Two Wilsons, Two Modes of Synthesizing (3/6)
Edmund Wilson’s approach to synthesizing is a classical one—indeed, he did not change the traditional mode of literary and historical synthesizing in any significant way. As a youth, he discovered in his father’s library various well-regarded literary (and historical) accounts emanating from the 18th and 19th century—among them, the evocative writings of Charles Sainte-Beuve, Edward Gibbon, Samuel Johnson, and Hippolyte Taine. These writers illuminated the major themes of literary and historical texts; provided the contexts in which they were written, published, and critiqued; and related them (often with pointed evaluations) to comparable works in that era and perhaps others as well. At their most modest level, these were simply reviews of books: at the most ambitious level, they included such masterworks of the 18th century as Edward Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and Samuel Johnson’s Lives of the Poets.
In my view, and in the view of many critics, Edmund Wilson did this kind of text summary, analysis, and contextualization, better—more consistently better- -than any of his peers in the Anglo-American world. And it is the dozens--actually hundreds—of reviews and essays that constitute the contents of most of his major collections of writings. A considerable proportion of each essay was descriptive and text-focused, as well as amazingly knowledgeable about history, language, and the ambient cultural context; but in the end, Edmund Wilson did not mince words. He made judgments of value—in an almost ex cathedra fashion; and then he defended these judgments vigorously, and, in a good many ways convincingly.
In the second blog in this series (link here), I mentioned the most ambitious and—to my mind—the most successful of his collections of essays. Two of them are, simply put, compendia of discrete essays that are well contextualized and loosely linked. Published in 1931, Axel’s Castle lays out the features that exemplify and connect the “symbolist” writings of T. S. Eliot, James Joyce, Marcel Proust, Gertrude Stein, Paul Valery, and William Butler Yeats. Published in 1962, Patriotic Gore surveys the literary output of the Civil War era, including such historical figures as Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant, literary figures Nathaniel Hawthorne, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Kate Chopin, eminent personages of the era like Frederic Law Olmsted and Oliver Wendell Holmes, along with a score of other intriguing (and less known) figures of the period.
I consider To the Finland Station to be the most ambitious of Edmund Wilson’s dozen collections—and it’s as well my personal favorite. This 1940 publication is a detailed probing of the ideas that—and the persons who—laid the groundwork for the ultimately successful Russian (Bolshevik) revolution at the end of the second decade of the 20th century. Not only does Wilson review the thinking, speaking, and writing of sundry historians, philosophers, sociologists, politicians, and activists. He also makes a persuasive case that their cumulative effect enabled the formation of political movements in the late 19th and early 20th century, and ultimately, paved the way for V.I Lenin’s arrival at the Finland Station in St. Petersburg in April of 1917.
Still, whatever its originality and excellence, Wilson was not breaking new expository ground in this book. The genre would have been well recognized by the authors of the books that aligned the shelves of the family library.
The one possible exception to this characterization of Edmund Wilson’s literary output is his 1941 collection The Wound and the Bow. At one level, this is yet another collection of biographical and literary material about an intriguing set of writers: Jacques Casanova (yes, that one) Charles Dickens, Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, Rudyard Kipling, Sophocles, and Edith Wharton. Surprisingly, it was published just a year after To the Finland Station, the historical study on which Wilson had (uncharacteristically) labored for at least a decade.
Arguably, The Wound and the Bow is the only of Wilson’s books that puts forth an empirical thesis, one that could in some way be tested. Playing off of the Greek legend of Philoctetes—an injured Greek warrior whose magic bow helped his fellow citizens win the Trojan War. Edmund Wilson suggests—and provides evidence for—an intriguing thesis: Psychological and/or physical injuries early in the lives of these individuals clearly take their toll. But at the same time, these injuries may lay the groundwork, provided the motivation, and—occasionally—even the themes for the subsequent literary output of these individuals. In the closing pages of his book, alluding to psychiatric and medical literature, Wilson puts forth “a more general and fundamental idea: the conception of superior strength as inseparable from disability.” And, importantly, for my undertaking in the succeeding blogs, it’s an argument that could be subjected to empirical testing.
As I’ve emphasized, describing Edmund Wilson’s life project is pretty straightforward. The life project of Ed Wilson is far broader, and, in my view, a good deal more controversial.
Like many budding scientists, Ed Wilson began with a passion for probing the world of physical entities—in his case, ants and, more broadly, insects. Indeed, his early success as a scholar was based on his detailed knowledge of the world of insects… mastery so impressive that by the time he reached the age of 30, major universities were competing for his talents.
Like many scientists, Wilson both deepened and broadened his purview. Building on his detailed knowledge of the anatomy and the physiology of the ant world, he became a pioneering expert on how insects communicate with one another through chemicals called pheromones (so named to contrast with hormones). And then, he took an important step toward broader theorizing in the spirit of Charles Darwin; in collaboration with his mathematically talented colleague Robert MacArthur, Ed Wilson carried out seminal innovative studies. Through chemical intervention, entire islands were depopulated and then repopulated, in order to illuminate the composition and balance of plant and ant life under various ecological conditions.
So far, until his late 30s, Wilson’s career trajectory did not differ markedly from that of other highly ambitious and highly successful peers in science. But, unlike most of his contemporaries, Wilson never activated the ‘stop button.’ First, he sought parallels in social organization and communication among other insects; then among other invertebrates; then across the spectrum of non-human animals; and then, most famously and most contentiously, extended to encompass homo sapiens. In his famous—and (for many) notorious—book Sociobiology (1975), Ed Wilson argued that the behavior of humans--like that of the rest of the animal world-- could be explained entirely in terms of evolutionary pressures; and he laid out an ambitious plan for testing this contentious claim. With vehemence, his critics argued that this was a bridge too far—historical, cultural, and individual psychological factors render the sociobiological claims inappropriate and perhaps harmful.
Other scientists and science writers might have been cautioned by the widespread challenge to his sociobiology agenda—including public denunciation by some of his colleagues in science at Harvard. Ed Wilson remained undeterred—and perhaps even stimulated, aroused, prodded, prompted. As he once put it, “I am a congenital synthesizer” (Rhodes, p. 132). Extending beyond the largely “Social organization and social life” arguments of his early work, Wilson put forth the notion of “Consilience.” Borrowing a word and concept from the 19th century English scientist and philosopher William Whewell, Ed Wilson argued that the major challenge—and the major opportunity—for contemporary scholars was to bridge the entire gamut of learning. No more separate huts for physics, biology, psychology, the arts, the humanities. Progress and understanding lay in the confluence, the linking together (and some would say the absorption of) the softer areas of knowledge with the rigorous definitions, tests, arguments of “The Scientists.”
Ed Wilson did not mince words:
There is only one way to unite the great branches of learning and end the culture wars. It is to view the boundary between the scientific and literary cultures not as a territorial line but as a broad and mostly unexplored terrain awaiting cooperative entry from both sides. ( Consilience, p. 126)
And with equal strength, he described the importance of what he (leading a small group of daring warriors) sought to achieve:
The answer is clear: Synthesis. We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom. The world henceforth will be run by synthesizers—people who are able to put together the right information at the right time, think critically about it, and make choices wisely.. ( Consilience, p. 236)
And, quite provocatively for my endeavor, Edward O. Wilson even cites Edmund Wilson as a potential ally in this endeavor:
I like to think that Edmund Wilson would have been favorable to the idea of consilience. ( Consilience, p. 216)
The gauntlet has indeed been thrown down. In the next blog, I retrieve it.
References
Rhodes, R. Scientist: E O Wilson: A Life in Nature. New York; Doubleday, 2021.
Wilson, Edmund. Axel’s Castle. New York: Scribner’s 1,931.
Wilson, Edmund. To the Finland Station. Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1940.
Wilson Edmund, The Wound, and the Bow. Cambridge: 1941.
Wilson, Edmund. Patriotic Gore: Studies in the literature of the American Civil War. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1962.
Wilson, E. O.: Sociobiology: The New Synthesis. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975.
Wilson, E. O. Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge. New York: Knopf, 1998.