Natural history Quote by Edward O. Wilson

“Annie Dillard was a pioneer in her Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, which won a Pulitzer Prize in 1974. Among other notable examples are David M. Carroll’s Following the Water: A Hydromancer’s Notebook (2009); David George Haskell’s The Forest Unseen (2012); and Dave Goulson’s A Buzz in the Meadow: The…” quote by Edward O. Wilson — Download Open image

““Annie Dillard was a pioneer in her Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, which won a Pulitzer Prize in 1974. Among other notable examples are David M. Carroll’s Following the Water: A Hydromancer’s Notebook (2009); David George Haskell’s The Forest Unseen (2012); and Dave Goulson’s A Buzz in the Meadow: The Natural History of a French Farm (2015).””

Edward O. Wilson

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Annie Dillard Natural history

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“Nature is the birthright of everyone on Earth. The millions of species we have allowed to survive are our phylogenetic kin. Their long-term history…

Edward O. Wilson

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“Traditional religious beliefs have been eroded, not so much by humiliating disproofs of their mythologies as by the growing awareness that beliefs are really…

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“[E]very major religion today is a winner in the Darwinian struggle waged among cultures, and none ever flourished by tolerating its rivals.”

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“Overall, it seems now possible to draw a reasonably good explanation of why the human condition is a singularity, why the likes of it has occurred only once and took so long in coming. The reason is simply the extreme improbability of the preadaptations necessary for it to occur at all. Each of the evolutionary steps has been a full-blown…

Edward O. Wilson

“let’s also promote the humanities, that which makes us human, and not use science to mess around with the wellspring of this, the absolute…

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“Moreover, we look in vain to philosophy for the answer to the great riddle. Despite its noble purpose and history, pure philosophy long ago abandoned the foundational questions about human existence. The question itself is a reputation killer. It has become a Gorgon for philosophers, upon whose visage even the best thinkers fear to gaze. They have good reason for…

Edward O. Wilson

“The creation myth is a Darwinian device for survival.”

Edward O. Wilson

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“Human beings and their social orders are intrinsically imperfectible and fortunately so. In a constantly changing world, we need the flexibility that only imperfection…

Edward O. Wilson

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“Another principle that I believe can be justified by scientific evidence so far is that nobody is going to emigrate from this planet not ever…It will be far cheaper, and entail no risk to human life, to explore space with robots. The technology is already well along…the real thrill will be in learning in detail what is out there...It is…

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“To explore and affiliate with life is a deep and complicated process in mental development. To an extent still undervalued in philosophy and religion,…

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“Social intelligence was therefore always at a high premium. A sharp sense of empathy can make a huge difference, and with it in an…

Edward O. Wilson

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“Somewhere close I knew spear-nosed bats flew through the tree crowns in search of fruit, palm vipers coiled in ambush in the roots of orchids, jaguars walked the river's edge; around them eight hundred species of trees stood, more than are native to all of North America; and a thousand species of butterflies, 6 percent of the entire world fauna,…

Edward O. Wilson

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Natural history is not taught in seminary. This is curious, as most people in pastoral ministry are about 567 times more likely to be asked about cosmology or sub-nuclear physics or human biology or evolution than they are to be asked about irregular Greek verbs or the danger of the patripassionist heresy. If we monotheists are going to go around…

Sara Maitland

The perfect woman is a higher type of humanity than the perfect man, and also something much rarer. The natural history of animals furnishes…

Friedrich Nietzsche

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“What the Boy chiefly dabbled in was natural history and fairy tales, and he just took them as they came, in a sandwichy sort…

Kenneth Grahame

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The use of natural history is to give us aid in supernatural history: the use of the outer creation, to give us language for…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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“Every new discovery about the genome is consistent with evolution having happened. Whether we find it appealing or not is another question, but personally…

Richard Fortey

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“Birds were what became of dinosaurs. Those mountains of flesh whose petrified bones were on display at the Museum of Natural History had done some brilliant retooling over the ages and could now be found living in the form of orioles in the sycamores across the street. As solutions to the problem of earthly existence, the dinosaurs had been pretty…

Jonathan Franzen

“The BBC's flagship natural history programme, was first shown in 1977, with The Bird That Beat The US Navy.”

Gareth Huw Davies

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The philosophy that I have worked under most of my life is that the serious study of natural history is an activity which has…

Roger Tory Peterson

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“I feel the need to fall in love with the world, to forge that relationship ever more strongly. But maybe I don’t have to work so hard. I have thought nature indifferent to humans, to one more human, but maybe the reverse is true. Maybe the world is already in love, giving us these gifts all the time—the glimpse of…

Sharman Apt Russell

[In the Field Museum of Natural History] we could see very simple, primitive, hand-built pottery from Babylonia and ancient Egypt and so forth, Greece. We could see the most sophisticated things that came out of the Orient - Japan, Korea, and China - some few pieces of European porcelain, majolica [tin glazed earthenware], and that sort of thing. But they…

Warren MacKenzie

Yes, Isaac Taylor, who has just published 'The World of Mind,' is the Isaac Taylor, author of the 'Natural History of Enthusiasm.' I dare…

George Eliot

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“The ridge of the Lammer-muir hills... consists of primary micaceous schistus, and extends from St Abb's head westward... The sea-coast affords a transverse section of this alpine tract at its eastern extremity, and exhibits the change from the primary to the secondary strata... Dr HUTTON wished particularly to examine the latter of these, and on this occasion Sir JAMES HALL…

John Playfair

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Natural history Quote by Edward O. Wilson

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