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Human beings function better if they are deceived by their genes into thinking that there is a disinterested objective morality binding upon them, which all should obey.
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
Humans
Objective
Thinking
Objectives
Morality
Function
Disinterested
Beings
Binding
Upon
Deceived
Better
Obey
Human
Genes
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People respect nonfiction but they read novels.
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We are not afraid of predators, we're transfixed by them, prone to weave stories and fables and chatter endlessly about them, because fascination creates preparedness, and preparedness, survival. In a deeply tribal way, we love our monsters.
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I was a senior in high school when I decided I wanted to work on ants as a career. I just fell in love with them, and have never regretted it.
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People yearn to be in one of the best--a combat marine regiment, an elite college, the executive committee of a company, a religious sect, a fraternity, a garden club--any collectivity that can be compared favorably with other, competing groups.
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In my heart, I'm an Alabaman who went up north to work.
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If history and science have taught us anything, it is that passion and desire are not the same as truth.
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Perhaps the time has come to cease calling it the 'environmentalist' view, as though it were a lobbying effort outside the mainstream of human activity, and to start calling it the real-world view.
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America in particular imposes an horrendous burden on the world. We have this wonderful standard of living but it comes at enormous cost.
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Companies that are willing to share, to withhold in order to further the growth of the company, willing to try to get a better atmosphere through a demonstration of democratic principles, fairness and cooperation, a better product, those will win in the end.
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If we lose half the species, which could happen by the end of the century if we don't do anything, that's going to create a big difference down the line in the stability and even the economic potential in the living world. Irreversibly.
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Thirty trillion dollars worth of services, scot-free to humanity, every year.
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Far more important throughout the rest of science is the ability to form concepts, during which the researcher conjures images and processes by intuition.
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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.
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For me, the peculiar qualities of faith are a logical outcome of this level of biological organization.
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The toxic mix of religion and tribalism has become so dangerous as to justify taking seriously the alternative view, that humanism based on science is the effective antidote, the light and the way at last placed before us.
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Overall, the human brain is the most complex object known in the universe - known, that is, to itself.
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It's always been a great survival value for people to believe they belong to a superior tribe. That's just in human relationships.
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There are millions and millions of species, including organisms most people have never heard of. There is so much that waits to be told. We don't know the functions of most of them, but they may be more vital for the planet's future sustainability than we can even dream. And we have to find out we need to be doing this sort of study.
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If enough species are extinguished, will the ecosystems collapse, and will the extinction of most other species follow soon afterward? The only answer anyone can give is: possibly. By the time we find out, however, it might be too late. One planet, one experiment.
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An Armageddon is approaching at the beginning of the third millennium. But it is not the cosmic war and fiery collapse of mankind foretold in sacred scripture. It is the wreckage of the planet by an exuberantly plentiful and ingenious humanity.
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