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Science is not marginal. Like art, it is a universal possession of humanity, and scientific knowledge has become a vital part of our species' repertory. It comprises what we know of the material world with reasonable certainty. . . . Thanks to science and technology, access to factual information of all kinds is rising exponentially.
E. O. Wilson -
We seem to be able to be fully comfortable only when the remainder of humanity can be labeled as members versus nonmembers.
E. O. Wilson
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No barrier stands between the material world of science and the sensibilities of the hunter and the poet.
E. O. Wilson -
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.
E. O. Wilson -
The mosquito is an automaton. It can afford to be nothing else.
E. O. Wilson -
The channels of human mental development... are circuitous and variable. Rather than specify a single trait, human genes prescribe the capacity to develop a certain array of traits.
E. O. Wilson -
Overall, the human brain is the most complex object known in the universe - known, that is, to itself.
E. O. Wilson -
Humanity is part of nature, a species that evolved among other species. The more closely we identify ourselves with the rest of life, the more quickly we will be able to discover the sources of human sensibility and acquire the knowledge on which an enduring ethic, a sense of preferred direction, can be built.
E. O. Wilson
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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.
E. O. Wilson -
In 2010, my two Harvard mathematician colleagues and I dismantled kin-selection theory, which was the reigning theory of the origin of altruism at the time.
E. O. Wilson -
One difference between ants and humans is that while ants send their old women off to war, humans send their young men.
E. O. Wilson -
The history of life on earth has been a history of interaction between living things and their surroundings.
E. O. Wilson -
Most kinds of aggressive behavior among members of the same species are responsive to crowding in the environment.
E. O. Wilson -
We are not afraid of predators, we're transfixed by them, prone to weave stories and fables and chatter endlessly about them, because fascination creates preparedness, and preparedness, survival. In a deeply tribal way, we love our monsters.
E. O. Wilson
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Are human beings innately aggressive? ...The answer to it is yes. ...Only by redefining the words 'innateness' and 'aggression' to the point of uselessness might we correctly say that human aggressiveness is not innate.
E. O. Wilson -
The incest taboo is another major category of primed learning.
E. O. Wilson -
Be prepared mentally for some amount of chaos and failure. Waste and frustration often attend the earliest stages.
E. O. Wilson -
Darwin's dice have rolled badly for Earth. The human species is, in a word, an environmental abnormality. Perhaps a law of evolution is that intelligence usually extinguishes itself.
E. O. Wilson -
The evolutionary epic is probably the best myth we will ever have.
E. O. Wilson -
From the freedom to explore comes the joy of learning. From knowledge acquired by personal initiative arises the desire for more knowledge. And from mastery of the novel and beautiful world awaiting every child comes self-confidence.
E. O. Wilson
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The most dangerous of devotions, in my opinion, is the one endemic to Christianity: I was not born to be of this world. With a second life waiting, suffering can be endured- especially in other people. The natural environment can be used up. Enemies of the faith can be savaged and suicidal martyrdom praised.
E. O. Wilson -
Evolution by natural selection is not an idle hypothesis. The genetic variation on which selection acts is well understood in principle all the way down to the molecular level.
E. O. Wilson -
All my life I have placed great store in civility and good manners, practices I find scarce among the often hard-edged, badly socialized scientists with whom I associate. Tone of voice means a great deal to me in the course of debate. I despise the arrogance and doting self-regard so frequently found among the very bright.
E. O. Wilson -
Humanity, in the desperate attempt to fit 8 billion or more people on the planet and give them a higher standard of living, is at risk of pushing the rest of life off the globe.
E. O. Wilson