now where discipline of science are learning enough and moving enough in the right direction so they can connect with the best of humanities to create a much better picture of who we are and where we came from than we ever have before. in fact, i would like to refer to it what's happening or at least will happen shortly is the new enlightenment. >> rose: richard haass and e.o. wilson, next. >> richard hawls is here, the president of the camp on foreign relations, author of foreign policy begins at home, and 9 select of state colin powell. the piece in the magazine is you called the unraveling how to respond to a disordered world. i'm pleased to have him back at the table. welcome. >> thanks charlie. there's so much attention in the financial market and you think of a metaphor that you lost 10% of the value. there's share stock, it didn't crash, it's not worthily but clearly the value is not otherwise. >> rose: is this one of those times henry kissinger talks about or you talk about as well where the world are reassessing relationships or relationships are changing. >> absolutely. and right now we're at a period where relationships are awfully complex they are neither allies or adversary ease and they are changing depending on the issue or the day of the issue. this is diffusing in many hands in many forms. desist making is decentralized. next month is the 25th anniversary of the end of the cold war. in 25 years, we've moved from a world tightly controlled by two super powers to world that's simply not tightly controlled in which many people are now making consequential decisions. >> i think the answer is yes. i wrote a book didn't sell very well called the opportunity. and it's just that. there was a moment when the united states which really had unprecedented power. >> rose: super power. >> it's a really characteristic moment. could we have done more to integrate other countries and i think the answer is yes particularly after 9/11. the united states had opportunities and many ways we pushed countries away, we saw multilateralism. was there peace and harmony for all kind, no. couldn't we have created a world of a world order than we have now. >> rose: is that missed in response to the response and later to go into iraq is that the crucial mistake that kept us from doing that. >> that was conof those things because it helped set in motion some of the events we're now seeing in the middle east is not solely responsible about partly responsible. it weakened the appeal and image of the united states around the world and made americans more weary about continuing global leadership. the decision to go into war in 2003 will be picked apart by historians. >> rose: everybody are knows that radical islam and jihadist groups who many say are kidnapping the religion are an agent of change today. what are the other agents of change? >> well they are agents of change but obviously destructive agents. >> rose: sure. >> you can say let's militias there's a group of pirate orgainizations, drug cartels, those are non-state actors. you could say states are still agents of change it's now a larger number of states. corporations, media organizations, large multinational corporations, the catholic church, the gates foundation. a lot of the conversation recently about health issues. >> rose: iraq of ascious an agent of change. >> and reflection of change so much more of the world's gdp and wealth is concentrated there and so much of the world's people are concentrated there. >> rose: the obama administration made a public declaration of a pivot to asia. was that a mistake. >> no. i think it's actually a big idea. in some ways it was the framing idea of this administration's first term in its foreign policy. there are looking down what the united states was doing in the middle east and dial up to asia because that's recognized the part of the world to shape 21st century history. >> rose: the president didn't want to dial down and get us out of two words. >> the problem with the pivot is not the idea it's the implication. when i would teach we would argue 90% of life is implementation or execution. pivot is a good idea. it's the fact china is a big challenge we have important alliance, asia is where the wealth is, military power's rising, nationalism's rising. the problem is we're not doing it, we're not increasing our air or naval presence. we're spending less time in asia during the second term of the obama administration. >> rose: is that because we pulled away from a benefit. >> apart from having a disciplined foreign paul cease not always allowing the urgen't to drive out some of the strategically important. i also don't see signs that the president is preparing congress and the american people to approve a major new transpacific trading agreement. that's going to take an awful lot of political work and so far you don't see that work happening. >> rose: why see why you can't do two or three things at the same time. deal with the christ in the middle east, deal with a relationship with our allies in asia. >> to be fair, if one of his chief lieutenants were sitting here he would say that's precisely what i'm doing. the balance is off. the priorities aren't exactly right. i don't see us doing nearly enough in asia. and what we seem to be doing more is going a bit from crises to crises where some of the areas we've chosen to invest time for example kerry's investment in the palestinian situation is you would say that's an odd choice, didn't look ripe. >> rose: if it was cessful it would have had a huge impact. >> i don't think so. we reached a moment of history where the palestinian crises matters a lot to israelys and pal steins. >> rose: your life is to focus on these things so with that respect. it seems to me if you could remove that, it's not that those problems would not be there standing alone but people pay lip service to them. it is on everybody's agenda in the region, and that if you could somehow take that off the take as an issue conflict you could take more progress in some other areas. what they say is true is every leader over there. that's no single leader in the middle east who doesn't believe or at least say do something about israeli palestinian. >> they would oppose the compromises. they don't want two states in the middle east because one of them would be israel. they're not interested in that outcome. >> rose: not today. you're not arguing they're happy with the circumstance today. >> no. i'm saying it's not the principal dynamic what's driving events. is it impossible. i'm not arguing that. it's not nearly as central as a lot of people argue. >> rose: that's the israeli point of view. if iran says the palestinian complex is what's at issue here it's not. what's at issue here is iran's ambitions and iran's place in the world. >> i disagree with the israeli government on certain issues and on this one i think their analysis is essentially right. if the israelis and palestinians have a lot of stake it's both in their interest to realize progress regardless who might be right between us and when what the regional consequences may be. >> rose: is there a great theory how to fix everything. is there some magic formula that could bring world order, that could bring a new age. if so tell me. >> at the risk of reinforcing my reputation, i don't think so. i don't think it's a problem to be solved. i really do think it's a little bit more of the situation. >> rose: it's a powerful idea that we're missing. >> it's the idea of trying to integrate other actors, particularly the major states to get them to sign up to certain rules and enter into certain agreements. whether it's for trade or climate change. >> rose: we're trying every one of those issues we're trying, they're trying and cuba's trying. >> that's what tells you something. the fact that we're trying and it's not working. we have very different agendas, very different stages of developments. someone like china expinld yeah they -- india they say you're right on climate change but we have people living in rural poverty who don't have access to electricity. we don't have that luxury. >> rose: they point to the finger at us and saying it took you a while to get there too and you want us to play by the rules you want to play by having become a major industrial state. >> you have the outliers, the iranians and others but the indias, the chinas, japans and europes, they have the same idea or they don't care to put much in the way of resources or calories to bring it about. even in our country you've got domestic politic that limit what we can do. for example we've never signed up, we never ratified the law of the sea treaty. >> rose: why? >> because people are worried about anything that's, some people rather are worried about anything that seems to abridge or compromise american sovereignty. it's a theoretical or ideological argument. we have people -- >> rose: has europe signed up. >> yes. we signed but not ratified. >> rose: europe has signed up. >> yes, sir. you have people who say we can't sign up to that trade agreement. either disadvantage that american work orer be bad for environmental issues. there's people who disagree about governing the internet. every single issue we can think of. in the united states we have a debate and we have an even bigger debate in the united states. the consensus explains the fact why we can't structure the world in a highly organized way. >> rose: what doubt the ambitions of the chinese are and president xi jinping. >> on one hand china still needs a stable external environment so they can focus on their internal economic and political development. >> rose: this is for prosperity for them. >> as chinese economic growth slows you beginning them to see not just crack down at hole but you again to see greater signs of chinese nationalism and greater signs of chinese activism in the neighborhood. china is living out something of a contradiction between more traditional foreign policy restraint of the last few decades and now a much more active foreign policy. >> rose: wouldn't history say to you and to me you have become the world's largest economic power that with that power will be a concurrent sense of how do we exercise that power in the world. it's inevitable and that's nationalism. >> partly the psychology. china still thinks of at least selectively a so-called quote/unquote developing country. if we say to them you got to belly up to the bar and share with us some of the obligations and responsibilities making this world work in ways that are good for you can't free ride. the chinese say well we're not ready to do that. >> rose: as soon as you say that they view the last 200 years as an aberration from his twrea. they've always been a great nation and what happened in the last 200 years leading them to say we're still a developing make is an aberration. >> on the other hand they are a great nation and developed in extraordinary ways and they've now reached a point in some ways their own foreign policies don't serve their interests. how are their interests serves by having a reckless innovator korea that they are subsidizing to the extent they are subsidizing. you can argue the insurance of regional order they need to continue growing economically they should be doing more with north korea. we're not there. look at their chinese environment. if any society is vulnerable now to climate change, you have to say china is high on that list. >> rose: when you talk to chinese leadership they're focused on two things over there. one beyond the big issues we're talking about, one is climate and two is corruption. >> they've got to again work it out in a way to maintain political order. that they try to retain high levels of economic growth and there's tensions and grade offs. one of the real questions for china is how to deal with the tensions and trade offs. with the next 30 years for china are much more difficult than the last 30 years. coming back to the conversation we're having here, what that means to me is the alternative to this world we had where the u.s. is dominant is not a world where china somehow steps up and takes our place. that's the classic model of history and all of that, the so called plaid sees complex. i don't think it works that way. if we reach a world where the united states does less and that's the world we're in we're more likely to have a world nobody steps up to take our place. >> rose: you sound exactly like barack obama. that's exactly what he would say. you know i'm right. >> the question is not so much the analysis it's the prescription. and in some areas i think some of the president's analysis is spot on. as i said before, i think some of the prescriptions are spot on like doing more in asia. then the problem is -- >> rose: are doing more with partnerships. that's clearly what you and the next security camp worked on at the time of the first gulf war. >> that was an extraordinary coalition but that was also a real coalition. what's the problem now is the coalition there's not much substance to it. we can't get ground forces, we can't get the turks to adopt a said of rules that are in many ways -- >> rose: does that say something about the power that we have as a nation or the power this president has as a persuader. >> i think it reflects the fact that the u.s. share of world power is less. i think the rest of the world now looks at us through more jaundiced eyes. they're not imperezzed by our domestic example we set anymore. the government shutdowns and sequesters and near defaults clearly hasn't impressed the world, the iraq war clearly did not impress. i also think this president paid an enormous price for what happened in syria. for what was the waiverring. first about not helping the opposition then the red lines not acting on them and i believe that was consequencessual beyond the middle east. even in asia and elsewhere. people look at that and say wow can we count on the united states the way we've used to and i think the's is no. >> rose: it's a new reality the way the world works. >> yes, applying the security pfltz a little bit more. there's a little bit less to fall on the united states and that makes for a messier world. >> rose: does china want to be a stakeholder. >> they're not there yet. i think the day may come but there's simply the priorities now particularly for the next eight years while xi jinping is president of china. there's this period of reduced economic growth, maintaining political primacy of the party. doing as you said something about the environment, doing something about corruption. i don't think china yet feels it has the luxury to do much in the way of being an international stakeholder >> rose: where do you put putin and russian as a new force. >> they're something of a spoiler. russia has decided its future does not lie heavily in european integration. and putin will take the canvas and basically insert primacy on a smaller canvas rather than say on a global canvas. >> rose: at the same time there's a pandemic and he has no respect for national borders. >> that's right. it's virulent. it shows you the inadequacy of the world health organization and other arrange's. we simply weren't up to the challenge. we have the national responses or cdc's and other country's equivalent. and it shows you there's a gap between where the world is and where it needs to be and we're vulnerable to the disease. just the consequences sierra leone is becoming a failed state because of this. it becomes another place where terrorists set up shop. there's national security on top of the health consequences. >> rose: back to one specific thing. turkey and isis. and the threat to the city right there on their border. i would like for the president to go, and i assume he's done this multiple times, and say okay what's the problem here. are you worried about the pkkk. what can we do to allay that fear right here. >> we've had conversations with the turks. i know the president, i heard the president talked to the prim minister. i think the concerns go beyond the pkkk, 12 million turks. they're worried about terrorism and the pkk but they're worried about setting in motion a political dynamic that threatens the territorial integrity and unity. can the states persuade them. i know the arguments i'm just not sure they're listening to the arguments. we can say we support kurdish in thence. it's a mini kurdistan not a maxi kurdistan. they seemed concerned about resisting any sign of kurdish nationalism and getting out of syria so at the moment they may technically be in the coalition in any meaningful sense of the word they're not. >> rose: i was wondering in the conversation, clearly i don't sit here at this table and think oh why are they doing this and not assuming perhaps they've tried to do this and for some reason it was not successful. the people who surround the president are bright and experienced. they're on the phone to you and the other people on foreign relations to submit ideas. >> this is clearly moving the country in a different direction. they've got a different image of turkey's own future both domestically -- >> rose: from what. >> domestically it's different from the turk model. >> rose: well sure. >> he sees himself just as critical to modern turkey. >> rose: not necessarily having the same sense. >> to come up with a new compact about the role of islam in turkish society and it's a very different foreign policy. clearly had an why and never articulated this idea of no problems with any neighbors. and now basically it hasn't worked and now they don't have any neighbor with whom they don't have a problem. the real question is whether the turks do a stock taking about their own difficulties in the region and so far at least i haven't seen it. but it's not so much an american foreign policy. i don't this at the president's door. this to me is yet another example how american power doesn't necessarily translate into american influence. and this is one of the reasons that the world is not in the shape we want to see it. >> rose: and that's true. at the same time, you hear from foreign countries coming to this table, prime ministers and the president saying what we want from the united states is leadership. i don't know how to connect those two things. the power's lift and at the same time they say we want america to step forward and leave. >> look. most people want to leave when it's in the direction they tend to approve. but all things being equal, that's the world they were familiar with. now for someone like him he's different because he has a different agenda than turkey has followed in the last 40 or 50 years. we're seeing? other countries greater nationalism not just in china but japan. we're seeing greater assertiveness. but countries are unneverred by our domestic inability for congress and the executive branch to work together. it creates new questions about american reliability and i think this administration with all of its taker about limiting america's involvement in the middle e putting calendar base withdrawals fourth iraq and what we're doing in afghanistan. >> rose: or whether we will ever use ground. >> there's been too much of an emphasis what we're not going to do and i think it plays, and also they read the polls. the foreign leaders read the polls about americans turning away from the world. they're beginning to build a narrative. i'm not saying it's right but that's the narrative they're beginning to build that the united states can't be counted on to be there quite as much in the past and this has a self fulfilling dynamic and one of the thing the president and the successor is try to change that dynamic. >> rose: there is on one hand a hard power and on the other hand on soft power. that's economic weapons in part or used aids and all kinds of things like that. what's the power of a step decline in all prices in terms of a deflective agent in the world order. >> i think it's largely from where we're sitting pretty good. the main reason is besides slow grek growth rate is the production. it's what we're putting on the market compared to five years ago. it's made us much less vulnerable to energy supply cut offs and pry changes. it's bad for countries like russia and iran. in some ways much more powerful than the sanctions we put in place or lower oil prices. >> rose: why can't we lower our oil prices. >> it's gone down from the low 80's, it's great. we can do other things. we can probably change export policy, change the policy on the petroleum reserve but we could not have engineered anything better than this. >> rose: what would it do to iran if in fact oil prices went down to 60 where they were several years ago. >> countries like iran and russia, it puts them in extremists. their budgets like in russia, the budget is based on royal being $105. what this does is make them extraordinarily vulnerable and makes the sanctions -- >> rose: more than likely to agree to a nuclear deal. >> absolutely. >> rose: what can we do to drive the price up. >> it's happening as we speak. >> rose: it went up a little bit after going down to 80. the saudis contributeñçñto this too. >> well they have in some ways but not reducing production. that's what's interesting interesting about opec is it's acting in the way cartels are meant to act which is to withdraw supply when demand goes down. the fact that oil has gone down as much as it has in price is saudis and others are willing to swallow hard to see countries like iran to pay a price strategically. >> rose: you conclude your case with this thought the question is not whether the world will continue to unravel but how fast and how far. if you do not get a domestic, this is your old argument. if you do not get our domestic house in order, it's precipitous unraveling unevitable. >> unraveling i believe is to some extent inhabit itable. i think it's simply in the structure of things, the rise of others. not the decline of the united states but our problems and letting our power into the diffusion of power and the world, questions about us. again it's so much inevitable but a lot of history is about extends and degreavmentz even if there's a graduate decline in world order and graduate decline in american influence, the question is what's the slope. and what are we putting in its place. it's a real difference charlie if america's role or influence goes down and we put something good or better in its place. >> rose: and developing new relationships as it's declining. >> building new institutions and new rules in which case we have a situation that's frightening. where the future starts getting messier and messier and messier and that's bad for us and everybody and the problem is i don't see who the partners are in the market. the chinese aren't ready, russia doesn't want to, japan got its own concerns and americans are saying we don't want to pay the price. what worries me, i don't see where the partners come and i don't see us as willing to do it as we used to be. >> rose: if you at the council of foreign relations or if you were running this table, we're going to convene a group of people to figure out how do we find a way to stop this. who would you convene. i assume you start with kissinger, it's inevitable you would include him. who else. >> in this country you got a number of people who think hard about foreign policy from henry kissing to bresenski but then you also want to get you would want to internationalize that conversation. you have people from germany and france from russia. you don't want to start excluding people. the whole idea of integration to knit together a world where people sign up to the same rules and build the arrangements to betress them by definition involves bringing in others. and in some cases compromising. we may have to make some difficult decisions. where we're willing to dilute or compromise some of the thing we want in order to get others to play ball. we can't just set the rules and say you got to sign up. it's got to be a real consultation about what are going to be the rules. >> rose: shared interest. >> but also people, if we're going to ask them to pay we've got to give them a chance to play. they just won't to use the phrase you used before. for someone to be a responsible stakeholder china or anybody else it's just not going to be a stakeholder in an american design system we have to be willing to sit down with them and say what are your preferences. >> rose: what are your definitions. >> absolutely. it's a bit of a consultation, a bit of a give and take. >> rose: i don't think you should start doing that over the council of foreign relations. you should start trying to have some people in and consider a theory for the future. all right. thank you. richard haass councilor on foreign relations. back in a moment. stay with us. >> rose: e.o. wilson is here. one of the world's most distinguished biologist and natural ice. he's a professor emeritus at harvard university. his new gook grapple with life's most fundmenteddal questions it is called the meaning of human existence. i'm pleased to have e.o. wilson as i always am back at this table. welcome. >> thank you. >> rose: how old are you now. >> i'm 85 and beginning to slow down in age but i don't feel quite that way yet. >> rose: here's why i ask,t&-we you were just here not long ago with another book. and you said to me three in two years. and i said is there some sense of urgency that you have these things that you think it's important for you to say now. >> yes. i said that. an 85 year old may have 10 more years, i'm not counting on it i just want to make sure if i have anything worth saying i get it out. >> rose: tell me how you came to the meaning of human existence. >> over a long long route. i started my career as an evolutionary biologist and that's another story, very interesting. but in the course of studying every aspect of the biology of ants, i became interested in the broad subject of social behavior. biological origin of social behavior. i wrote a book entitled sociobiology and so on and other related books. >> rose: that became a good controversy. >> it did. we settled that in the 70's though and now it's not controversial. we're not social animals. and i found myself to sit in a position where philosophers and scholars have largely abandoned. which are where did we come from, what are we and where are we going. >> rose: and what is it to be human. which is what this is. >> the point is to combine science and humanities. i think we're approaching the time now where the appropriate disciplines of science are, has learned enough and are moving enough in the right direction so they can connect with the best of humanities to create a much better picture of who we are. and where we came from than we ever had before. in fact, i would like to refer to it what's happening or at least will happen shortly is the new enlightenment. time has come for us to renew. >> rose: to find the new enlightenment. >> yes, i think we're ready now. >> rose: help me define what it might be. >> the original own lightment was a period primarily in the late 17th and throughout the 18th century in which plus furs and scientists they didn't call them that at that time but those who were called actual philosophers and scientists were in agreement. that they were learning so much so fast, that in short order we would be able to combine all that knowledge and come down to stand humanity in the light of knowledge that we can acquire ourselves. ask not just rely on -- -- >> rose: there was time to step back and say what did we learn and make of it. >> what happened was the old enlightenment faded away because of two developments. one was a romantic period of literature came to dominate a lot of english language. but also it was that science could not deliver. not in the early 1800's. and so it's the promise of actually contributing something fundamental to the question what is the meaning of human existence. and we had to wait for two centuries. now after two centuries, i think we're ready to ask those questions again with a lot more confidence. >> rose: also much more challenging because science has roared ahead and challenged definitions what it mean to be. >> that's exactly right. let me just say about this too. it isn't just science that holds the promise of connecting with humanities and renewing the question. i think we're close to finding it but just not any science. for example you're going to get no where if you ask an astrophysicist, an astronomer, you're going to get no where on this question if you ask a chemist even my colleagues in molecular biology, they're just too far removed from what we need to know about where humans came from was a fit in the earth's fauna and flora as a species that evolved from something into our present self glorified form. >> rose: so where do we find the answers. >> where do we find the answers? let me list. five disciplines where we are finding the answers. a couple may surprise you. we are find is them in evolutionary biology which is advancing the health of genetics, molecular genetics and disciplines advance itself very quickly. evolutionary biology. >> rose: is it something you know or is there more judicial it's coming out. the next one that we know is contributing and will contribute big time is brain science. of course that is now the subject of immense interests and intensity of research. but the third one of course is as anyone would want to list would be paleontology and archaeology sort of seg -- segueing into each other. and then something that is the a surprise is artificial intelligence and robotic. these are the branches of science and technology which are attempting, actually, to understand how the human brain works, and thereby just what evolution has deduced. >> rose: i know a little bit about this because we have conferences and i participate in them. we've done two complete years of conversations about the brain. but when you get to artificial intelligence, there's some people, very wise people who are scared about the consequences of this. does it bother you. >> not that least. i just had the opportunity of reading six of the key figures of artificial intelligence and robotics. they had gathered to receive and i was there and we arranged for a roundtable discussion on the present status of those subjects. and in my case, we were bringing in biological diversity. how is this going to affect living environments of the world when we start filling it up with robots and changing our consumption pattern and so on. and the answer is because they became an ancillary subject, are the robots going to take over. that's a great story and hollywood loves a great story. so they tell the story over and over again. and answer, the short answer's no. >> rose: because? >> because we have control. we are not going to allow even advanced humanoid robots to -- >> rose: you said we can control it so we will not allow it because we need to make sure we understand the danger of it therefore we will put -- >> a barrier, we will bring it short. we just haven't even begun really to understand how the emotional centers are the core of our human nature, how they work. which locating right now. >> rose: in the last ten years made a lot of progress. >> rapid progress but that being the case and understanding that we're just beginning to find out where all those subconscious centers are and how they feed into the image ree with a hot and intense we call the conscious mind, we're not likely to be able to duplicate or try to duplicate robots. but if we were to try to duplicate it, we're certainly not going to give the robots the chance to evolve. >> rose: if we could, we're not going to give it to them. >> right. >> rose: here's the question to that. that's very nice to say but these probably somebody over there out there somewhere who says i don't particularly want to follow e.o. wilson's definition of where we should let the robots evolve to. i want to see how far we can take it. >> well you know you're right. that's the mantra of the techno scientific age. there will be no halting of any scientific investigation or potentially useful technology, because as human, it is our human nature, the core of our nature to want to explore and keep exploring all. there's a big difference between the mad scientist this is a great neutron bomb on his own in the private laboratory. and teams of scientists working that are needed to produce the ability of robots, artificial intelligence of any kind to mu tailt -- mu tailt and go through the natural selection. those who make up the stories in hollywood don't know what selection is, natural selection and artificial selection. >> rose: let me go bare. neuroscience, artificial intelligence, robotics. >> brain science. and paleontology and archaeology. >> rose: one or two. >> they segue into one ool you get far enough back where you're not dealing with the artifact of culture so much but the anatomy and capacity what human paleontology was called. >> rose: when i picked up this book before i read it i said here we go with the revered e.o. wilson has decided to say we are creating human life in too many ways in which we're trying to design human life. and that's not such a good idea. that somehow molecular biology and the capacity to do all the things we learned about gene therapy. and the capacity to tinker with human evolution has put real power to change what it means to be human in the hands of people with certain skills. that's what i thought you were going to say. >> no, i didn't. >> rose: that's not an issue for you. >> i'm glad you brought that up because this is the issues of the importance of the humanities which you might have noticed. i touch on a chapter called the all importance of the humanities. >> rose: right. >> the reason i do that, part of the reason is that consider that rational abilities and rational process and the engineering and technology that emerges from that, nevertheless is not human, fundamental human quality. the capacity as unique to humans but what is fundamentallal to human policy. what makes us a distinctive species. what gives humanity to us. may i use these in the word metaphorically what our soul is in our emotions. and we're not going to tinker with those. that's the core what we're trying to save and we're dealing with all of the technology. >> rose: are you saying tinkering with that or it's impossible. >> i didn't mean it's impossible, i'm just saying when we finally settle down if we do settle down before we wreck this planet, we'll come to understand these the congraham -- conglomerate process that makes us distinctive is the core on our humanity. >> rose: our emotional -- >> yes. >> rose: what advances are we making -- >> just studies. >> rose: just studies. there's no landmark. >> they're landmark in the sense that neuro biologists, you can't really tell where they were from one month to the next they're moving so rapidly but right at the moment they have succeeded in locating quite a few centers for emotions and also centers for subconscious decision making. and the idea is to learn about this as thoroughly as possible. decisions can be anything as recently given the nobel prize for of judging distance and orientation, quick learning process. lineage by lineage we're beginning to get a map of the mind and then we'll be able to map the emotions and move to the next phase in a mice term that's being used and that is whole brain emulation. emulate the human brain but not try to exactly duplicate it. >> rose: what's the difference if we emulate it? where would we go if we emulate the human brain. it would be different if we tried to duplicate it. >> i think that's a very good question, sir. but the imlation means that the computing that depends on the decision-making has emotion-like components to it is one of the goals of artificial intelligence. there's a kind of technology that's being developed, it's secondary in importance to digital, binary models. and that is called neuromorphic. that is computers that actually design to be analogued and work a bit like the brain. and so i suspect that in time neuro morphic that is analogue computers to imitate the brain will come by and we will give the robots, now i'm way out beyond -- >> rose: i like it though. >> you like it, fine. this is good. but the goal i believe is that we will have computers smart enough to perform the obvious complex task we want on the surface of mars and the middle of volcanos. but we want them also to be able to make judgments that are appropriate for human need. and so that's about as far as i think we would want to take it. >> rose: did you ever know michael creighton. >> yes, i got to know him pretty well. >> rose: that's what i thought. >> yes. even once maybe this will allow me to escape from where you trapped me is the brave emlation. but one day i had dinner with michael creighton and i described an experiment. i had fossil ants 15-20 years old. i probably could have open that amber and extracted from it substances, terpinnoids and those substances today as alarm substances that you emit to alarm one another danger danger come this way, alert alert getting ready to do something. i said to michael creighton, you know, did this satisfy you if i did that? and actually took the signal, the chemical signal 15 to 20 million years ago went to their descendents and delivered a message, i had a colony of that species in my lab and allow they had, and like said did you do it. i said no. he said why. it will just be a surface trick and it would. that's all it would be. it wouldn't be science. >> rose: in trying to know all that you know and to follow all of these trails of human knowledge. >> i don't know. >> rose: you read, you talk, you had your curiosity to take you. >> that takes me in a lot of directions and that's basically what it's all about. that's why i'm as you brought up early, maybe i did. i'm getting old enough now so i'm worrying about the time i have left. basically i've always, i have the same excitement over science and discoveries that i had when i was just a kid. >> rose: you appreciate science more today do you think? do we appreciate science more today? >> well, more but it's not nearly enough. i wonder how many real scientists you interview here. probably not many compared to leaders and other branches. >> rose: i make two points on that. i don't do enough but i do more than anybody else. >> you do. i didn't mean to take any credit. otherwise if it were for you, i wouldn't be sitting anywhere being interviewed like this. >> rose: but when you, let's assume you were thinking of dooms day, is it more likely to come as you have talked about often somehow what we do to the planet or are we going to unleash something beyond our comprehension which will have a velocity of change that we never imagined? >> both. it's a race among dooms days as to which will come first. these are the words. now we are above critical level in the concentration of the climate change components of the at must fear. and scientists who are expert on these subjects and real scientists wonder and worry that there's some kind of a tripping turning point. >> rose: a tipping point. >> a tipping point that could be catastrophic in nature and they could imagine scenarios. so we could do massive damage or catastrophic damage with the tipping points we didn't anticipate well enough. and we're allowing the essential cause of that to go on and on. so we should be careful about climate change because that could create a catastrophe. but the other way of by the means of whimper and that is i'm beginning to concentrate all my energies on and that's cons vasion of the bio sphere. and not let the species slip away, become extinct as they are a thousand times faster than before humans came. because we don't know what will happen with the biosphere as we destroy it. it could mean we lie down to a less interesting and less productive planet and that's kind of dark age we could never emerge from. >> rose: if you had just got i out of college today, what field would you most go to? what field would you go to. >> if i named that field in my autobiography which i felt would be toward the end of my career in 1996 i said if i had to do it over again i would go into microbial ecology. i would work on microbes. we are micro organisms in nature. we know in a single sample of soil, one gram you have in the billions of bacteria and there's as many as 5,000 kinds, almost all unknown to science. here is a virgin area of biology. i loved doing that if i could start at the beginning. because that's a major area that's going to open up but i to wonder about it, if i started there instead of ants, would i end up thinking about humans? maybe not. i would be thinking about i believe a young microbial ecologist would be thinking about oh i can't wait to get those samples back from the aqueous layer of mars from drilling through europa. >> rose: what would you do. >> it's all sort of things from ebola to figuring out how life started spontaneously. >> rose: somebody picks up this book and says the meaning of human existence. okay, dr. wilson, tell me what the answer is. what is the meaning of human existence. >> i'll have to just because i know our time is limited, just answer with a couple of general statements which i think carry the meaning of the meaning. first is that history makes no sense without prehistory. prehistory makes no sense without biology. human existence is a result of long series of evolutionary and cultural events, the cultural starting primarily when agriculture was discovered that lead up to what we are today. and the meaning then is the actual history, the epic. it goes all the way back to the origin of our biological imperatives. and then i would say let us consider that human beings are above all a biological species in a biological world. if we live in a razor thin layer of the atmosphere within which life can exist and to which we as a species are exquisitely well adapted. so it's when we get this understanding of where we are and what we are and where we came from that we'll be better prepared to decide where we're going. >> rose: e.o. wilson, thank you. >> thank you. >> rose: it's a pleasure. thank you for joining us. see you next time. visit us on-line at pbs.org and charlierose.com. captioning sponsored by rose communications captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org this is "nightly business report" with tyler mathisen and susie gharib. brought to you in part by -- >> thestreet.com. featuring stephanie link who shares her investment strategies, stock picks and market insights with action alerts plus, the multimillion dollar portfolio she manages with jim cramer. you can learn more at thestreet.com/nbr. breaking 80, the price of oil falls blow a key level during the trading day. while that's good news for drivers, it could be bad news for parts of the job market. hashtag disappointing. twitter's quarterly revenue more than double ed but its outlook failed to impress investors. not accepted. apple pays with supposed to usher in a new way to pay for just about anything, but ak

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