An individual ant, even though it has a brain about a millionth of a size of a human being’s, can learn a maze; the kind we use is a simple rat maze in a laboratory. They can learn it about one-half as fast as a rat.
E. O. WILSONIt’s obvious that the key problem facing humanity in the coming century is how to bring a better quality of life – for 8 billion or more people – without wrecking the environment entirely in the attempt.
More E. O. Wilson Quotes
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Blind faith, no matter how passionately expressed, will not suffice.
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Our brain is mapping the world. Often that map is distorted, but it’s a map with constant immediate sensory input.
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A very Faustian choice is upon us: whether to accept our corrosive and risky behavior as the unavoidable price of population and economic growth, or to take stock of ourselves and search for a new environmental ethic.
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Because the living environment is what really sustains us.
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One thing I did was grow up as an ardent naturalist. I never grew out of my bug period.
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We should preserve every scrap of biodiversity as priceless while we learn to use it and come to understand what it means to humanity.
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I’m very much a Christian in ideals and ethics, especially in terms of belief in fairness, a deep set obligation to others, and the virtues of charity, tolerance and generosity that we associate with traditional Christian teaching.
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Ants are the dominant insects of the world, and they’ve had a great impact on habitats almost all over the land surface of the world for more than 50-million years.
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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.
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If all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed ten thousand years ago.
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There doesn’t seem to be any other way of creating the next green revolution without GMOs.
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Destroying rainforest for economic gain is like burning a Renaissance painting to cook a meal.
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Individual versus group selection results in a mix of altruism and selfishness, of virtue and sin, among the members of a society.
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Ideas emerge when a part of the real or imagined world is studied for its own sake.
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It’s obvious that the key problem facing humanity in the coming century is how to bring a better quality of life – for 8 billion or more people – without wrecking the environment entirely in the attempt.
E. O. WILSON