Dwight H. Terry Lectureship January 20, 2005 Groups as Organisms and Organisms as Groups

David Sloan Wilson is Professor of Biological Sciences with a joint appointment in Anthropology at Binghamton University (State University of New York). He is also director of EvoS, a program founded in 2003 that seeks to make evolutionary theory part of the common discourse for all subjects relevant to human affairs and the natural world.

Professor Wilson received his B.A. from the University of Rochester in 1971 and his Ph.D. in 1975 from Michigan State University. He originally planned to be an aquatic biologist but soon discovered that evolutionary theory provided a way to study the full pageant of life. His theoretical approach enabled him to conduct research on a diversity of subjects and organisms, from microbes to humans, and to publish in anthropology, biology, economics, philosophy, psychology and religion journals. He is author of The Natural Selection of Populations and Communities (1980), Unto Others: The Evolution and Psychology of Unselfish Behavior (with philosopher Elliott Sober, 1998), and Darwin's Cathedral: Evolution, Religion, and the Nature of Society (2002). A forthcoming edited book The Literary Animal: Evolution and the Nature of Narrative (with Jonathan Gottschall, 2005) represents an intellectual homecoming for Professor Wilson, as he is the son of novelist Sloan Wilson, author of The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit.

Professor Wilson is a past Guggenheim fellow (1986), Vice-President of the American Society of Naturalists (1997), and recipient of SUNY's Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Scholarship and Creative Activities (2003).