The work on ants has profoundly affected the way I think about humans.
Interpretation
E. O. Wilson suggests that studying ants provides deep insights into human behavior and society.
This quote reflects the idea that by examining the social structures and behaviors of ants, we can gain a better understanding of human interactions, cooperation, and the complexities of societal roles. Wilson emphasizes that even the smallest creatures can offer significant lessons about our own species and the way we organize our societies.
In practice
During a lecture on sociology, I quoted E. O. Wilson to illustrate the importance of studying nature to understand human society.
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.
There are, in truth, no specialties in medicine, since to know fully many of the most important diseases a man must be familiar with their manifestations in many organs.
Do not become archivists of facts. Try to penetrate to the secret of their occurrence, persistently search for the laws which govern them.
Gravitational waves, because they are so imperturbable - they go through everything - they will tell you the most information you can get about the earliest instants that go on in the universe.
Universe consists of frozen light.
Intellectual-property rules are clearly necessary to spur innovation: if every invention could be stolen, or every new drug immediately copied, few people would invest in innovation. But too much protection can strangle competition and can limit what economists call 'incremental innovation' - innovations that build, in some way, on others.
When it comes down to it, the reason that science fiction endures is that it is, at its core, an optimistic genre. What it says at the end of the day is that there is a tomorrow, we do go on, we don't extinguish ourselves and leave the planet to the cockroaches.
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