E.O. Wilson, a biologist who wrote about learning

E.O. Wilson, arguably the most important biologist of the day, died Sunday. He helped us to understand how social structures influence the development of species, including our own.

I’m enormously interested in his work on biology, but my interest goes beyond that. Wilson wrote some more personal essays about how we humans learn.

He said we learn by following our own interests.

Wilson, who taught at Harvard, started with a boyhood interest in ants. He wondered why some insects are so highly developed socially while others are not. He followed that interest his entire life.

A basic interest in insects led him to other interests in other disciplines. You can make a hobby of collecting insects. But to really understand them requires an understanding of biology, chemistry, physics and mathematics. 

Wilson has argued that the proper course in education is to encourage that initial interest. Let a kid who’s interested in ants learn about ants. Let that interest grow naturally into and across the disciplines.

The wrong thing to do is what we in fact usually do: tell the aspiring scientists that they cannot study insects until they have mastered the prerequisites.

Wilson studied advanced math because he wanted better tools to help him to understand ants.

We learn when we are driven to learn, not when we mindlessly follow the abstract demands of a curriculum. And that driving force is interest. It’s individual, quirky, eccentric.

• Source: E.O. Wilson, The Meaning of Human Existence; New York: Liveright, 2015.