Эдвард Осборн Уилсон цитаты

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„Неизменный парадокс религии состоит в том, что во многом суть ее представляется явным обманом, и все-таки религия остается движущей силой во всех обществах.“

„Важной чертой племени является то, что оно имеет двойной морально-нравственный стандарт – один вид поведения принят для внутригрупповых отношений и другой – для внегрупповых отношений.“

„Магия и тотемизм представляли собой результат непосредственной адаптации к среде и в общественной эволюции предшествовали религии как таковой.“

„Среди американских новорожденных этнические китайцы, например, более психически устойчивы, меньше тревожатся от шума и движения, лучше приспосабливаются к новым стимулам и дискомфорту и быстрее успокаиваются, чем младенцы европейской расы.“

„Нам достались эмоции времен Палеолита, средневековые социальные институты и божественные технологии.“

„Пение и танец служат для того, чтобы объединить группы, управлять эмоциями людей, подготовить их к совместным действиям.“

„Наиболее острой внутренней проблемой современного человека является проблема идентичности.“

„Полигамию, как тайную, так и явную – одобренную обычаями, практикуют преимущественно мужчины.“

„Исследования Кинси (Kinsey) и его коллег показали, что в 1940-х гг. приблизительно 10% от достигших сексуальной зрелости мужчин в Соединенных Штатах были главным образом или исключительно гомосексуалистами.“

„Точка возникновения человеческой речи находится на позднейших этапах видообразования в роде Homo.“

„Половое поведение стало мало связанным собственно с оплодотворением.“

“We can search among the unconscious, emotion-laden learning rules for the kind of behavior most directly influenced by genetic evolution.”

“Nationalism and racism, to take two examples, are the culturally nurtured outgrowths of simple tribalism.”

“If history and science have taught us anything, it is that passion and desire are not the same as truth.”

“The evolutionary epic is probably the best myth we will ever have.”

“The borderline between normal and schizophrenic people is broad and nearly imperceptible.”

“Most kinds of aggressive behavior among members of the same species are responsive to crowding in the environment.”

“Cultural evolution is Lamarckian and very fast, whereas biological evolution is Darwinian and usually very slow.”

“Genetic determinism… On its interpretation depends the entire relation between biology and the social sciences.”

“The genius of human society is in fact the ease with which alliances are formed, broken, and reconstituted, always with strong emotional appeals to rules believed to be absolute.”

“Animals use aggression as a technique for gaining control over necessities… that are scarce or are likely to become so… They intensify their threats and attack with increasing frequency as the population around them grow. As a result the behavior itself induces members of the population to spread out in space, raises the death rate, and lowers the birth rate. In such cases aggression is said to be a "density-dependent factor" in controlling population growth.”

“The increase in brain size and refinement of stone artifacts point to an unbroken advance in mental ability over the last two or three million years. …No organ in the history of life has grown faster.”

“The emergence of civilization has everywhere followed a definable sequence.”

“Piaget, who was originally trained as a biologist, views intellectual development as an interaction of an inherited genetic program with the environment. It is no coincidence that he calls this conception "genetic epistemology," in effect the study of the hereditary unfolding of understanding.”

“To search for unasked questions, plus questions to put to already acquired but unsought answers, it is vital to give full play to the imagination. That is the way to create truly original science.”

“To know how scientists engage in visual imagery is to understand how they think creatively.”

“Intertribal aggression, escalating in some cultures to limited warfare, is common enough to be regarded as a general characteristic of hunter-gatherer social behavior.”

“The three extreme kinds of schizophrenia are unmistakable: the haunted paranoid surrounded by his imaginary community of spies and assassins, the clownish, sometimes incontinent hebephrenic, and the frozen catatonic.”

“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.”

“This planet can be a paradise in the 22nd century.”

“[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.”

“There is no such thing as a typically "schizophrenogenic" (schizophrenia-producing) family arrangement, one most likely to produce a mentally ill adult from a child with the potential for the disease.”

“Because it is… far slower than Lamarckian evolution, biological evolution is always quickly outrun by cultural change.”

“The essence of humanity's spiritual dilemma is that we evolved genetically to accept one truth and discovered another.”

“At the apogee of the state's evolution, architecture was monumental, and the ruling class were exalted as a pseudospecies. The sacred rites of statehood became the central focus of religion.”

“Are human beings innately aggressive? …The answer to it is yes. …Only by redefining the words "innateness" and "aggression" to the point of uselessness might we correctly say that human aggressiveness is not innate.”

“The naturalist is a civilized hunter. He goes alone into the field or woodland and closes his mind to everything but that time and place, so that life around him presses in on all the senses and small details grow in significance. He begins the scanning search for which cognition was engineered. His mind becomes unfocused, it focuses on everything, no longer directed toward any ordinary task or social pleasantry.”

“The incest taboo is another major category of primed learning.”

“Pure knowledge is the ultimate emancipator. It equalizes people and sovereign states, erodes the archaic barriers of superstition and promises to lift the trajectory of cultural evolution. But I do not believe that it can change the ground rules of human behavior or alter the main course of history's predictable trajectory.”

“The most dangerous of devotions, in my opinion, is the one endemic to Christianity: I was not born to be of this world. With a second life waiting, suffering can be endured- especially in other people. The natural environment can be used up. Enemies of the faith can be savaged and suicidal martyrdom praised.”