Watching more than 2,000 people, mostly Montana State University students, troop into the campus field house last week, was a revelation to me. It looked like a crowd to watch a basketball game or the annual rodeo.
They came to hear not a rock star but a soft-spoken Harvard professor of five decades, E. O. Wilson, probably the world’s most famous living scientist, who said that while human population approaches 9 billion, much of the planet’s biodiversity is headed for extinction.
“I think the 21st century is destined to be known as the century of the environment,” he said.
This from the scientist honored for his pioneering research in biology and the development of the controversial field of “sociobiology,” which links animal and human behavior to their evolutionary heritage.
He appeared at the college to accept yet another award (he has more than 100 awards in science and letters), the George R. Stibitz Computer and Communications Pioneer Award, for his promotion of an electronic “Encyclopedia of Life” that would store information about every species of flora and fauna on Earth.
Acknowledging this as a huge undertaking, he said that of millions of species, many of which are microorganisms or tiny nematode worms, only about 10 percent are known to science.
“This is really a little known planet. We’ve just begun to explore it,” he said.
He spoke of entire environments, such as rain forest canopies, bacteria and fungi living two miles underground, and of a freshwater lake locked for more than a million years under Antarctic ice.
Now, biodiversity is threatened by human activity, habitat loss from pollution and climate change, he said. There have been five great mass extinctions in history that wiped out species in a relatively short time, and after each one it took 5 to 10 million years for life to recover.
“The planet is now in the sixth great mass extinction,” he said. “Half the world’s species are facing extinction in this century.”
The students were in rapt attention-they did not attend for class credit or to prep for a biology exam-as Wilson read from the first chapter of his new book, “The Creation.” The winner of two Pulitzer Prizes for “On Human Nature” and “The Ants,” Wilson is a writer of extraordinary clarity and grace. Subtitled “An Appeal to Save Life on Earth,” the slim book makes the case in a letter to a Southern Baptist pastor.
At a time when creation and evolution seem to be contradictions, Wilson demonstrates that science and religion need not be the focus of political adversaries. Together, humanity can take some important and surprisingly cheap steps to save the planet. Drawing on his own religious upbringing, Wilson pleads with people of faith to join biologists in the effort to protect the Creation.
In his letter to the pastor, Wilson writes, “You will not agree with all that I say about the origins of life-science and religion do not easily mix in such matters-but I like to think that in this one life-and-death issue we have a common purpose.”
After the presentation, Wilson met with fans at Main Street’s Country Bookshelf, where I stood in a line the length of the store and spilling out onto the sidewalk half- way down the block. I bought a copy of “The Creation” and waited almost an hour to have it signed to my sister, the teacher of earth science at a Catholic high school, who is an avid fan of Wilson and has dealt for years with the very division between religion and science of which he writes. At a time when government regularly disputes or buries the findings of scientific studies containing inconvenient truths, Wilson’s writings are more important than ever. A culture born of evangelism drives the clash between science and faith that sees no accommodation between the two.
If people believe in the Creation, ought they not be willing to protect it? Why polarize opinion against evolution in favor of a literal, or even metaphorical reading of Genesis? Would it not honor the Creator to admire His works by preserving them?
We can only hope that those who champion faith to the exclusion of science will find a convergence of belief in the wisdom and clarity of E. O. Wilson.
After all, if 2,000 college students in a red state can embrace his vision, our leaders surely should be able to follow.