Quotes from Edward O. Wilson

In Hebei Province, in the heart of China's northern grain belt, the average water level in the deep aquifer is dropping nearly three meters a year. Underground

Where scientific observation addresses all phenomena existing in the real world, scientific experimentation addresses all possible real worlds, and scientific theory addresses all conceivable real worlds, the humanities encompass all three of these levels and one more, the infinity of all fantasy worlds.

Within groups selfish individuals beat altruistic individuals, but groups of altruists beat groups of selfish individuals. Or, risking oversimplification, individual selection promoted sin, while group selection promoted virtue.

The early stages of a creative thought, the ones that count, do not arise from jigsaw puzzles of specialization. The most successful scientist thinks like a poet—wide-ranging, sometimes fantastical—and works like a bookkeeper. It is the latter role that the world sees.

HISTORY MAKES LITTLE SENSE WITHOUT PREHISTORY, AND PREHISTORY MAKES LITTLE SENSE WITHOUT BIOLOGY. KNOWLEDGE OF PREHISTORY AND BIOLOGY IS INCREASING RAPIDLY, BRINGING INTO FOCUS HOW HUMANITY ORIGINATED AND WHY A SPECIES LIKE OUR OWN EXISTS ON THIS PLANET.

An estimated hundred billion star systems make up the Milky Way galaxy, and astronomers believe that all are orbited by an average of at least one planet.

So what could the hypothetical aliens learn from us that has any value to them? The correct answer is the humanities.

People must have a tribe. It gives them a name in addition to their own and social meaning in a chaotic world. It makes the environment less disorienting and dangerous. The social world of each modern human is not a single tribe, but rather a system of interlocking tribes, among which it is often difficult to find a single

Earth relates to the Universe as the second segment of the left antenna of an aphid sitting on a flower petal in a garden in Teaneck, New Jersey, for a few hours this afternoon.

the broad definition of "epigenetic" used by the U.S. National Institutes of Health as "changes in the regulation of gene activity and expression that are not dependent on gene sequence," including "both heritable changes in gene activity and expression (in the progeny of cells or individuals) and also stable, long-term alterations in the transcriptional potential of a cell that are not necessarily heritable.

Writers of Earth-invader science fiction, please remember to provide all your aliens with soft grasping hands or tentacles or some other fleshy fat appendages.)

an iron rule exists in genetic social evolution. It is that selfish individuals beat altruistic individuals, while groups of altruists beat groups of selfish individuals.

The idea and its supporting logic came in pieces

Genius is the summed production of the many with the names of the few attached for easy recall, unfairly so to other scientists.

Religious believers today, as in ancient times, are not as a rule much interested in theology, and not at all in the evolutionary steps that led to the present-day world religions. They are concerned instead with religious faith and the benefits it provides. The creation myths explain all they need to know of deep history in order to maintain tribal unity. In

Would the humanities care to colonize the sciences?

The unknown and prodigious are drugs to the scientific imagination, stirring insatiable hunger with a single taste.

A spider spinning its web intends, whether conscious of the outcome or not, to catch a fly. That is the meaning of the web.

States, the final step up in the cultural evolution of societies, have a centralized authority.

With all its quirks, irrationality, and risky productions, and all its conflict and inefficiency, the biological mind is the essence and the very meaning of the human condition.

The ultimate explanation is why we have two hands and ten fingers to start with, and why are we prone with them to do thus and so and not something else.

Los seres humanos y sus órdenes sociales son intrínsecamente imperfectos, por suerte. En un mundo en constante cambio, necesitamos la flexibilidad que solo la imperfección proporciona.

more efficient than vegetable food.

The longing for odysseys and faraway adventure is in our genes.