E.O. Wilson in Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge: If the religious mythos did not exist in a culture, it would be quickly invented, and in fact it has been everywhere, thousands of times through history.  Such inevitability is the mark of instinctual behavior in any species.  That is, even when learned, it is guided toward […]

E.O. Wilson in Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge: Not just hunter-gatherer bands but also groups and nations at the level of high civilization are prone to adopt animal species as totems to reflect the qualities they most value in themselves.  American football fans, having at last found a way to form their own Paleolithic tribes, […]

E.O. Wilson in Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge: Early humans invented [the arts] in an attempt to express and control through magic the abundance of the environment, the power of solidarity, and other forces in their lives that mattered most to survival and reproduction.  The arts were the means by which these forces could be […]

E.O. Wilson in Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge: The most distinctive qualities of the human species are extremely high intelligence, language, culture, and reliance on long-term social contracts.  In combination they gave early Homo sapiens a decisive edge over all competing animal species, but they also exacted a price we continue to pay, composed of […]

E.O. Wilson in Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge: Where cultural relativism had been initiated to negate belief in hereditary behavioral differences among ethnic groups – undeniably an unproven and ideologically dangerous conception – it was then turned against the idea of a unified human nature grounded in heredity.  A great conundrum of the human condition […]