Empiricism & Ants

I find it interesting how the majority of my classes have similar topics.  On Monday in my biology class we watched a movie called Lord of the Ants. If you're interested you may watch it here: http://video.pbs.org/video/980049632/  It is 50 min long so just prepare yourself (I may add it's quite interesting).

This video is a documentary of Edward Wilson and his life findings regarding his life-long studies of ants.  This man, much like the wise individuals of the renaissance, started making observations from scratch.  One interesting thing though that ties well with John Locke's Essay on human understanding is that a fellow scholar of his suggested he try to link chemistry with the behavior of ants.  This new idea led him to discover how ants communicate one with another regardless of the fact they can't see and they don't speak.

Have you ever wondered how it is that ants know where to go to get food after one ant has found a stash?!  They leave an invisible chemical trail behind them and when they return, others may follow its scent and the trail becomes larger and the invisible chemicals stronger until the food source is devoured.

Edward Wilson followed the practice of empiricism to find his answers and unlocked a new way of understanding how insects (ants particularly) live & survive.