E.O. Wilson has a new explanation for consciousness, art & religion. Is it credible?

His publishers describe this ‘ground-breaking book on evolution’ by ‘the most celebrated living heir to Darwin’ as ‘the summa work of Edward O. Wilson’s legendary career’. As emeritus professor of biology at Harvard, Wilson, now 84, is revered across the world as the doyen of Darwinists. And in announcing that he will offer a new answer to those three cosmic questions scrawled in the corner of a Gauguin painting — ‘Where have we come from? Who are we? Where are we going?’ — he leads us to expect some profound new insight into how a billion years of evolution have made us a species unique on earth.

Wilson introduces his ‘big idea’ by arguing that the two forms of life which, in evolutionary terms, have been most successful in ‘conquering the earth’ are those rather disconcertingly described as ‘eusocial’ — that is to say they have evolved societies based on a complex division of labour between different groups, all working for the good of the whole.