[Bacteria are the] dark matter of the biological world [with 4 million mostly unknown species in a ton of soil].
Interpretation
Bacteria, despite being largely unknown, play a critical role in our ecosystem.
E. O. Wilson's quote highlights the vast and largely unexplored diversity of bacteria in our environment, comparing them to dark matter in physics, which is invisible yet fundamentally important. This analogy underscores the significance of bacteria in maintaining the health of ecosystems and suggests that there is much more to learn about these microorganisms.
In practice
During a lecture on microbiology, I quoted E. O. Wilson to emphasize the importance of studying bacteria.
Consider the nematode roundworm, the most abundant of all animals. Four out of five animals on Earth are nematode worms β if all solid materials except nematode worms were to be eliminated, you could still see the ghostly outline of most of it in nematode worms.
Nature holds the key to our aesthetic, intellectual, cognitive and even spiritual satisfaction.
The worst thing that will probably happen-in fact is already well underway-is not energy depletion, economic collapse, conventional war, or the expansion of totalitarian governments. As terrible as these catastrophes would be for us, they can be repaired in a few generations. The one process now going on that will take millions of years to correct is loss of genetic and species diversity by the destruction of natural habitats. This is the folly our descendants are least likely to forgive us.
Humanity today is like a waking dreamer, caught between the fantasies of sleep and the chaos of the real world. The mind seeks but cannot find the precise place and hour. We have created a Star Wars civilization, with Stone Age emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technology. We thrash about. We are terribly confused by the mere fact of our existence, and a danger to ourselves and to the rest of life.
Destroying rainforest for economic gain is like burning a Renaissance painting to cook a meal.
An Armageddon is approaching at the beginning of the third millennium. But it is not the cosmic war and fiery collapse of mankind foretold in sacred scripture. It is the wreckage of the planet by an exuberantly plentiful and ingenious humanity.
Science is the captain, and practice the soldiers.
Gravity is not a version of the truth. It is the truth. Anyone who doubts it is invited to jump out a tenth-storey window.
God used beautiful mathematics in creating the world.
That is the essence of science: ask an impertinent question, and you are on the way to a pertinent answer.
The Analytical Engine has no pretensions whatever to originate anything. It can do whatever we know how to order it to perform... But it is likely to exert an indirect and reciprocal influence on science itself.
It is impossible to devise an experiment without a preconceived idea; devising an experiment, we said, is putting a question; we never conceive a question without an idea which invites an answer. I consider it, therefore, an absolute principle that experiments must always be devised in view of a preconceived idea, no matter if the idea be not very clear nor very well defined.
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