Symposium namesake Elkin R. “Ike” Isaac, ’48, long-time professor and athletic director for Albion, received an honorary doctorate from the College during the morning Honors Convocation,

The Future of Life
E.O. Wilson, "Ike" Isaac Look to Tomorrow During Research Symposium Highlights
Posted April 22, 2005

Story by Jake Weber; photos by Dave Trumpie

The “Future of life” on the individual and global levels, was a focus for the Isaac lecture and the Isaac Symposium keynote, both of which took place during the College’s 16th annual Elkin R. Isaac Research Symposium, held yesterday.

"The 21st century will come to be called the Century of the Environment," predicted Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson in his keynote for the 2005 Isaac Research Symposium.  "Science and technology, combined with foresight and moral courage, both based on a more enlightened ethic, has to see us through to saving this planet before we wreck it."

Symposium namesake Elkin R. “Ike” Isaac, ’48, offered the 2005 Isaac lecturer, discussing and demonstrating the role of exercise in combating the aging process. Isaac led several volunteers through a demonstration of "Ikesercize," an exercise program he’s developed specifically for people aged 65 and older.

“The trauma of aging involves many factors, such as loss of strength, tone, range of motion, flexibility, balance, coordination, joint integrity, and the onset of conditions like osteoporosis and arthritis,” noted Isaac. “My program will improve all of these factors for anyone who commits to it. Teddy Roosevelt said, ‘Quality of life is a task worth pursuing,’ and that’s true for every age.”

Renowned biologist Edward O. Wilson visited Albion to deliver the Symposium keynote that evening, with the topic “The Future of Life.” He made a strong case for the need not only to preserve the environment and its related biodiversity, but also to study and more fully understand the still-enormous mysteries of life on this planet.

Wilson with a coterie of Honors Institute students Thursday afternoon.  In addition to meeting with this class, Wilson also visited the Symposium's poster session.

Despite the fact that biologists have currently identified nearly two million different species of life on earth, “we don’t know, even within the nearest order of magnitude, how many species are in the world,” said Wilson. “It’s an astonishing fact that we do not know the vast majority of species on which our own lives depend. “

Wilson explained that today’s biologists, using new technologies, are able to explore environments never before seen by man, such as the deep earth (single cell organisms have been discovered living more than two miles below the earth’s surface), the deep oceans and forest canopies. In addition, explorers are finding vast new worlds literally at their fingertips, using DNA sampling to identify thousands of previously-unknown bacteria living in soil and even in human bodies.

A more complete picture of the world’s biodiversity, Wilson argued, is far from simply a taxonomic exercise. “The benefits would be incalculable in terms of scientific knowledge, producing new products, finding out how the environment really works, saving species and managing the environment in ways that can be more sustainable,” he explained.

He also noted that environmental protection should not be a humans vs. wilderness argument. “Both the poor and biological diversity occur in developing countries,” Wilson explained. “The poor, especially the one billion people who are absolutely destitute, have very little chance to improve their lives in a devastated environment.”

Coming to a full understanding of earth’s biodiversity, and using that knowledge to address environmental problems “is a [challenge] that we have defined and it can be solved, and we know the cost,” Wilson concluded. “The resources to do it exist …the technology exists, the costs are not high, and the long-term benefit is beyond calculation. A civilization able to envision God and embark on the colonization of space is surely going to find a way to save the integrity of this magnificent planet … because quite simply, it’s the right thing to do and it’s an ennobling task for our species.”

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