Conversations like these might give the impression that Wilson—one of the most driven and prolific biologists of his generation—has mellowed and is shifting now to a quieter, more retiring, if not truly retired, phase of life, settling into the easy-fitting robes of scientific eminence and mostly lending endorsements and encouragement to the good works of others. And his bug collecting could easily be misinterpreted as a mere enthusiasm, a nostalgic return to the field. But Wilson had rebuked me in our very first encounter, after he had picked up the ant for close inspection, pointedly declaring that he was interested in “more than ants,” and his travel here, like almost everything he does, is bound up with ideas and themes that he has doggedly pursued for decades. (Even in his recently published first novel, the best-selling Anthill, his 24th book, readers schooled in evolutionary science cannot miss the play of long-gestating Wilsonian theories, and linkages to his latest work.)

Indeed, while we sat in camp chairs talking about conservation and ants and countless other subjects, a dispute was raging among evolutionary biologists half a world away, one of the most hotly contested in that field in years—and Wilson was at its center. Christopher X J. Jensen, a Pratt Institute biologist who has blogged about the conflict, described it as a “scientific gang fight.” Its outcome could have big implications for how we understand ourselves and our motivations—and particularly the complex interplay of selfish and altruistic behavior in human nature.

This is hardly the first scientific controversy surrounding Wilson. An even bigger fight erupted around him in the 1970s, as he laid out his ideas on sociobiology in three landmark books, The Insect Societies, Sociobiology, and On Human Nature. At issue throughout were his claims that our genes not only are responsible for our biological form, but help shape our instincts, including our social nature and many other individual traits.

These contentions drew fierce criticism from all across the social sciences, and from prominent specialists in evolution such as Wilson’s late Harvard colleague, Stephen Jay Gould, who helped lead the charge against him.

Wilson defined sociobiology for me as “the systematic study of the biological basis of all forms of social behavior in all organisms.” Gould savagely mocked both Wilson’s ideas and his supposed hubris in a 1986 essay titled “Cardboard Darwinism,” in The New York Review of Books, for seeking “to achieve the greatest reform in human thinking about human nature since Freud,” and Wilson still clearly bears a grudge.

“I believe Gould was a charlatan,” he told me. “I believe that he was … seeking reputation and credibility as a scientist and writer, and he did it consistently by distorting what other scientists were saying and devising arguments based upon that distortion.” It is easy to imagine Wilson privately resenting Gould for another reason, as well—namely, for choosing Freud as a point of comparison rather than his own idol, Darwin, whom he calls “the greatest man in the world.”

“Darwin is the one who changed everything, our self-conception; greater than Copernicus,” Wilson told me. “This guy is irritatingly correct, time and time again, even when he has limited evidence.” In Darwin’s mold, the thrust of Wilson’s life work has been aimed at changing humankind’s self-conception. Indeed it can be difficult, from today’s vantage point, to see what much of the fuss of the 1970s was about, so thoroughly has the Wilsonian idea that our genes shape our nature penetrated the mainstream.