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In science, obsessiveness under psychological control can be a virtue.

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
Psychological
Control
Virtue
Science

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I had reached a point in my career in which I was ready to try something new in my writing, and the idea of a novel has always been in the back of my mind.
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One thing I did was grow up as an ardent naturalist. I never grew out of my bug period.
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In addition I wanted to write a Southern novel, because I'm a Southerner.
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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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The cost of scientific advance is the humbling recognition that reality was not constructed to be easily grasped by the human mind. This is the cardinal tenet of scientific understanding. Our species and its ways of thinking are a product of evolution, not the purpose of evolution.
E. O. Wilson
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Evolution by natural selection is not an idle hypothesis. The genetic variation on which selection acts is well understood in principle all the way down to the molecular level.
E. O. Wilson
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It's always been a dream of mine, of exploring the living world, of classifying all the species and finding out what makes up the biosphere.
E. O. Wilson
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The essence of humanity's spiritual dilemma is that we evolved genetically to accept one truth and discovered another. Is there a way to erase the dilemma, to resolve the contradictions between the transcendentalist and the empiricist world views?
E. O. Wilson
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[T]he true natural sciences lock together in theory and evidence to form the ineradicable technical base of modern civilization. The pseudosciences satisfy personal psychological needs... but lack the ideas or the means to contribute to the technical base.
E. O. Wilson
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The search for knowledge is in our genes. It was put there by our distant ancestors who spread across the world, and it's never going to be quenched.
E. O. Wilson
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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.
E. O. Wilson
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Only in the last moment in history has the delusion arisen that people can flourish apart from the rest of the living world.
E. O. Wilson
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I would say that for the sake of human progress, the best thing we could possibly do would be to diminish, to the point of eliminating, religious faiths. But certainly not eliminating the natural yearnings of our species or the asking of these great questions.
E. O. Wilson
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In science, you really do need to have a purpose-driven life. You will succeed to the extent that you get the most out of your career so that you can give the most back. Try to be an addict, driven to achieve discoveries, learning new things, and then writing about them.
E. O. Wilson
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The human mind evolved to believe in the gods. It did not evolve to believe in biology.
E. O. Wilson
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Theology made no provision for evolution. The biblical authors had missed the most important revelation of all! Could it be that they were not really privy to the thoughts of God?
E. O. Wilson
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We've got paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and god-like technologies.
E. O. Wilson
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Humanity is part of nature, a species that evolved among other species. The more closely we identify ourselves with the rest of life, the more quickly we will be able to discover the sources of human sensibility and acquire the knowledge on which an enduring ethic, a sense of preferred direction, can be built.
E. O. Wilson
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No statistical proofs exist that prayer reduces illness and mortality, except perhaps through a psychogenic enhancement of the immune system if it were otherwise the whole world would pray continuously.
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