Jerry, I am very pleased that you found the Charles Mills book worthwhile. Charles had a quite successful career, of course, but I have never thought that his work received in the philosophical community quite the recognition that it deserved.
As for counting ants, I have always thought Wilson was having his fun with me but it is a lovely story and allowed me to make a point that I think is important about the differences in the sorts of things that academics do.
Here are some odd personal conjunctions. My big sister, Barbara, was a graduate student at Harvard in biology at the same time as Wilson and she knew him slightly. Everybody was of course enamored of Stephen Jay Gould,who was teaching there at that time and nobody thought much of Wilson. The other big name in the field in those days and Gould's collaborator was Richard Lewontin, who graduated from Forest Hills High School a year before Barbara did and three years before I did.When I looked him up on Wikipedia to check, I discovered that he died six months ago.
Well, enough necrology. Onward to 89!
8 comments:
Bon anniversaire, prof!
(After reading from your autobiography, I can't help but wonder whether you are secretly in competition with your sister to see who reaches the oldest age. lol)
A quick Wikipedia check shows that Lewontin and E.O. Wilson were both born in 1929. Stephen Jay Gould was younger, born in 1941.
Gould started teaching at Harvard in 1967 (again according to Wiki). Wilson got his PhD in 1955. So Gould was not teaching there in the '50s when Wilson and your sister were graduate students. Gould graduated from college (Antioch) in 1963, PhD (Columbia) 1967.
Interesting. I got that wrong. Thanks for checking.
Happy Birthday, Professor Wolff. Your comment about Lewontin reminded me of a remarkable memorial tribute to him by your friend Charles Parsons that appeared on Brian Leiter’s blog last summer. It’s short and very much worth reading. Also, apropos of nothing, the distinguished Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor turned 90 last month. And take heart from the fact that the original compilers of Charles Sanders Peirce’s collected works, Paul Weiss and Charles Hartshorne, lived to be 101 and 103, respectively. (I have a book by Weiss that he published when he was 94.) And of course there’s Dewey, who was born a month or two before the publication of The Origin of Species and lived until 1952. Dewey added a long (37 pages) Introduction to his 1919 Reconstruction in Philosophy in October 1948—the month and year in which I (and an enormous cohort of third-year baby-boomers) was born. Again, Happy Birthday.
I suspect that Professor Wolff was confusing Gould with James Watson—who was indeed at Harvard in the 1950s and who was the talk of the town. Wilson initially detested Watson, who he thought was one of the most obnoxious people he had ever met; but he came to dislike Watson less as time went on. Watson is still with us, so far as I know, and is 93.
Indeed, I totally got your point even if the counting ant story was a bit of teasing.
Wonderful blog.
Happy Birthday Professor Wolff!
RPW, let me add my birthday wishes to the others on this blog. I trail you by a bit over a decade, and my own arthritic thoughts seem to be in perpetual rivalry with arthritic hips, knees, knuckles.... So I very much admire, and take heart from, your continued engagement with intellectual and political matters. Years ago I saw you speak at several socialist conferences in the Amherst, New York area, lively and engaging sessions. You were an inspiration then, and continue to be so now. Keep on truckin', as the vestigial Californianism has it.
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