I had the opportunity to know and be in the company of Richard Levins, the professor of "Population Sciences" at the Harvard School for Public Health. I had heard about him vaguely through some circles I used to be part of but a formal introduction to his universe was facilitated a couple of years ago by my friend Paul Malachi, a graduate of HSPH and a former student of his.
From then on, I would meet him and his daughter, the writer, poet and activist Aurora Levins Morales, quite frequently - well, at least every couple of months or so. I even had the fortune of attending a couple of his lectures, one of which I recorded -
Richard Levins - The Two Faces of Science - HSPH Oct 17 2012
I have to confess I never understood the issues of complexity and dialectics that he addressed in his lectures - mostly because I did not try hard enough to understand. A recent tribute to him in the Jacobin magazine sheds some light on what Prof. Levins was arguing...
Levins was also a leading intellectual figure in the fight against biological determinism and remained an activist to the end of his life, often lecturing on his favorite topic: the use of dialectics to understand complexity and change in both the natural and social sciences....
Thus, whether an organism is subject to something as universal and seemingly natural as the laws of gravity depends on its genes. In this way, they uprooted biological determinism’s intellectual foundation: the reductionist fallacy that it is possible to detach genes from environment.Or maybe I might have read this piece of his -
Finding truth in ‘the whole
Levins argues that public health professionals can run into trouble when they don’t look at the bigger picture. He notes that for a brief period in the 20th century, some researchers believed that the emergence of antibiotics and vaccines heralded a new age in which infectious diseases could be stopped in their tracks. This optimism was dashed by a wave of globally emerging infections including HIV, Ebola, and West Nile virus.
“You can’t just look at humans if you want to understand infectious diseases,” Levins said. “Organisms evolve. When we invent something, so do the bugs.”
...
When studying an environment, Levins says he has always tried to see the “point of view” of the organisms involved and understand the reasons why they react the way they do. Much as he has encouraged biology students to see a forest from a tree’s perspective, he hopes future students who want to change human behavior to promote health will consider how the world looks through the eyes of the people they are trying to influence.
Among his papers are the following -
Is capitalism a disease? The crisis in U.S. public health.
Whose scientific method? Scientific methods for a complex world.
Our biology is social. A talk with Richard Levins. Interview by Bob Huff.
Toward an ecosocial view of health.
Genetics and hunger.
Fundamental and applied research in agriculture.
Genetics and ecology.
I only saw him as a genial old man who always expressed delight when he saw me. I had the fortune to attend some poetry sessions that his daughter organized at their home in Cambridge. While we read from a selection of books of Cuban poetry and Neruda and other poets, Prof. Levins would fish out some diary of his, in which I could see text crammed in a neat hand - and proceed to read limericks that he had composed...with absolute childish delight! [I later came to know that he had various fantastical stories going on in his head, that he had a "satirical alter-ego, Isidore Nabi," and had authored a book of fiction as well!
I last saw him during Christmas break 2015...he had moved to senior-living at Youville. He was still cheerful but looked tired (And I remember he smiled when I had come in).
On Jan 16 I received a message from Aurora that Prof Levins was "in his final days and wanting lots of people around." He breathed his last 3 days later, on Tuesday January 19 2016.
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