E. O. Wilson Quotes
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No barrier stands between the material world of science and the sensibilities of the hunter and the poet.
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The ideal scientist thinks like a poet and only later works like a bookkeeper.
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The borderline between normal and schizophrenic people is broad and nearly imperceptible.
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We use pandas and eagles and things. I'd love to see a wilderness society with an angry-looking wolverine as their logo.
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We seem to be able to be fully comfortable only when the remainder of humanity can be labeled as members versus nonmembers.
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The essence of humanity's spiritual dilemma is that we evolved genetically to accept one truth and discovered another. Is there a way to erase the dilemma, to resolve the contradictions between the transcendentalist and the empiricist world views?
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If religion and science could be united on the common ground of biological conservation, the problem would be soon solved. If there is any moral precept shared by people of all beliefs, it is that we owe ourselves and future generations a beautiful, rich, and healthful environment.
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The increase in brain size and refinement of stone artifacts point to an unbroken advance in mental ability over the last two or three million years. ...No organ in the history of life has grown faster.
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The love of complexity without reductionism makes art; the love of complexity with reductionism makes science.
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Genetic determinism... On its interpretation depends the entire relation between biology and the social sciences.
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The theory of population genetics and experiments on other organisms show that substantial changes can occur in the span of less than 100 generations, which for man reaches back to the time of the Roman Empire.
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If those committed to the quest fail, they will be forgiven. When lost, they will find another way. The moral imperative of humanism is the endeavor alone, whether successful or not, provided the effort is honorable and failure memorable.
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Because the brain can be guided by rational calculation only in a limited degree, it must fall back on the nuances of pleasure and pain mediated by the limbic system and other lower centers of the brain.
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Cultural change is the statistical product of the separate behavioral responses of large numbers of human beings who cope as best they can with social existence.
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The evolutionary epic is probably the best myth we will ever have.
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The real problem of humanity is the following: we have paleolithic emotions; medieval institutions; and god-like technology. And it is terrifically dangerous, and it is now approaching a point of crisis overall.
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The most peaceable tribes of today were often ravagers of yesteryear and will probably again produce soldiers and murderers in the future.
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It's always been a dream of mine, of exploring the living world, of classifying all the species and finding out what makes up the biosphere.
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The fraction of Americans working in occupations concerned primarily with information has increased from 20 to nearly 50 percent of the work force.
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Biological diversity is the key to the maintenance of the world as we know it... Eliminate one species, and another increases to take its place. Eliminate a great many species, and the local ecosystem starts to decay.
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Stable climates with muted seasons allow more kinds of organisms to specialize on narrower pieces of the environment, to outcompete the generalists around them, and so persist for longer periods of time. Species are packed more tightly. No niche, it seems goes unfilled. Specialization is likely to be pushed to bizarre, beautiful extremes.
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Known as the biosphere to scientists and as the creation to theologians, all of life together consists of a membrane around earth so thin that it cannot be seen edgewise from a satellite yet so prodigiously diverse that only a tiny fraction of species have been discovered and named.
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To search for unasked questions, plus questions to put to already acquired but unsought answers, it is vital to give full play to the imagination. That is the way to create truly original science.
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Man's destiny is to know, if only because societies with knowledge culturally dominate societies that lack it. Luddites and anti-intellectuals do not master the differential equations of thermodynamics or the biochemical cures of illness. They stay in thatched huts and die young.