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Edward O. Wilson

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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.

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Edward O. Wilson

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Sometimes a concept is baffling not because it is profound but because it is wrong.

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Edward O. Wilson

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Science is not marginal. Like art, it is a universal possession of humanity, and scientific knowledge has become a vital part of our species' repertory. It comprises what we know of the material world with reasonable certainty. Thanks to science and technology, access to factual information of all kinds is rising exponentially.

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Edward O. Wilson

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Political ideology can corrupt the mind, and science.

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Edward O. Wilson

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Perhaps the time has come to cease calling it the "environmentalist" view, as though it were a lobbying effort outside the mainstream of human activity, and to start calling it the real-world view.

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Edward O. Wilson

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People need a sacred narrative. They must have a sense of larger purpose, in one form or another, however intellectualized. They will find a way to keep ancestral spirits alive.

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Edward O. Wilson

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Old beliefs die hard even when demonstrably false.

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Edward O. Wilson

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No statistical proofs exist that prayer reduces illness and mortality, except perhaps through a psychogenic enhancement of the immune system; if it were otherwise the whole world would pray continuously.

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Edward O. Wilson

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Nature holds the key to our aesthetic, intellectual, cognitive and even spiritual satisfaction.

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Edward O. Wilson

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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.

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