E. O. Wilson Quotes

146 Sourced Quotes

The ideal scientist thinks like a poet and only later works like a bookkeeper.

E. O. Wilson
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
God remains a viable hypothesis as the prime mover, however undefinable and untestable that conception may be.

E. O. Wilson
The essence of humanity's spiritual dilemma is that we evolved genetically to accept one truth and discovered another.

E. O. Wilson
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
Are human beings innately aggressive?... The answer to it is yes.... Only by redefining the words "innateness" and "aggression" to the point of uselessness might we correctly say that human aggressiveness is not innate.

E. O. Wilson
By any reasonable measure of achievement, the faith of the Enlightenment thinkers in science was justified.

E. O. Wilson
True spite is a commonplace in human societies, undoubtedly because human beings are keenly aware of their own blood lines and have the intelligence to plot intrigue. Human beings are unique in the degree of their capacity to lie to other members of their own species.

E. O. Wilson
The cutting of primeval forest and other disasters, fueled by the demands of growing human populations, are the overriding threat to biological diversity everywhere.

E. O. Wilson
It may be argued that to know one kind of beetle is to know them all. But a species is not like a molecule in a cloud of molecules — it is a unique population.

E. O. Wilson
We can search among the unconscious, emotion-laden learning rules for the kind of behavior most directly influenced by genetic evolution.

E. O. Wilson
Marxism is sociobiology without biology…Although Marxism was formulated as the enemy of ignorance and superstition, to the extent that it has become dogmatic it has faltered in that commitment and is now mortally threatened by the discoveries of human sociobiology.

E. O. Wilson
[Biology has] become the paramount science, exceeding other disciplines, including physics and chemistry at least, in the creative tumult of its disciplines and disputations. [...] I'll also be so bold at this point to suggest that we are now at the edge of establishing the two fundamental laws of biology: The first law is that all of the phenomena of biology, the entities and the processes, are ultimately obedient to the laws of physics and chemistry. Not immediately reducible to them, but ultimately consistent and in consilience with them, by a cause and effect explanation. The second law is that all biological phenomena, these entities and processes that define life itself, have arisen by evolution through natural selection.

E. O. Wilson
Much of good science — and perhaps all of great science — has its roots in fantasy.

E. O. Wilson
Stable climates with muted seasons allow more kinds of organisms to specialize on narrower pieces of the environment, to outcompete the generalists around them, and so persist for longer periods of time. Species are packed more tightly. No niche, it seems goes unfilled. Specialization is likely to be pushed to bizarre, beautiful extremes.

E. O. Wilson
We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom. The world henceforth will be run by synthesizers, people able to put together the right information at the right time, think critically about it, and make important choices wisely.

E. O. Wilson
The incest taboo is another major category of primed learning.

E. O. Wilson
To search for unasked questions, plus questions to put to already acquired but unsought answers, it is vital to give full play to the imagination. That is the way to create truly original science.

E. O. Wilson
Nationalism and racism, to take two examples, are the culturally nurtured outgrowths of simple tribalism.

E. O. Wilson
The borderline between normal and schizophrenic people is broad and nearly imperceptible.

E. O. Wilson
The evolutionary epic is probably the best myth we will ever have.

E. O. Wilson
The most peaceable tribes of today were often ravagers of yesteryear and will probably again produce soldiers and murderers in the future.

E. O. Wilson
We are not compelled to believe in biological uniformity in order to affirm human freedom and dignity.

E. O. Wilson
The truth is that we need invertebrates but they don't need us. If human beings were to disappear tomorrow, the world would go on with little change.... But if invertebrates were to disappear, I doubt that the human species could last more than a few months.

E. O. Wilson
No species... possesses a purpose beyond the imperatives created by genetic history.... The human mind is a device for survival and reproduction, and reason is just one of its various techniques.

E. O. Wilson
The worst thing that can happen during the 1980s is not energy depletion, economic collapse, limited nuclear war, or conquest by a totalitarian government. As terrible as these catastrophes would be for us, they can be repaired within a few generations. The one process ongoing in the 1980s that will take millions of years to correct is the loss of genetic and species diversity by the destruction of natural habitats. This is the folly that our descendents are least likely to forgive us.

E. O. Wilson
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.

E. O. Wilson
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
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
Why do we study insects? Because, together with man, hummingbirds and the bristlecone pine, they are among the great achievements of organic evolution.

E. O. Wilson