Posts tagged “Consilience”
Maybe capitalism isn’t the best philosophy
E.O. Wilson in Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge: To suppose that the living standard of the rest of the world can be raised to that of the most prosperous countries, with existing technology and current levels of consumption and waste, is a dream in pursuit of a mathematical impossibility. Even to level out present-day income […]
Can we choose who we will become before we know who we are?
E.O. Wilson in Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge: Homo sapiens, the first truly free species, is about to decommission natural selection, the force that made us. There is no genetic destiny outside our free will, no lodestar provided by which we can set course. Evolution, including genetic progress in human nature and human capacity, will […]
The next step
E.O. Wilson in Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge: On the one side, ethics and religion are still too complex for present-day science to explain in depth. On the other, they are far more a product of autonomous evolution than hiterto conceded by most theologians. Science faces in ethics and religion its most interesting and possibly […]
Science vs. religion
E.O. Wilson in Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge: The essence of humanity’s spiritual dilemma is that we evolved genetically to accept one truth and discovered another.
Animal behavior
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 […]
How religion went bad
E.O. Wilson in Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge: The rising agricultural societies, egalitarian at first, became hierarchical. As chiefdoms and then states thrived on agricultural surpluses, hereditary rulers and priestly castes took power. The old ethical codes were transformed into coercive regulations, always to the advantage of the ruling classes. About this time the idea […]
Sports really are primitive
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, […]