E O Wilson Quotes

Destroying rainforest for economic gain is like burning a Renaissance painting to cook a meal.

We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom. The world henceforth will be run by synthesizers, people able to put together the right information at the right time, think critically about it, and make important choices wisely.

You are capable of more than you know. Choose a goal that seems right for you and strive to be the best, however hard the path. Aim high. Behave honorably. Prepare to be alone at times, and to endure failure. Persist! The world needs all you can give.

There is no better high than discovery.

If all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed ten thousand years ago. If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos.

Nature holds the key to our aesthetic, intellectual, cognitive and even spiritual satisfaction.

Adults forget the depths of languor into which the adolescent mind decends with ease. They are prone to undervalue the mental growth that occurs during daydreaming and aimless wandering

I will argue that every scrap of biological diversity is priceless, to be learned and cherished, and never to be surrendered without a struggle.

Johnny and Marissa, sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G. First comes love, then comes marriage. Then comes an abrupt, tragic miscarriage. Then comes blame, then comes despair. Two hearts damaged beyond repair... Johnny leaves Marissa, and takes the tree. D-I-V-O-R-C-E.

A lifetime can be spent in a Magellanic voyage around the trunk of a single tree.

Let us see how high we can fly before the sun melts the wax in our wings.

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.

It often occurs to me that if, against all odds, there is a judgmental God and heaven, it will come to pass that when the pearly gates open, those who had the valor to think for themselves will be escorted to the head of the line, garlanded, and given their own personal audience.

In fact, public speaking anxiety may be primal and quintessentially human, not limited to those of us born with a high-reactive nervous system. One theory, based on the writings of the sociobiologist E.O. Wilson, holds that when our ancestors lived on the savannah, being watched intently meant only one thing: a wild animal was stalking us. And when we think we're about to be eaten, do we stand tall and hold forth confidently? No. We run. In other words, hundreds of thousands of years of evolution urge us to get the hell off the stage, where we can mistake the gaze of the spectators for the glint in a predator's eye.

The biologist and intellectual E. O. Wilson was once asked what represented the most hindrance to the development of children; his answer was the soccer mom. He did not use the notion of the Procrustean bed, but he outlined it perfectly. His argument is that they repress children's natural biophilia, their love of living things. But the problem is more general; soccer moms try to eliminate the trial and error, the antifragility, from children's lives, move them away from the ecological and transform them into nerds working on preexisting (soccer-mom-compatible) maps of reality. Good students, but nerds--that is, they are like computers except slower. Further, they are now totally untrained to handle ambiguity. As a child of civil war, I disbelieve in structured learning . . . . Provided we have the right type of rigor, we need randomness, mess, adventures, uncertainty, self-discovery, near-traumatic episodes, all those things that make life worth living, compared to the structured, fake, and ineffective life of an empty-suit CEO with a preset schedule and an alarm clock.

E. O. Wilson, the Harvard entomologist and evolutionary biologist, is reputed to have said of socialism: “Great idea. Wrong species.” Any system that is built on a false understanding of human nature is doomed to fail.

This is the assembly of life that took a billion years to evolve. It has eaten the storms-folded them into its genes-and created the world that created us. It holds the world steady.

The race is now on between the technoscientific and scientific forces that are destroying the living environment and those that can be harnessed to save it. . . . If the race is won, humanity can emerge in far better condition than when it entered, and with most of the diversity of life still intact.

If there is danger in the human trajectory, it is not so much in the survival of our own species as in the fulfillment of the ultimate irony of organic evolution: that in the instant of achieving self-understanding through the mind of man, life has doomed its most beautiful creations.

We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom. The world henceforth will be run by synthesizers, people able to put together the right information at the right time, think critically about it, and make important choices wisely. —E. O. Wilson

[E]very major religion today is a winner in the Darwinian struggle waged among cultures, and none ever flourished by tolerating its rivals.

As the great biologist E. O. Wilson suggested, humanity’s real problem is that we have ‘Palaeolithic emotions; medieval institutions; and god-like technology’.

A wiser intelligence might now truthfully say of us at this point: here is a chimera, a new and very odd species come shambling into our universe, a mix of Stone Age emotion, medieval self-image, and godlike technology. The combination makes the species unresponsive to the forces that count most for its own long-term survival.

Soccer moms are the enemy of natural history and the full development of a child.

An ideal scientist thinks like a poet and only later works like a book-keeper.

Is a universe of discrete material particles possible only with one specific set of natural laws and parameter values? In other words, does human imagination, which can conceive of other laws and values, thereby exceed possible existence?

Would I be happy if I discovered that I could go to heaven forever? And the answer is no. Consider this argument. Think about what is forever. And think about the fact that the human mind, the entire human being, is built to last a certain period of time. Our programmed hormonal systems, the way we learn, the way we settle upon beliefs, and the way we love are all temporary. Because we go through a life's cycle. Now, if we were to be plucked out at the age of 12 or 56 or whenever, and taken up and told, "Now you will continue your existence as you are. We're not going to blot out your memories. We're not going to diminish your desires." You will exist in a state of bliss - whatever that is - forever. [...] Now think, a trillion times a trillion years. Enough time for universes like this one to be born, explode, form countless star systems and planets, then fade away to entropy. You will sit there watching this happen millions and millions of times and that will be just the beginning of the eternity that you've been consigned to bliss in this existence.

I think that we reject the evidence that our world is changing because we are still, as that wonderfully wise biologist E. O. Wilson reminded us, tribal carnivores. We are programmed by our inheritance to see other living things as mainly something to eat, and we care more about our national tribe than anything else. We will even give our lives for it and are quite ready to kill other humans in the cruellest of ways for the good of our tribe. We still find alien the concept that we and the rest of life, from bacteria to whales, are parts of the much larger and diverse entity, the living Earth.

If we were to wipe out insects alone on this planet, the rest of life and humanity with it would mostly disappear from the land. Within a few months.

On one wall there was a recent watercolour — Saint E.O. Wilson of Hymenoptera

We are not compelled to believe in biological uniformity in order to affirm freedom and dignity

The diversity of life forms, so numerous that we have yet to identify most of them, is the greatest wonder on this planet.

«El principal problema de la humanidad es que tenemos emociones paleolíticas, instituciones medievales y tecnología de dioses» — E.O. Wilson

The genes supply the motivation for warfare, [E. O.] Wilson is saying, in humans as they do in chimps, but people, blessed with the power of language, look for some objective cause of war. A society psychs itself up to go to war by agreeing that their neighbors have wronged them, whether by seizing property or failing to deliver on some promise. Religious leaders confirm that the local deity favors their cause and off go the troops.

Questions lead to further questions, and inquiry breeds insight. Gathering expertise brings both confidence and consolation. E. O. Wilson wrote: "You start by loving a subject. Birds, probability theory, stars, differential equations, storm fronts, sign language, swallowtail butterflies....The subject will be your lodestar and give sanctuary in the shifting mental universe.

Among the writers he was reading when he wrote these stories in the 1950s—and he was reading all the time, all kinds of books, dozens and dozens of them—were David Riesman, Saul Bellow, Bernard Malamud, John Cheever, James Baldwin, Randall Jarrell, Sigmund Freud, Paul Goodman, William Styron, C. Wright Mills, Martin Buber, George Orwell, Suzanne Langer, F. R. Leavis, David Daiches, Edmund Wilson, Alfred Kazin, Ralph Ellison, Erich Fromm, Joseph Conrad, Dylan Thomas, Sean O’Casey, e. e. cummings—who collectively represented a republic of discourse in which he aspired to

Harvard biologist and entomologist E. O. Wilson’s coined term “Biofilia,” by which he means the emotional affiliation humans feel toward other living organisms

I recommend Richard Dawkins’s and E. O. Wilson’s books on evolution. If I had to pick just one, it would be Dawkins’s River Out of Eden.

Exclusion makes us suffer, inclusion makes us thrive.

The ideal scientist thinks like a poet and only later works like a bookkeeper.

Each species is a masterpiece of evolution that humanity could not possibly duplicate even if we somehow accomplish the creation of new organisms by genetic engineering. —E. O. Wilson

Humans are not indistinguishable and equal worker ants. E. O. Wilson, the Harvard entomologist and evolutionary biologist, is reputed to have said of socialism: “Great idea. Wrong species.

The problem holding everything up thus far is that Homo sapiens is an innately dysfunctional species. We are hampered by the Paleolithic Curse: genetic adaptations that worked very well for millions of years of hunter-gatherer existence but are increasingly a hindrance in a globally urban and technoscientific society. We seem unable to stabilize either economic policies or the means of governance higher than the level of a village.

Science is the global civilization of which I am a citizen. The spread of its democratic ethic and its unifying powers provides my faith in humanity. The astonishing depths of wonders in the universe, continuously revealed by science is my temple. The capacity of the informed human mind, liberated at last by the understanding that we are alone and thus the sole stewards of earth, is my religion. The potential of humanity to turn this planet into a paradise for future generations is my afterlife.

During a chance meeting, the naturalist E.O. Wilson advised me to give up thinking we are doomed. "It's our chance to practice altruism," he said. I looked doubtful, but he continued. "We have to wear suits of armor like World War II soldiers and just keep going. We have to get used to the changes in the landscape and step over the dead bodies. We have to discipline our behavior and not get stuck in tribal and religious restrictions. We have to work altruistically and cooperatively and make a new world.

The naturalist E. O. Wilson gave a name to this warm, fuzzy feeling I’m experiencing: biophilia. He defined it as “the innately emotional affiliation of human beings to other living organisms.” Wilson argued that our connection to nature is deeply ingrained in our evolutionary past. That connection isn’t always positive. Take snakes, for instance. The chances of encountering a snake, let alone dying from a snakebite, are extraordinarily remote. Yet modern humans continue to fear snakes even more, studies have found, than car accidents or homicide or any of the dozens of other more plausible ways we might meet our demise. The fear of snakes resides deep in our primitive brain. The fear of the Long Island Expressway, while not insignificant, was added much more recently.

The biologist and intellectual E. O. Wilson was once asked what represented the most hindrance to the development of children; his answer was the soccer mom….Soccer moms try to eliminate the trial and error from children's lives and transform them into nerds working on preexisting (soccer-mom-compatible) maps of reality. They are good students, but nerds--that is, they are like computers except slower. Further, they are totally untrained to handle ambiguity….Provided we have the right type of rigor, we need randomness, mess, adventures, uncertainty, self-discovery, near-traumatic episodes, all those things that make life worth living.

If most of the area of habitat is destroyed, and a fraction of the area is saved as a reserve, the reserve will initially contain more species than it can hold at equilibrium. The excess will gradually go extinct. The smaller the reserve, the higher will be the extinction rates…. Different species require different minimum areas to have a reasonable chance of survival.

We have good news and bad news. The good news is that the dismal vision of human sexuality reflected in the standard narrative is mistaken. Men have not evolved to be deceitful cads, nor have millions of years shaped women into lying, two-timing gold-diggers. But the bad news is that the amoral agencies of evolution have created in us a species with a secret it just can’t keep. Homo sapiens evolved to be shamelessly, undeniably, inescapably sexual. Lusty libertines. Rakes, rogues, and roués. Tomcats and sex kittens. Horndogs. Bitches in heat.1 True, some of us manage to rise above this aspect of our nature (or to sink below it). But these preconscious impulses remain our biological baseline, our reference point, the zero in our own personal number system. Our evolved tendencies are considered “normal” by the body each of us occupies. Willpower fortified with plenty of guilt, fear, shame, and mutilation of body and soul may provide some control over these urges and impulses. Sometimes. Occasionally. Once in a blue moon. But even when controlled, they refuse to be ignored. As German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer pointed out, Mensch kann tun was er will; er kann aber nicht wollen was er will. (One can choose what to do, but not what to want.) Acknowledged or not, these evolved yearnings persist and clamor for our attention. And there are costs involved in denying one’s evolved sexual nature, costs paid by individuals, couples, families, and societies every day and every night. They are paid in what E. O. Wilson called “the less tangible currency of human happiness that must be spent to circumvent our natural predispositions.”2 Whether or not our society’s investment in sexual repression is a net gain or loss is a question for another time. For now, we’ll just suggest that trying to rise above nature is always a risky, exhausting endeavor, often resulting in spectacular collapse. Any attempt to understand who we are, how we got to be this way, and what to do about it must begin by facing up to our evolved human sexual predispositions. Why do so many forces resist our sustained fulfillment? Why is conventional marriage so much damned work? How has the incessant, grinding campaign of socio-scientific insistence upon the naturalness of sexual monogamy combined with a couple thousand years of fire and brimstone failed to rid even the priests, preachers, politicians, and professors of their prohibited desires? To see ourselves as we are, we must begin by acknowledging that of all Earth’s creatures, none is as urgently, creatively, and constantly sexual as Homo sapiens.

And we really should be considering the moral implications of what we're doing. What kind of a species are we that we treat the rest of life so cheaply? There are those who think that's the destiny of Earth: We arrived, we're humanizing the Earth, and it will be the destiny of Earth for us to wipe humans out and most of the rest of biodiversity. But I think the great majority of thoughtful people consider that a morally wrong position to take, and a very dangerous one.

gene plays a role, are quite tractable, but anything entailing higher dimensionality falls apart. Understanding the genetic makeup of a unit will never allow us to understand the behavior of the unit itself. A reminder that what I am writing here isn’t an opinion. It is a straightforward mathematical property. The mean-field approach is when one uses the average interaction between, say, two people, and generalizes to the group—it is only possible if there are no asymmetries. For instance, Yaneer Bar-Yam has applied the failure of mean-field to evolutionary theory of the selfish-gene narrative trumpeted by such aggressive journalistic minds as Richard Dawkins and Steven Pinker, with more mastery of English than probability theory. He shows that local properties fail and the so-called mathematics used to prove the selfish gene are woefully naive and misplaced. There has been a storm around work by Martin Nowack and his colleagues (which include the biologist E. O. Wilson) about the terminal flaws in the selfish gene theory.fn2

The biologist and intellectual E. O. Wilson was once asked what represented the most hindrance to the development of children; his answer was the soccer mom [helicopter parent]….They try to eliminate the trial and error from children's lives and transform them into nerds working on preexisting (parent-compatible) maps of reality. They are good students, but nerds--that is, they are like computers, except slower. Further, they are totally untrained to handle ambiguity….Provided we have the right type of rigor, we need randomness, mess, adventures, uncertainty, self-discovery, near-traumatic episodes, all those things that make life worth living.

. . . As I sit here in my Aeron chair, thinking E. O. Wilson thoughts. Was it love or reproduction? Chance or destiny? Crime or nature at work? Maybe the gene contained an override, ensuring its expression, which would explain Desdemona’s tears and Lefty’s taste in prostitutes; not fondness, not emotional sympathy; only the need for this new thing to enter the world and hence the heart’s rigged game. But I can’t explain it, any more than Desdemona or Lefty could have, any more than each one of us, falling in love, can separate the hormonal from what feels divine, and maybe I cling to the God business out of some altruism hard-wired to preserve the species;

Ants In his paper “Moore’s Law at 40,” Gordon Moore makes an interesting observation. He points out that, according to biologist E. O. Wilson, there are 1015 to 1016 ants in the world. By comparison, in 2014 there were about 1020 transistors in the world, or tens of thousands of transistors per ant.8 An ant’s brain might contain a quarter of a million neurons, and thousands of synapses per neuron, which suggests that the world’s ant brains have a combined complexity similar to that of the world’s human brains. So we shouldn’t worry too much about when computers will catch up with us in complexity. After all, we’ve caught up to ants, and they don’t seem too concerned. Sure, we seem like we’ve taken over the planet, but if I had to bet on which one of us would still be around in a million years—primates, computers, or ants—I know who I’d pick.

In fact, public speaking anxiety may be primal and quintessentially human, not limited to those of us born with a high-reactive nervous system. One theory, based on the writings of the sociobiologist E. O. Wilson, holds that when our ancestors lived on the savannah, being watched intently meant only one thing: a wild animal was stalking us. And when we think we’re about to be eaten, do we stand tall and hold forth confidently? No. We run. In other words, hundreds of thousands of years of evolution urge us to get the hell off the stage, where we can mistake the gaze of the spectators for the glint in a predator’s eye. Yet the audience expects not only that we’ll stay put, but that we’ll act relaxed and assured. This conflict between biology and protocol is one reason that speechmaking can be so fraught. It’s also why exhortations to imagine the audience in the nude don’t help nervous speakers; naked lions are just as dangerous as elegantly dressed ones.

Public speaking phobia has many causes, including early childhood setbacks, that have to do with our unique personal histories, not inborn temperament. In fact, public speaking may be primal and quintessentially human, not limited to those of us born with a high-reactive nervous system. One theory, based on the writings of the sociobiologist E. O. Wilson, holds that when our ancestors lived on the savannah, being watched intently meant only one thing: a wild animal was stalking us. And when we think we're about to be eaten, do we stand tall and hold forth confidently? No. We run. In other words, hundreds of thousands of years of evolution urge us to get the hell off the stage, where we can mistake the gaze of the spectators for the glint in a predator's eye. Yet the audience expects not only that we'll stay put, but that we'll act relaxed and assured. This conflict between biology and protocol is one reason that speechmaking can be so fraught. It's also why exhortations to imagine the audience in the nude don't help nervous speakers; naked lions are just as dangerous as elegantly dressed ones.

Evidence of the failure to love is everywhere around us. To contemplate what it is to love today brings us up against reefs of darkness and walls of despair. If we are to manage the havoc—ocean acidification, corporate malfeasance and government corruption, endless war—we have to reimagine what it means to live lives that matter, or we will only continue to push on with the unwarranted hope that things will work out. We need to step into a deeper conversation about enchantment and agape, and to actively explore a greater capacity to love other humans. The old ideas—the crushing immorality of maintaining the nation-state, the life-destroying belief that to care for others is to be weak, and that to be generous is to be foolish—can have no future with us. It is more important now to be in love than to be in power. It is more important to bring E. O. Wilson’s biophilia into our daily conversations than it is to remain compliant in a time of extinction, ethnic cleansing, and rising seas. It is more important to live for the possibilities that lie ahead than to die in despair over what has been lost. Only an ignoramus can imagine now that pollinating insects, migratory birds, and pelagic fish can depart our company and that we will survive because we know how to make tools. Only the misled can insist that heaven awaits the righteous while they watch the fires on Earth consume the only heaven we have ever known.

Higor se aproximou sorridente, e no meio do quarto, percebendo-o sem a camisa, imediatamente procurei por sua língua. E nos beijamos. Céus, como o irmão da minha mulher beijava bem.

renowned biologist and thinker E. O. Wilson calls the study of gene-culture coevolution “one of the great unexplored domains of science.

That we reengineered the natural world so sufficiently to close the book on an entire geological era—that is the major lesson of the Anthropocene. The scale of that transformation remains astonishing, even to those of us who were raised amidst it and took all of its imperious values for granted. Twenty-two percent of the earth’s landmass was altered by humans just between 1992 and 2015. Ninety-six percent of the world’s mammals, by weight, are now humans and their livestock; just four percent are wild. We have simply crowded—or bullied, or brutalized—every other species into retreat, near-extinction, or worse. E. O. Wilson thinks the era might be better called the Eremocine—the age of loneliness.

More recent reflections on the importance of our link to the natural world have given rise to the “biophilia hypothesis,” first suggested by Erich Fromm and later developed by E. O. Wilson in his 1984 work Biophilia, according to which human beings have a deep-seated impulse to affiliate with other life-forms.58 This notion may be a little too speculative for some, but a body of empirical evidence seems to support the more modest hypothesis that human beings benefit from proximity to natural surroundings and are susceptible to what Richard Louv has called “nature-deficit disorder:

E. O. Wilson, one of the world’s most distinguished ecologists, certainly its most eloquent: ‘At the heart of the environmentalist world view is the conviction that human physical and spiritual health depends on the planet Earth … Natural ecosystems – forests, coral reefs, marine blue waters – maintain the world as we would wish it to be maintained. Our body and our mind evolved to live in this particular planetary environment and no other.

both confidence and consolation. E. O. Wilson wrote: “You start by loving a subject. Birds, probability theory, stars, differential equations, storm fronts, sign language, swallowtail butterflies.… The subject will be your lodestar and give sanctuary in the shifting mental universe.

The late Harvard scientist E. O. Wilson has called this core human value biophilia, which he defined as a genetic memory of our emergence, a piercing love affair with the other life-forms that surround us on the planet. Our

MINUTE CREATURES swarm around us…objects of potentially endless study and admiration, if we are willing to sweep our vision down from the world lined by the horizon to include the world an arm’s length away. A lifetime can be spent in a Magellanic voyage around the trunk of a tree. —E. O. WILSON

Mark W. Moffett is a Smithsonian entomologist who has won the Lowell Thomas Medal from the Explorers Club and the Bowdoin Medal for writing from Harvard. After completing a PhD under E. O. Wilson, he spent years watching ants for his book, Adventures Among Ants.

The subject for you, as in any true love, is one in which you are interested and that stirs passion and promises pleasure from a lifetime of devotion.

El biólogo E. O. Wilson escribió que Colombia debería contarse como «uno de los países de la megadiversidad de la Tierra, con una fauna y una flora cuya riqueza solo es comparable a la de Brasil».

Si la historia hubiera tomado un camino diferente, la palabra Colombia evocaría instantáneamente orquídeas, colibríes y anfibios de colores brillantes. El biólogo E. O. Wilson escribió que Colombia debería contarse como «uno de los países de la megadiversidad de la Tierra, con una fauna y una flora cuya riqueza solo es comparable a la de Brasil».

Naturalist E. O. Wilson writes, “There can be no purpose more inspiring than to begin the age of restoration, reweaving the wondrous diversity of life that still surrounds us.

7. The Force of Love. We at SoulBoom headquarters are all about the biggest possible L-O-V-E. (Warning: this is going to get all sorts of corny.) Everything boils down to love. We mean everything. Light is love. Friends are love. Trees and birds and the ocean are love. Language is love. Time is love. Laughter is love. The type of love that is a beautiful and hilarious series of high fives with the universe. We believe in love as a universal law like gravity and that our love for everyone should radiate out like sunlight. Rumi said it best: “Love is the bridge between you and everything.

The real problem of humanity is the following: We have Paleolithic emotions, Medieval institutions, and God-like technology. And it is terrifically dangerous…..

The fundamental problem of humanity is we have paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and god-like technology.

Stephen Jay Gould, E. O. Wilson, Lewis Thomas, and Richard Dawkins in biology; Steven Weinberg, Alan Lightman, and Kip Thorne in physics; Roald Hoffmann in chemistry; and the early works of Fred Hoyle in astronomy.

Gloria în țara aceasta începe cu publicity. Cineva se bucură de publicity doar când aduce profit altcuiva. Cine se bucură în America de faima națională? Cei care fac bani sau cei prin intermediul cărora alții fac bani. O regulă fără excepții. Banii! Faimă națională are un campion la box sau la fotbal, pentru că meciul cu participarea lui adună un milion de dolari. Faimă are o stea de cinema, pentru că notorietatea ei e de folos producătorului. Acesta poate să i-o ia în orice clipă, când are chef. Faimă au bandiții, pentru că de pe urma lor profită ziarele și pentru că de numele bandiților sunt legate cifre cu multe zerouri. Însă cine ar avea nevoie să-i facă celebri pe Thompson, Jackson, Wilson sau Adams, dacă oamenii aceștia construiesc doar utilaje, uzine electrice, poduri și sisteme de irigație? Patronilor nici nu le convine ca ei să ajungă celebri. Unei persoane celebre trebuie să-i dai un salariu mai mare.

Research from Denis Dutton, Brian Boyd, V.S. Ramachandran, William Hirstein and E.O. Wilson, among many others, is clear on the subject: we are enticed by forms, shapes, rhythms and movements that are useful to our existence. We find Vermeer’s “The Girl with the Pearl Earring,” beautiful, for example, because her face is symmetrical, a clue to her strong immune system2. As the neuroscientist Eric Kandel suggests in The Age of Insight, we are fascinated by Gustav Klimt’s Judith because “at a base level, the aesthetics of the image’s luminous gold surface, the soft rendering of the body, and the overall harmonious combination of colors could activate the pleasure circuits, triggering the release of dopamine. If Judith’s smooth skin and exposed breast trigger the release of endorphins, oxytocin, and vasopressin, one might feel sexual excitement.

I had not yet gotten around to the sociobiologist E. O. Wilson’s Consilience. When I did read it, I discovered on page 286 that people follow religion because it is “easier” than empiricism. That struck a nerve, and provoked a response I shall be candid enough to report. Mr. Wilson: When you have endured an eight-day O-sesshin in a Zen monastery, sitting cross-legged and motionless for twelve hours a day and allowed only three and one-half hours of sleep each night until sleep and dream deprivation bring on a temporary psychosis (my own nondescript self); When you have attended four “rains retreats” at the Insight Buddhist Meditation Center in Barre, Massachusetts, for a total of one complete year of no reading, no writing, no speaking, and eyes always downcast (my wife); When you have almost died from the austerities you underwent before you attained enlightenment under a bo tree in India; When you have been crucified on Golgatha; When you have been thrown to lions in the Roman coliseum; When you have been in a concentration camp and held on to some measure of dignity through your faith; When you have given your life to providing a dignified death for homeless, destitute women gathered from the streets of Calcutta (Mother Teresa), or played out her counterpart with the poor in New York City (Dorothy Day); When, Mr. Wilson, you have undergone any one of these trials, it will then be time to talk about the ease of religion as compared with the ardors of empiricism.

In Hobbes’ state of nature, when a male individual conquers (contracts with) a female individual he becomes her sexual master and she becomes his servant. Rousseau’s conjectural history of the development of civil society tells how women must ‘tend the hut’, and in La Nouvelle Héloise Julie superintends the daily domestic business at Clarens. The story has been told again more recently – this time as science – by the sociobiologists. E. O. Wilson’s story of the genesis of the contemporary sexual division of labour in the earliest stages of human history is held to reveal that the division is a necessary part of human existence. The story begins with the fact that, like other large primates, human beings reproduce themselves slowly: Mothers carry fetuses for nine months and afterward are encumbered by infants and small children who require milk at frequent intervals through the day. It is to the advantage of each woman of the hunter– gatherer band to secure the allegiance of men who will contribute meat and hides while sharing the labor of child-rearing. It is to the reciprocal advantage of each man to obtain sexual rights to women and to monopolize their economic productivity.4 That is to say, science reveals that our social life is as if it were based on a sexual contract, which both establishes orderly access to women and a division of labour in which women are subordinate to men.

No one knows the number of bacterial species. About 5,000 species have been characterized and another 10,000 have been partially identified. Biodiversity authority Edward O. Wilson has estimated that biology has identified no more than 10 percent of all species and possibly as little as 1 percent. Wilson’s reasoning would put the total number of bacterial species at 100,000, probably a tenfold underestimate. Most environmental microbiologists believe that less than one-tenth of 1 percent of all bacteria can currently be grown in laboratories so that they can be identified. Microbial geneticist J.

Scientists should think like poets and work like accountants.

Agora, para retornar para minha freqüente ocupação de escrever ficção científica, imagine um mundo no qual o idioma alemão não contém a palavra "alles" ou qualquer um dos seus derivados, mas inclui alguma forma de sombunall (some-but-not-all). Adolph Hitler jamais teria sido capaz de proferir, ou mesmo pensar, a maioria das suas generalizações a respeito dos judeus. Ele poderia ter falado e pensado acerca da parte e não do todo deles. Não defendo que somente isso teria evitado o Holocausto: não estou prestes a oferecer uma forma de determinismo linguístico para competir com o determinismo econômico de Marx ou com o determinismo racial de Hitler, mas... As mentalidades do Holocausto são encorajadas por enunciados generalizantes. Elas são desencorajadas por enunciados específicos. Imagine Arthur Schopenhauer com um sombunall de palavras em vez de palavras generalizantes em seu vocabulário. Ainda assim, ele poderia ter feito generalizações acerca de sombunal mulheres, mas não de todas elas; e uma grande fonte de aversão literária para as mulheres teria desaparecido de nossa cultura. Imagine as feministas escrevendo a respeito de sombunall homens, mas não de todos eles. Imagine um debate referente a óvnis no qual os dois lados pudessem generalizar um sombunall de visões, mas não haveria nenhuma forma linguística para generalizá-las. Imagine o que aconteceria se, juntamente com essa higiene semântica, o "ser" aristotélico fosse substituído pelo neurologicamente mais preciso "parece-me".

Se insta a los adventistas a que estudien el tema de la ordenación por su cuenta Ted N. C. Wilson, presidente de la Iglesia Adventista, hizo un llamado a los miembros para que estudien la Biblia en relación con la teología de la ordenación, mientras la iglesia sigue examinando el tema en el Concilio Anual del mes próximo y en el Congreso de la Asociación General del año próximo. [fotografía de archivo de ANN] El presidente Wilson y Stele, presidente de la comisión de investigación, piden que oren para que el Espíritu Santo guíe las deliberaciones September 24, 2014 | Silver Spring (Maryland, EstadosUnidos) | Andrew McChesney/Adventist Review Ted N. C. Wilson, presidente de la Iglesia Adventista, hizo un llamado a los miembros de iglesia de todo el mundo para que lean con detenimiento lo que dice la Biblia sobre la ordenación de las mujeres y para que oren para que él y otros líderes de la iglesia sigan humildemente la conducción del Espíritu Santo respecto de ese tema. Los miembros de iglesia que desean comprender lo que enseña la Biblia sobre la ordenación de las mujeres no tienen razón de preocuparse por dónde empezar, dijo Artur A. Stele, quien coordinó un estudio sin precedentes de dos años sobre la ordenación de las mujeres, como presidente de la Comisión de Estudio sobre la Teología de la Ordenación establecida por la iglesia. Stele, quien se hizo eco del llamado de Wilson para que los miembros de iglesia lean la Biblia y oren sobre el tema, recomendó leer las tres breves declaraciones sobre el estado de la cuestión, que citan textos bíblicos y a Elena G. White, una de las fundadoras de la denominación, para apoyar cada una de las tres posiciones sobre la ordenación de las mujeres que surgieron durante la investigación de la comisión. Los resultados del estudio serán analizados en octubre próximo durante el Concilio Anual, uno de los principales encuentros de líderes de la iglesia. El Concilio Anual decidirá entonces si pedir o no a los casi 2600 delegados que voten sobre el tema en el Congreso de la Asociación General de julio del año próximo. Al hablar en una entrevista, Wilson instó a cada uno de los 18 millones de miembros de la iglesia a que lean con oración los materiales de estudio, disponibles en el sitio web de la Secretaría de Archivos, Estadísticas e Investigaciones de la iglesia. “Miren para ver de qué  manera los trabajos y presentaciones se basaron en la comprensión de una clara lectura de las Escrituras”, dijo Wilson en su oficina de la sede central de la Iglesia Adventista en Silver Spring (Maryland, Estados Unidos). “El espíritu de profecía nos dice que tenemos que leer la Biblia simplemente como fue escrita”, dijo. “Animo a cada miembro y, por cierto, a cada representante al Concilio Anual y a los que serán delegados al Congreso de la Asociación General, a que revisen con oración esas presentaciones y entonces pidan al Espíritu Santo que les ayude a conocer la voluntad de Dios”. El espíritu de profecía se refiere a los escritos de Elena G. White, quien entre sus declaraciones sobre cómo leer la Biblia, escribió en El conflicto de los siglos (p. 584): “El lenguaje de la Biblia debe explicarse de acuerdo con su significado manifiesto, a no ser que se trate de un símbolo o figura”. “No tenemos el lujo de tener el Urim y el Tumim”, dijo Wilson, al referirse a las piedras que usaba el sumo sacerdote en Israel durante la era del Antiguo Testamento para conocer la voluntad de Dios. “Tampoco tenemos con nosotros un profeta vivo. Por ello, debemos apoyarnos en la conducción del Espíritu Santo en nuestro propio estudio de la Biblia al revisar las simples enseñanzas de las Escrituras”. Wilson dijo que los líderes de la iglesia mundial se habían comprometido a “un muy abierto, justo y cuidadoso proceso” sobre el tema de la ordenación de las mujeres. El presidente añadió que la pregunta fundamental que enfrenta la iglesia

Recognized as a way to build and maintain a network of mutually beneficial relationships, nonreproductive sex no longer requires special explanations. Homosexuality, for example, becomes far less confusing, in that it is, as E. O. Wilson has written, “above all a form of bonding…consistent with the greater part of heterosexual behavior as a device that cements relationships.

Physicists and mathematicians are not the only ones who find unexpected connections between disparate fields. In his book Consilience, the distinguished biologist E. O. Wilson makes an impassioned argument for the unity of all knowledge, from science to the humanities.

He always woke early, had coffee, checked his e-mail and then decided whether to climb back into bed.

The renowned biologist and thinker E. O. Wilson calls the study of gene-culture coevolution “one of the great unexplored domains of science.

Sociobiology, E. O. Wilson

Among natural landscapes , however, we show the greatest preference for open spaces dotted with trees , with a little water nearby— picture the views from the high-rises that famously border Central Park in Manhattan; as the biologist E. O. Wilson puts it, “to see most clearly the manifestations of human instinct, it is useful to start with the rich.

Exclusion makes us suffer, inclusion makes us thrive.

Is the cosmos all there is, or was, or ever will be? Of course not. That idea is complete nonsense, and from a man who should have known better. The laws of nature give “no hint” of a divine plan or creator? How could Steven Weinberg have made an assertion as foolish as that? To the dogmatic atheist, it seems like science fiction, or a recurrent nightmare. But there’s no getting around the scientific fact. The finding of modern physics that the universe has a beginning in space and in time meets E. O. Wilson’s litmus test for one of the most important scientific discoveries ever made. It provides, for all who take the trouble to understand and reflect upon it, powerful and convincing evidence of the existence of an eternal, supernatural being that created our world and everything in it.

— Que sujeito mais idiota... quem cria uma enguia elétrica? — murmura Helmuth. — Será que foi preso? Bem, ele não fez de propósito, é um doido. Deve ter sido solto... Edgar Wilson permanece calado como se não ouvisse nada. Helmuth o chama pelo nome e o sacode. Percebe que Edgar está coberto de fibras, pelos e sangue. — Elas se ajoelham e choram — diz Edgar com a voz baixa, sonolento. — Do que você está falando? — As ovelhas. Elas te olham, se ajoelham e choram antes de morrer. Edgar Wilson dá uma longa tragada no cigarro. Enche os pulmões de fumaça e solta pelo nariz lentamente. — Quase não consegui. Tive que quebrar o pescoço de algumas primeiro, aí eu cobria os olhos delas e as degolava — conclui Edgar. — Você precisa de um banho — diz Helmuth.

and spirituality. I asked him if he agreed with E. O. Wilson, who has written that all of us must ultimately choose: either the path of science or the path of spirituality

Naturalist E. O. Wilson writes, “There can be no purpose more inspiring than to begin the age of restoration, reweaving the wondrous diversity of life that still surrounds us.” The stories are piling up all around in scraps of land being restored: trout streams reclaimed from siltation, brownfields turned into community gardens, prairies reclaimed from soybeans, wolves howling in their old territories, schoolkids helping salamanders across the road. If your heart isn’t raised by the sight of whooping cranes restored to their ancient flyway, you must not have a pulse.

[Biodiversity] is the assembly of life that took a billion years to evolve. It has eaten the storms – folded them into its genes – and created the world that created us. It holds the world steady. E.O. Wilson, The Diversity of Life

Meanwhile, the most frequent question I am casually asked about ants is, 'What do I do about the ones in my kitchen?' My answer is, Watch where you step, be careful of little lives, consider becoming an amateur myrmecologist, and contribute to their scientific study. Further, why should these wondrous little insects not visit your kitchen? They carry no disease, and may help eliminate other insects that do carry disease. You are a million times larger than each one. You could hold an entire colony in your cupped hands. You inspire fear in them; they should not in you. I recommend that you make use of your kitchen ants by feeding them and reflecting upon what you see, rather like an informal tour of a very foreign country. Place a few pieces of food the size of a thumbnail on the floor or sink. House ants are especially fond of honey, sugar water, chopped nuts, and canned tuna. A scout in close vicinity will soon find one of the baits and, to the degree the colony is hungry, run excitedly back to the nest. There will follow social behavior so alien to human experience that it might as well be on some other planet.

E. O. Wilson has summarized it in his book The Social Conquest of Earth, we exist with a bizarre combination of “Stone Age emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technology.

E. O. Wilson argues a case for accepting suicide, or rather the mind that can contemplate suicide, as ultimately a biological phenomenon from a philosophical stance at the beginning his book, Sociobiology: “Camus said that the only serious philosophical question is suicide. That is wrong even in the strict sense intended. The biologist, who is concerned with questions of physiology and evolutionary history, realizes that self-knowledge is constrained and shaped by the emotional control centers in the hypothalamus and limbic system of the brain. These centers flood our consciousness with all the emotions–hate, love, guilt, fear, and others–that are consulted by ethical philosophers who wish to intuit the standards of good and evil. What, then, made the hypothalamus and limbic system? They evolved by natural selection . That simple biological statement must be pursued to explain ethics and ethical philosophers, if not epistemology and epistemologists, at all depths. Self-existence, or the suicide that terminates it, is not the central question of philosophy. The hypothalamic-limbic complex automatically denies such logical reduction by countering it with feelings of guilt and altruism . In this one way the philosopher’s own emotional control centers are wiser than his solipsist consciousness , “knowing” that in evolutionary time the individual organism counts for almost nothing.

I think I may have been the only scientist in modern times to be physically attacked for an idea.

The essence of humanity’s spiritual dilemma is that we evolved genetically to accept one truth and discovered another. —E. O. Wilson I would gladly lay down my life for two brothers or eight cousins. —J. B. S. Haldane

Humans evolved in nature. Our sense of beauty evolved to attract us to environments in which our ancestors thrived, such as grasslands with trees and water, where herbivores are plentiful, or the ocean’s edge, with its rich marine resources. The great evolutionary biologist E.O. Wilson said that humans are ‘biophilic’, by which he meant that humans have ‘the urge to affiliate with other forms of life’. This is why people travel to wondrous natural destinations.