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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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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
Well
Principle
Way
Evolution
Molecular
Understood
Genetic
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Variation
Levels
Hypothesis
Principles
Selection
Natural
Idle
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Acts
More quotes by E. O. Wilson
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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I see no way out of the problems that organized religion and tribalism create other than humans just becoming more honest and fully aware of themselves.
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Of course, there is no reconciliation between the theory of evolution by natural selection and the traditional religious view of the origin of the human mind.
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Jungles and grasslands are the logical destinations, and towns and farmland the labyrinths that people have imposed between them sometime in the past. I cherish the green enclaves accidentally left behind.
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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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In science, obsessiveness under psychological control can be a virtue.
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Each of these [bacterial] species are masterpieces of evolution. Each has persisted for thousands to millions of years. Each is exquisitely adapted to the environment in which it lives, interlocked with other species to form ecosystems upon which our own lives depend in ways we have not begun even to imagine.
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If everyone agreed to become vegetarian, leaving little or nothing for livestock, the present 1.4 billion hectares of arable land (3.5 billion acres) would support about 10 billion people.
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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.
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We exist in a bizarre combination of Stone Age emotions, medieval beliefs, and god-like technology.
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You teach me, I forget. You show me, I remember. You involve me, I understand.
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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
We are compelled to drive toward total knowledge, right down to the levels of the neuron and the gene. When we have progressed enough to explain ourselves in these mechanistic terms...the result might be hard to accept.
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The human mind evolved to believe in the gods. It did not evolve to believe in biology.
E. O. Wilson
And pigs may fly. And we may be able to terraform and send surface populations to Mars. And Jesus may come next week anyway, so it doesn't matter one way or the other. All these crazy things run through people's minds.
E. O. Wilson
Well, let me tell you, ants are the dominant insects. They make up as much as a quarter of the biomass of all insects in the world. They are the principal predators. They're the cemetery workers.
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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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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.
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We've got paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and god-like technologies.
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In the end ... success or failure will come down to an ethical decision, one on which those now living will be judged for generations to come.
E. O. Wilson
