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Edward O. Wilson Quotes
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Edward Osborne Wilson , usually cited as E. O. Wilson, is an American biologist, naturalist, and writer. His biological specialty is myrmecology, the study of ants, on which he has been called the world's leading expert.Wilson has been called "the father of sociobiology" and "the father of biodiversity" for his environmental advocacy, and his secular-humanist and deist ideas pertaining to religious and ethical matters. Among his greatest contributions to ecological theory is the theory of island biogeography, which he developed in collaboration with the mathematical ecologist Robert MacArthur. This theory served as the foundation of the field of conservation area design, as well as the unified neutral theory of biodiversity of Stephen Hubbell.

Wilson is the Pellegrino University Research Professor, Emeritus in Entomology for the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University, a lecturer at Duke University, and a Fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. He is a Humanist Laureate of the International Academy of Humanism. He is a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction and a New York Times bestselling author for The Social Conquest of Earth, Letters to a Young Scientist, and The Meaning of Human Existence. Wikipedia  

✵ 10. June 1929
Edward O. Wilson photo
Edward O. Wilson: 83   quotes 8   likes

Edward O. Wilson Quotes

“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

Game

“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

Pain , Pleasure

“Old beliefs die hard even when demonstrably false.”

Edward O. Wilson

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

Falseness

“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)

God

“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

World , Game , Heart , Animals

“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

Life

“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.

Failure

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

Edward O. Wilson

Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge (1998)

History

“A schema is a configuration within the brain, either inborn or learned, against which the input of the nerve cells is compared. …the conscious mind …can fill in details that are missing from the actual sensory input and create a pattern in the mind which is not necessarily present in reality. In this way, the gestalt of objects—the impression…—is aided by the taxonomic powers of the schemata.”

Edward O. Wilson book On Human Nature

On Human Nature (1978), Ch.4 Emergence

Way , Reality , Learning

“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.”

Edward O. Wilson book On Human Nature

On Human Nature (1978), Ch.4 Emergence

Behavior , Change

“If we choose the path of destruction, the planet will continue to descend irreversibly into the Anthropocene Epoch, the biologically final age in which the planet exists almost exclusively by, for, and of ourselves.”

Edward O. Wilson

Half-Earth: Our Planet's Fight for Life (2016)

Age