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.
Edward O. WilsonTags: manners politeness rudeness arrogance etiquette good-manners bad-attitude ill-mannered-scientists impoliteness politesse poor-manners self-regard tone-of-voice
Destroying forest for economic gain is like burning a Renaissance painting to cook a meal.
Edward O. WilsonHumanity today is like a waking dreamer, caught between the fantasies of sleep and the chaos of the real world. The mind seeks but cannot find the precise place and hour. We have created a Star Wars civilization, with Stone Age emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technology. We thrash about. We are terribly confused by the mere fact of our existence, and a danger to ourselves and to the rest of life.
Edward O. WilsonYou teach me, I forget. You show me, I remember. You involve me, I understand.
Edward O. WilsonTags: learning understanding memory teaching involvement
The human mind is a product of the Pleistocene age, shaped by wildness that has all but disappeared. If we complete the destruction of nature, we will have succeeded in cutting ourselves off from the source of sanity itself. Hermetically sealed amidst our creations and bereft of those of the
Creation, the world then will reflect only the demented image of the mind imprisoned within itself. Can the mind doting on itself and its creations be sane?
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.
Edward O. WilsonSometimes a concept is baffling not because it is profound but because it is wrong.
Edward O. Wilson[Scientific humanism is] the only worldview compatible with science's growing knowledge of the real world and the laws of nature.
Edward O. WilsonTags: science knowledge nature understanding humanism
The predisposition to religious belief is an ineradicable part of human behavior. Mankind has produced 100,000 religions. It is an illusion to think that scientific humanism and learning will dispel religious belief. Men would rather believe than know... A kind of Darwinistic survival of the fittest has occurred with religions... The ecological principle called Gause's law holds that competition is maximal between species with identical needs... Even submission to secular religions such as Communism and guru cults involve willing subordination of the individual to the group. Religious practices confer biological advantage. The mechanisms of religion include (1) objectification (the reduction of reality to images and definitions that are easily understood and cannot be refuted), (2) commitment through faith (a kind of tribalism enacted through self-surrender), (3) and myth (the narratives that explain the tribe's favored position on the earth, often incorporating supernatural forces struggling for control, apocalypse, and millennium).
Edward O. WilsonTags: science belief humanism myth evolution beliefs myths gause-s-law georgii-frantsevich-gause georgii-guase georgy-gause guase
[E]very major religion today is a winner in the Darwinian struggle waged among cultures, and none ever flourished by tolerating its rivals.
Edward O. WilsonTags: struggle evolution tolerance natural-selection
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