Edward O. Wilson: Trending quotes

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Edward O. Wilson: 166 quotes9 likes

“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.”

Edward O. Wilson book On Human Nature

On Human Nature (1978), Ch.3 Development

“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.”

Edward O. Wilson book On Human Nature

On Human Nature (1978), Ch.4 Emergence

“The selection pressures of hunter-gatherer existence have persisted for over 99 percent of human evolution.”

Edward O. Wilson book On Human Nature

On Human Nature (1978), Ch.4 Emergence

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

Edward O. Wilson

Source: Letters to a Young Scientist (2013), chapter 5, "The Creative Process", page 74.

“The only other mammalian carnivores that take outsized prey are lions, hyenas, wolves, and African wild dogs. Each… has an exceptionally advanced social life, prominently featuring the pursuit of prey in coordinated packs.”

Edward O. Wilson book On Human Nature

On Human Nature (1978), Ch.4 Emergence

“The cardinal mystery of neurobiology is not self-love or dreams of immortality but intentionality. What is the prime mover, the weaver who guides the flashing shuttles?”

Edward O. Wilson book On Human Nature

On Human Nature (1978), Ch.4 Emergence

“In early history phobias might have provided the extra margin needed to insure survival…”

Edward O. Wilson book On Human Nature

On Human Nature (1978), Ch.3 Development

“Self-knowledge will reveal the elements of biological human nature from which modern social life proliferated in all its strange forms.”

Edward O. Wilson book On Human Nature

On Human Nature (1978), Ch.4 Emergence

“Early human beings… filled a special ecological niche: they were carnivorous primates of the African plains. …When agriculture permitted the increase of population density, game was no longer abundant… carnivorism remained a basic dietary impulse, with cultural aftereffects that varied according to the special conditions of the environment in which the society evolved.”

Edward O. Wilson book On Human Nature

On Human Nature (1978), Ch.4 Emergence

“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.”

Edward O. Wilson book On Human Nature

On Human Nature (1978), Ch.3 Development

“Old beliefs die hard even when demonstrably false.”

Edward O. Wilson

Source: Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge (1998), p. 256.

“The rules followed are tight enough to produce a broad overlap in the decisions taken by all individuals and hence a convergence powerful enough to be labelled human nature.”

Edward O. Wilson book On Human Nature

On Human Nature (1978), Ch.3 Development

“God remains a viable hypothesis as the prime mover, however undefinable and untestable that conception may be.”

Edward O. Wilson book On Human Nature

On Human Nature (1978)

“Ancient Mexico, like most forest-invested New World tropics, was deficient in the kind of large game that flourished on the plains of Africa and Asia. …The situation was partially relieved by cannibalizing the victims of human sacrifice. …The [ Aztec ] priesthood… sanctified it… immediately after their hearts had been cut out, the victims were systematically butchered like animals and their parts distributed and eaten.”

Edward O. Wilson book On Human Nature

On Human Nature (1978), Ch.4 Emergence

“Daily life is a comprimised blend of posturing for the sake of role-playing and of varying degrees of self-revelation. Under stressful conditions even the "true" self cannot be precisely defined, as Erving Goffman observes. …Little wonder that the identity crisis is a major source of modern neuroticism, and that the urban middle class aches for a return to a simpler existence.”

Edward O. Wilson book On Human Nature

Wilson cites Goffman's Frame Analysis (1974) as a reference here.
On Human Nature (1978), Ch.4 Emergence

“Primitive men are ecological analogs of lions, wolves, and hyenas… they have adopted pack hunting in the pursuit of big game. …habitually slaughtering surplus prey, storing food, feeding solid food to their young, dividing labor, practicing cannibalism, and interacting aggressively with competing species. …this way of life persisted for millions of years or longer and was abandoned in most societies only during the last few thousand years.”

Edward O. Wilson book On Human Nature

On Human Nature (1978), Ch.4 Emergence

“Evidence has… been adduced that schizophrenia is widespread in other kinds of human societies. …and they form a substantial fraction of the clientele of the tribal shamans and healers.”

Edward O. Wilson book On Human Nature

On Human Nature (1978), Ch.3 Development

“Be prepared mentally for some amount of chaos and failure. Waste and frustration often attend the earliest stages.”

Edward O. Wilson

Source: Letters to a Young Scientist (2013), chapter 5, "The Creative Process", page 69.

“Nothing fundamental separates the course of human history from the course of physical history.”

Edward O. Wilson

Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge (1998)

“Will we solve the crises of next hundred years? asked Krulwich. “Yes, if we are honest and smart,” said Wilson. “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.” Until we understand ourselves, concluded the Pulitzer-prize winning author of On Human Nature, “until we answer those huge questions of philosophy that the philosophers abandoned a couple of generations ago—Where do we come from? Who are we? Where are we going?—rationally,” we’re on very thin ground.”

Edward O. Wilson

Quoted in Harvard Magazine http://harvardmagazine.com/breaking-news/james-watson-edward-o-wilson-intellectual-entente from a public discussion between Wilson and James Watson moderated by NPR correspondent Robert Krulwich, September 9, 2009.