E. O. Wilson - Biological Quotes

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If insemination were the sole biological function of sex, it could be achieved far more economically in a few seconds of mounting and insertion. Indeed, the least social of mammals mate with scarcely more ceremony. The species that have evolved long-term bonds are also, by and large, the ones that rely on elaborate courtship rituals.... Love and sex do indeed go together.

E. O. Wilson
Cultural evolution is Lamarckian and very fast, whereas biological evolution is Darwinian and usually very slow.

E. O. Wilson
Because it is... far slower than Lamarckian evolution, biological evolution is always quickly outrun by cultural change.

E. O. Wilson
Self-knowledge will reveal the elements of biological human nature from which modern social life proliferated in all its strange forms.

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

E. O. Wilson
I will argue that every scrap of biological diversity is priceless, to be learned and cherished, and never to be surrendered without a struggle.

E. O. Wilson