The film began comparing E.O. Wilson, eminent Harvard ant biologist, to Charles Darwin, which at first I considered a stretch. By the end of the film, I was thoroughly convinced because the film ultimately showed the comparison was valid.
The film opens with a comic scene of E.O. Wilson demonstrating the anger of fire ants by sticking his hand into an opened nest and talking about the burning sensation he feels. Wilson also conducts small experiments on screen to show that ants use chemicals to communicate (one of his many discoveries).
The film is full of story-telling, like why E.O. Wilson chose to study insects rather than coral reefs or birds. Wilson became blind at an early age when a dorsal spine from a fish he caught struck him in the eye. Since then, he's preferred animals that he could "hold between his fingers".
In fact, Wilson has become quite fond of his fingers. He is a gifted illustrator and there are several scenes of Wilson drawing ants under the microscope. Wilson strongly believes in the practice of kinesthetics and, aside from his extensive illustrations, also writes all his manuscripts by hand (as a tool-using primate, he finds it more rewarding than word processing).
Unlike so many films featuring scientists, E.O. Wilson was rarely interviewed in an office, which is good because Wilson's heart wasn't much in his office. Instead, he is a man of ants, poetry, and developing broad ideas about human behavior (sounds a little like barnacles, letter writing, and natural selection). The film even captured a shifting baseline: there was a time when E.O. Wilson was labeled a Eugenicist for his ideas that spawned the field of sociobiology, which is now widely accepted and even heralded.
It will be great to eventually hear what Scientist Gone Hollywood Randy Olson feels about the film. Not only does he have particularly high standards for film, but when he was a graduate student at Harvard, he was E.O. Wilson's Teaching Assistant. Watch for Olson's eventual review and for The Naturalist (coming soon from Windfall Films) near you.
Environment
Comments
I was young, dumb and impressionable when I was a 22 yr old teaching fellow in Wilson's Nat Sci 6 course, but he really gave some of the best evolutionary ecology lectures I've ever heard, filled with tons of great anecdotes. Like my favorite, when he told about his famous island biogeography experiments in the Florida Keys where they fumigated mangrove islands.
He said he has always had three great passions in life -- islands, insects, and sharks. So one day he was standing at the edge of a mangrove ISLAND, collecting INSECTS, and looked down in the water to see a SHARK, fulfilling the momentary triple intersection of his life's greatest passions.
Can't wait to see the film.
Posted by: Randy Olson | October 9, 2007 9:57 AM