I’ve been interested on and off in the sociobiology of Edward O. Wilson, but wrote today about his prodigious work on ants:

Despite his agnosticism and the reductive materialism of his Darwinism, Wilson wrote with a real warmth and soulfulness. Amid his storied academic career and the controversies kicked up by his theories, it’s worth considering all that he did to highlight the miraculous complexity and wonders of life via a lowly bug that is considered a pest when it isn’t ignored altogether.