![]() ![]() ![]() Wilson compares the “humanities” to “science.” The humanities tell us “what,” “the particularities of human nature back and forth in endless permutations, albeit laced with genius and in exquisite detail,” while science increasingly is needed to tell us “why.” ![]() We have the “capacity to imagine possible futures, and to plan and choose among them,” the “ability to invent and inwardly rehearse competing scenarios of future interactions.”ĭr. ![]() “Our species is almost unconscious of most stimuli.” His is a daunting title but the contents live up to expectations.įirst, far less: homo sapiens have existed through a modest six millennia, a mere blip in the 13-plus billion years of our universe, the 4.5 billion years of this earth and the 400 million years of other “species on earth.” And this earth is but a “mote of stardust near the edge of our galaxy (an estimated hundred billion star systems make up the Milky Way galaxy) among a hundred billion or more galaxies in the universe.”Īnd even among the other species here on this planet, “how bizarre we are as a species … we are chemosensory idiots” when compared to most of them. In 15 brief, succinct and challenging chapters, each less than 10 pages, he suggests that, at once, we are far more and far less than we imagine. Wilson, the eminent Harvard biologist and noted student of ants, describes our strange species in a remarkable and memorable book. ![]()
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