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E. O. Wilson

79 quotes

“The race to make discoveries of the greatest generality, to solve the major problems in the 'mainstream of biology,' does not strike me as the best research strategy to teach to students. It results in an implosive convergence of effort on a few subjects, in a sharp decline in the number of discoveries per man per unit time, and in frustration on the part of young scientists who realize too late that their own professors have picked up the best pebbles on the beach.”
E. O. Wilson (1929–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This planet can be a paradise in the 22nd century.”
E. O. Wilson (1929–2021) first seen 2007 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Statement quoted at the "TED Prize" website, which he won in 2007
“My definition of a scientist is that you can complete the following sentence: ‘he or she has shown that…’,”
E. O. Wilson (1929–2021) first seen 2014 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Why Richard Dawkins 'is not a scientist', the survival of the least selfish, and what ants tell us about humans - EO Wilson on his new book Independent, 10 November 2014
“Wonderful theory, wrong species. (On Marxism, which he considered more suited to ants than to humans.)”
E. O. Wilson (1929–2021) first seen 2007 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quoted in Quotations for our times: 75 sayings for the modern world Independent, 23 August 2007, citing The Oxford Dictionary of Modern Quotations
“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.”
E. O. Wilson (1929–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The pattern of human population growth in the 20th century was more bacterial than primate. When Homo sapiens passed the six billion mark we had already exceeded by perhaps as much as 100 times the biomass of any large animal species that had ever existed on the land. We and the rest of life cannot afford another 100 years like that.”
E. O. Wilson (1929–2021) first seen 2012 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: quoted in Life on the Brink: Environmentalists Confront Overpopulation. University of Georgia Press (2012), p. 83
“We have stone age emotions, medieval institutions and god-like technology.”
E. O. Wilson (1929–2021) first seen 2011 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: attributed to 2011 commencement address at the University of North Carolina in
“In the process of natural selection, then. any device that can insert a higher proportion of certain genes into subsequent generations will come to characterize the species.”
E. O. Wilson (1929–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Samuel Butler's famous aphorism that the chicken is only an egg's way of making another egg has been modernized: the organism is only DNA's way of making more DNA.”
E. O. Wilson (1929–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The key to the sociobiology of mammals is milk.”
E. O. Wilson (1929–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Scientists and humanists should consider together the possibility that the time has come for ethics to be removed temporarily from the hands of philosophers and biologized.”
E. O. Wilson (1929–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The evolutionary epic is probably the best myth we will ever have.”
E. O. Wilson (1929–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“God remains a viable hypothesis as the prime mover, however undefinable and untestable that conception may be.”
E. O. Wilson (1929–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We are not compelled to believe in biological uniformity in order to affirm human freedom and dignity.”
E. O. Wilson (1929–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The genius of human society is in fact the ease with which alliances are formed, broken, and reconstituted, always with strong emotional appeals to rules believed to be absolute.”
E. O. Wilson (1929–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Genetic determinism... On its interpretation depends the entire relation between biology and the social sciences.”
E. O. Wilson (1929–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The mosquito is an automaton. It can afford to be nothing else.”
E. O. Wilson (1929–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The channels of human mental development... are circuitous and variable. Rather than specify a single trait, human genes prescribe the capacity to develop a certain array of traits.”
E. O. Wilson (1929–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The borderline between normal and schizophrenic people is broad and nearly imperceptible.”
E. O. Wilson (1929–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The three extreme kinds of schizophrenia are unmistakable: the haunted paranoid surrounded by his imaginary community of spies and assassins, the clownish, sometimes incontinent hebephrenic, and the frozen catatonic.”
E. O. Wilson (1929–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Although the capacity to become schizophrenic may well be within all of us, there is no question that certain persons have distinctive genes predisposing them to the condition.”
E. O. Wilson (1929–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Evidence has... been adduced that schizophrenia is widespread in other kinds of human societies. ...and they form a substantial fraction of the clientele of the tribal shamans and healers.”
E. O. Wilson (1929–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is no such thing as a typically "schizophrenogenic" (schizophrenia-producing) family arrangement, one most likely to produce a mentally ill adult from a child with the potential for the disease.”
E. O. Wilson (1929–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The central idea of the philosophy of behaviorism, that behavior and the mind have an entirely materialist basis subject to experimental analysis, is fundamentally sound.”
E. O. Wilson (1929–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Piaget, who was originally trained as a biologist, views intellectual development as an interaction of an inherited genetic program with the environment. It is no coincidence that he calls this conception "genetic epistemology," in effect the study of the hereditary unfolding of understanding.”
E. O. Wilson (1929–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The rules followed are tight enough to produce a broad overlap in the decisions taken by all individuals and hence a convergence powerful enough to be labelled human nature.”
E. O. Wilson (1929–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Because the brain can be guided by rational calculation only in a limited degree, it must fall back on the nuances of pleasure and pain mediated by the limbic system and other lower centers of the brain.”
E. O. Wilson (1929–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We can search among the unconscious, emotion-laden learning rules for the kind of behavior most directly influenced by genetic evolution.”
E. O. Wilson (1929–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In early history phobias might have provided the extra margin needed to insure survival...”
E. O. Wilson (1929–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The incest taboo is another major category of primed learning.”
E. O. Wilson (1929–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We seem to be able to be fully comfortable only when the remainder of humanity can be labeled as members versus nonmembers.”
E. O. Wilson (1929–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Because of mathematical indeterminancy and the uncertainty principle, it may be a law of nature that no nervous system is capable of acquiring enough knowledge to significantly predict the future of any other intelligent system in detail. Nor can intelligent minds gain enough self-knowledge to know their own future, capture fate, and in this sense eliminate free will.”
E. O. Wilson (1929–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The cardinal mystery of neurobiology is not self-love or dreams of immortality but intentionality. What is the prime mover, the weaver who guides the flashing shuttles?”
E. O. Wilson (1929–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A schema is a configuration within the brain, either inborn or learned, against which the input of the nerve cells is compared. ...the conscious mind ...can fill in details that are missing from the actual sensory input and create a pattern in the mind which is not necessarily present in reality. In this way, the gestalt of objects—the impression...—is aided by the taxonomic powers of the schemata.”
E. O. Wilson (1929–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Cultural change is the statistical product of the separate behavioral responses of large numbers of human beings who cope as best they can with social existence.”
E. O. Wilson (1929–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Cultural evolution is Lamarckian and very fast, whereas biological evolution is Darwinian and usually very slow.”
E. O. Wilson (1929–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Because it is... far slower than Lamarckian evolution, biological evolution is always quickly outrun by cultural change.”
E. O. Wilson (1929–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Intertribal aggression, escalating in some cultures to limited warfare, is common enough to be regarded as a general characteristic of hunter-gatherer social behavior.”
E. O. Wilson (1929–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The only other mammalian carnivores that take outsized prey are lions, hyenas, wolves, and African wild dogs. Each... has an exceptionally advanced social life, prominently featuring the pursuit of prey in coordinated packs.”
E. O. Wilson (1929–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Primitive men are ecological analogs of lions, wolves, and hyenas... they have adopted pack hunting in the pursuit of big game. ...habitually slaughtering surplus prey, storing food, feeding solid food to their young, dividing labor, practicing cannibalism, and interacting aggressively with competing species. ...this way of life persisted for millions of years or longer and was abandoned in most societies only during the last few thousand years.”
E. O. Wilson (1929–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The selection pressures of hunter-gatherer existence have persisted for over 99 percent of human evolution.”
E. O. Wilson (1929–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The increase in brain size and refinement of stone artifacts point to an unbroken advance in mental ability over the last two or three million years. ...No organ in the history of life has grown faster.”
E. O. Wilson (1929–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The theory of population genetics and experiments on other organisms show that substantial changes can occur in the span of less than 100 generations, which for man reaches back to the time of the Roman Empire.”
E. O. Wilson (1929–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The emergence of civilization has everywhere followed a definable sequence.”
E. O. Wilson (1929–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“At the apogee of the state's evolution, architecture was monumental, and the ruling class were exalted as a pseudospecies. The sacred rites of statehood became the central focus of religion.”
E. O. Wilson (1929–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Nationalism and racism, to take two examples, are the culturally nurtured outgrowths of simple tribalism.”
E. O. Wilson (1929–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Daily life is a compromised blend of posturing for the sake of role-playing and of varying degrees of self-revelation. Under stressful conditions even the "true" self cannot be precisely defined, as Erving Goffman observes. ...Little wonder that the identity crisis is a major source of modern neuroticism, and that the urban middle class aches for a return to a simpler existence.”
E. O. Wilson (1929–2021) first seen 1974 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Wilson cites Goffman's Frame Analysis (1974) as a reference here.
“Early human beings... filled a special ecological niche: they were carnivorous primates of the African plains. ...When agriculture permitted the increase of population density, game was no longer abundant... carnivorism remained a basic dietary impulse, with cultural aftereffects that varied according to the special conditions of the environment in which the society evolved.”
E. O. Wilson (1929–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Ancient Mexico, like most forest-invested New World tropics, was deficient in the kind of large game that flourished on the plains of Africa and Asia. ...The situation was partially relieved by cannibalizing the victims of human sacrifice. ...The [ Aztec ] priesthood... sanctified it... immediately after their hearts had been cut out, the victims were systematically butchered like animals and their parts distributed and eaten.”
E. O. Wilson (1929–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I interpret contemporary human social behavior to comprise hypertrophic outgrowths of the simpler features of human nature joined together into an irregular mosaic.”
E. O. Wilson (1929–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source