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The love of complexity without reductionism makes art the love of complexity with reductionism makes science.

E. O. Wilson

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E. O. Wilson
Age: 95
Born: 1929
Born: June 10
Autobiographer
Biologist
Ecologist
Entomologist
Ethologist
Evolutionary Biologist
Myrmecologist
Naturalist
Novelist
Science Writer
Birmingham
Alabama
E. O. Wilson
Edward Osborne
EO Wilson
E O Wilson
Edward Osborne Wilson
Wilson
Edward Wilson
Junior
Makes
Art
Without
Love
Reductionism
Complexity
Science

More quotes by E. O. Wilson

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[W]hen the martyr's righteous forebrain is exploded by the executioner's bullet and his mind disintegrates, what then? Can we safely assume that all those millions of neural circuits will be reconstituted in an immaterial state, so the conscious mind carries on?
E. O. Wilson
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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
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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
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I turned to the teeming small creatures that can be held between the thumb and forefinger: the little things that compose the foundation of our ecosystems, the little things, as I like to say, who run the world.
E. O. Wilson
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Wonderful theory, wrong species.
E. O. Wilson
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The human juggernaut is permanently eroding Earth's ancient biosphere.
E. O. Wilson
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When you have seen one ant, one bird, one tree, you have not seen them all.
E. O. Wilson
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The evolutionary epic is ... the best myth we will ever have.
E. O. Wilson
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The one process now going on that will take millions of years to correct is the loss of genetic and species diversity by the destruction of natural habitats. This is the folly our descendants are least likely to forgive us.
E. O. Wilson
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So in my freshman year at the University of Alabama, learning the literature on evolution, what was known about it biologically, just gradually transformed me by taking me out of literalism and increasingly into a more secular, scientific view of the world.
E. O. Wilson
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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
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Mating Strategy is influenced by the cardinal fact that women have more at stake in sexual activity than men, because of the limited age span in which they can reproduce and the heavy investment required of them with each child conceived. In courtship women consistently emphasize commitment of resources and material security.
E. O. Wilson
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In science, obsessiveness under psychological control can be a virtue.
E. O. Wilson
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Once I feel I'm right, I have enjoyed provoking.
E. O. Wilson
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So, the ant way of life is very ancient and very successful. As far as human beings are concerned, we've been around for only one million years--too soon be sure.
E. O. Wilson
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Science is not marginal. Like art, it is a universal possession of humanity, and scientific knowledge has become a vital part of our species' repertory. It comprises what we know of the material world with reasonable certainty. . . . Thanks to science and technology, access to factual information of all kinds is rising exponentially.
E. O. Wilson
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Sstudying ants just quickly became part of me because I was allowed to wander, explore and find things and figure things out myself. And I saw how much was there and what could be done and how I could make a life of it.
E. O. Wilson
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Even as empiricism is winning the mind, transcendentalism continues to win the heart.
E. O. Wilson
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Destroying a tropical rainforest for profit is like burning all the paintings of the Louvre to cook dinner.
E. O. Wilson
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The price of these failures has been a loss of moral consensus, a greater sense of helplessness about the human condition. ... The intellectual solution to the first dilemma can be achieved by a deeper and more courageous examination of human nature that combines the findings of biology with those of the social sciences.
E. O. Wilson