E. O. Wilson Quotes - Page 8

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• By any reasonable measure of achievement, the faith of the Enlightenment thinkers in science was justified. Today the greatest divide within humanity is not between races, or religions, or even, as is widely believed, between the literate and illiterate. It is the chasm that separates scientific from prescientific cultures.

  E. O. Wilson

  Race, Achievement, Humanity

  E. O. Wilson (2014). “Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge”, p.72, Vintage

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• The history of life on earth has been a history of interaction between living things and their surroundings.

  E. O. Wilson

  Earth, History Of Life, Surroundings

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• Every kid has a bug period... I never grew out of mine.

  E. O. Wilson

  Kids, Bugs, Grew

  "E.O. Wilson's Advice for Future Scientists". Interview with Ira Flatow, www.npr.org. June 21, 2013.

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• Yes, the natural sciences are telling us a great deal about human origins, the origins of our species the origins of our minds; we're on our way to explaining a large part of it. I'll accept an answer provided only by such means as obtaining and exploring, analyzing and arguing over the evidence - not because of a scribe's myopic view of the subject written 500 years before the birth of Christ!

  E. O. Wilson

  Mean, Views, Years

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• The evolutionary epic is ... the best myth we will ever have.

  E. O. Wilson

  Epic, Myth

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• Science offers the boldest metaphysics of the age. It is a thoroughly human construct, driven by the faith that if we dream, press to discover, explain, and dream again, thereby plunging repeatedly into new terrain, the world will somehow come clearer and we will grasp the true strangeness of the universe. And the strangeness will all prove to be connected, and make sense.

  E. O. Wilson

  Faith, Dream, Age

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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

  Play, Giving, Imagination

  "Letters to a Young Scientist". Book by E. O. Wilson, 2013.

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• Not all ants use violence to dominate their world, some use more subtle methods.

  E. O. Wilson

  Use, World, Ants

  "Bill Moyers Journal", www.pbs.org. July 6, 2007.

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• We don't even know what species are out there, for the most part, particularly when you get down to the microbes and very small invertebrates. They make up the mass of the organisms around us, including the soil we depend on, the soil of cornfields as well as hardwood forests. We haven't taken ecology to the point where we can even make a crude prediction of what's going to happen when we've reduced the living world down to a certain level.

  E. O. Wilson

  Taken, Levels, Soil

  Source: blog.cleveland.com

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• Somewhere close I knew spear-nosed bats flew through the tree crowns in search of fruit, palm vipers coiled in ambush in the roots of orchids, jaguars walked the river's edge; around them eight hundred species of trees stood, more than are native to all of North America; and a thousand species of butterflies, 6 percent of the entire world fauna, waited for the dawn.

  E. O. Wilson

  Butterfly, Eight, Orchids

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• The second half of the 20th century was a golden age of molecular biology, and it was one of the golden ages of the history of science. Molecular biology was so successful and made such a powerful alliance with the medical scientists that the two together just flourished. And they continue to flourish.

  E. O. Wilson

  Powerful, Successful, Age

  Source: www.businessinsider.com

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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.

  E. O. Wilson

  Destiny, Men, Illness

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• Hands-on experience at the critical time, not systematic knowledge, is what counts in the making of a naturalist. Better to be an untutored savage for a while, not to know the names or anatomical detail. Better to spend stretches of time just searching and dreaming.

  E. O. Wilson

  Dream, Hands, Names

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• The time has come to link ecology to economic and human development. When you have seen one ant, one bird, one tree, you have not seen them all. What is happening to the rain forests of Madagascar and Brazil will affect us all.

  E. O. Wilson

  Rain, Knowledge, Science

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• Of course, there is no reconciliation between the theory of evolution by natural selection and the traditional religious view of the origin of the human mind.

  E. O. Wilson

  Religious, Views, Theory Of Evolution

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• These slender little people (Homo Habilis), the size of modern 12 year olds, were devoid of fangs and claws and almost certainly slower on foot than the four legged animals around them. They could have succeeded in their new way of life only by relying on tools and sophisticated cooperative behavior

  E. O. Wilson

  Animal, Feet, Years

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• I believe that traditional religious belief and scientific knowledge depict the universe in radically different ways. At the bedrock they are incompatible and mutually exclusive.

  E. O. Wilson

  Religious, Believe, Different

  "The Fascinated God: What Science Says to Faith and Faith to Scientists". Book by Robert E. Zinser, 2003.

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• The variety of genes on the planet in viruses exceeds, or is likely to exceed, that in all of the rest of life combined.

  E. O. Wilson

  Rest Of Life, Viruses, Genes

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• Wonderful theory, wrong species.

  E. O. Wilson

  Ants, Wonderful, Theory

  "The Ant King's Latest Mission". www.theguardian.com. October 01, 2006.

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• In my heart, I'm an Alabaman who went up north to work.

  E. O. Wilson

  Heart, Up North, My Heart

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• The green prehuman earth is the mystery we were chosen to solve, a guide to the birthplace of our spirit, but it is slipping away. The way back seems harder every year. 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. And thus humanity closes the door on its past.

  E. O. Wilson

  Beautiful, Men, Past

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• In addition I wanted to write a Southern novel, because I'm a Southerner.

  E. O. Wilson

  Writing, Southern, Novel

  "EO Wilson: Our Greatest Biologist Writes A Novel, ‘Anthill’". Interview with Steve Ross, www.huffingtonpost.com. June 5, 2010.

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• 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

  Two, Harvard, Theory

  "Wilson says selfish people, altruistic groups win: interview". Bloomberg News Interview, www.dailyherald.com. April 17, 2012.

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• Character is in turn the enduring source of virtue. It stands by itself and excites admiration in others. It is not obedience to authority, and while it is often consistent with and reinforced by religious belief, it is not piety.

  E. O. Wilson

  Religious, Character, Atheism

  E. O. Wilson (2014). “Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge”, p.365, Vintage

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• Much of good science and perhaps all of great science has its roots in fantasy.

  E. O. Wilson

  Roots, Fantasy, Great Science

  "Letters to a Young Scientist". Book by E. O. Wilson, 2013.

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