- cellular/molecular journal showing that the change to
occurs in our own species, as when the exact spot of back that I agreed with them right down the line.
burial is preserved in memory, often with a marker, so I soon received a second letter from Richard,
that the desecration of such places by others is taken as saying that his actual purpose in w riting me was, in
an attack on the living relatives. Consider the outrage part, to find out if I might be willing to write the
that recent attacks on Jewish cemeteries have evoked. Foreword for a new book he had w ritten called The
The attackers, who dug up corpses and assaulted some Selfish Gene. This was especially appropriate, he told
of these, were regarded as more depraved and anti-Se me, because my work, more than anyone elses, was
mitic than those who do harm to living Jews, as indeed featured in his book. W hat the hell, I thought, and
they may be since if they are that eager to desecrate bur he sent the m anuscript along. There were indeed
ial grounds, God knows what else they are eager to do. chapters based on individual papers of m ineBat
tle of the Generations (parent-offspring conflict),
Richard Dawkins and the Concorde Fallacy Battle of the Sexes (parental investment and sexual
In 1975 I was in Jamaica on sabbatical when I received selection), You Scratch My Back, Ill Ride on Yours
a letter from one Richard Dawkins enclosing a paper (reciprocal altruism ). I never deluded myself that
w ritten by himself and Tamsin Carlisle pointing out my w ork was more fundam ental than Bill Ham il
that I had committed the Concorde Fallacy in my tons, nor did Richard, but we both knew that if you
paper on Parental Investment and Sexual Selection, as w anted to get some of the fun details filled in on a
indeed I had. The Concorde Fallacy is the notion that variety of subjectsnot ants, fig wasps, or life under
because you have wasted $10 billion on a bad idea bark, but social topics relevant to ourselvesmy
the exceedingly expensive supersonic plane Concorde work was a better bet than Bills.
you owe it to the 10 to throw in smother 4 in hopes Better than finding my own work given such a
of making it work. In poker, the rule is, Dont throw high billing, though, was discovering that Richard
good money after bad. Good money is money you still had a most pleasing combination of absolute mastery
have, bad money is already in the pot; it is no longer of the material w ith a wonderful way of expressing
yours. Just because you have $300 in a large poker pot itfunny, precise, vivid. Let me give one example.
(money gone) does not m ean that you owe it to that He presented Bill Hamiltons idea that a geneor a
money to lose another $200, w ith odds stacked tightly linked cluster of genescould evolve if it
against you. Every decision should be rationally cali could spot itself in an o th er individual and th en
brated to future pay-offs only, not past sunk costs. transfer a benefit based on the phenotypic similarity.
I had argued in my paper that since females al But Richard added a vivid image, calling this the
most always begin w ith greater investment in off green beard effect. The name soon caught on in the
spring than do males, this committed them to further scientific literature, so that everyone today refers to
investmentthey would be less likely to desert their green beard genes, thereby summing up a compli
offspring. Simple Concorde Fallacy; only future pay cated idea in a way that actually makes it easier to
off is relevant. I consoled myself w ith the thought that think through. The phenotypic trait is obvious: you
there probably was a sex bias similar to the one Id have a green beard. And the genetic bias is obvious:
proposed, but only because past investment had con you favor green-bearded individuals. Genes spread
strained future opportunities. In any case, I wrote apace. Except w hat about a m utant that leaves your