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" Ants have the most complicated social organization on earth next to humans. "
E. O. Wilson
Ants
Earth
Complicated
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" But I feel music has a very important role in ritual activity, and that being able to join in musical activity, along with dancing, could have been necessary at a very early stage of human culture. "
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" Nature holds the key to our aesthetic, intellectual, cognitive and even spiritual satisfaction. "
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" But once the ants and termites jumped the high barrier that prevents the vast variety of evolving animal groups from becoming fully social, they dominated the world. "
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" Even as empiricism is winning the mind, transcendentalism continues to win the heart. "
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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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" The variety of genes on the planet in viruses exceeds, or is likely to exceed, that in all of the rest of life combined. "
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" I doubt that most people with short-term thinking love the natural world enough to save it. "
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" In many environments, take away the ants and there would be partial collapses in many of the land ecosystems. "
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" To the extent that philosophical positions both confuse us and close doors to further inquiry, they are likely to be wrong. "
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" The biological evolutionary perception of life and of human qualities is radically different from that of traditional religion, whether it's Southern Baptist or Islam or any religion that believes in a supernatural supervalance over humanity. "
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" If we were to wipe out insects alone on this planet, the rest of life and humanity with it would mostly disappear from the land. Within a few months. "
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" It's the technique, I think, of writing a novel that is difficult for a nonfiction writer. "
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Writer
" There is no better high than discovery. "
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Better
Discovery
" 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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" True character arises from a deeper well than religion. "
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" The world depends on fungi, because they are major players in the cycling of materials and energy around the world. "
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Players
Energy
Cycling
" So in my freshman year at the University of Alabama, learning the literature on evolution, what was known about it biologically, just gradually transformed me by taking me out of literalism and increasingly into a more secular, scientific view of the world. "
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Me
Learning
World
" Blind faith, no matter how passionately expressed, will not suffice. Science for its part will test relentlessly every assumption about the human condition. "
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" The education of women is the best way to save the environment. "
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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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Group
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" Secular humanists can sit around and talk about their love of humanity, but it doesn't stack up against a two-millennium-old funeral high mass. "
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Talk
Sit
" The work on ants has profoundly affected the way I think about humans. "
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About
Ants
" Destroying rainforest for economic gain is like burning a Renaissance painting to cook a meal. "
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Renaissance
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" Jehovah had nothing to say to Moses and the others about the care of the planet. He had plenty to say about tribal loyalty and conquest. "
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" Ants make up two-thirds of the biomass of all the insects. There are millions of species of organisms and we know almost nothing about them. "
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Ants
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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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" The essence of humanity's spiritual dilemma is that we evolved genetically to accept one truth and discovered another. Is there a way to erase the dilemma, to resolve the contradictions between the transcendentalist and the empiricist world views? "
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" The one process now going on 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 our descendants are least likely to forgive us. "
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" America in particular imposes an horrendous burden on the world. We have this wonderful standard of living but it comes at enormous cost. "
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" I thought perhaps it should be recognized that religious people, including fundamentalists, are quite intelligent, many of them are highly educated, and they should be treated with complete respect. "
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Thought
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