*1. Prologue *2. Bernhardsdorp *3. The Superoganism *4. The Time Machine *5. The Bird of Paradise *6. The Poetic Species *7. The Serpent *8. The Right Place *9. The Conservation Ethic *10. Surinam * Reading Notes * Acknowledgments
Edward O. Wilson was Pellegrino University Professor, Emeritus, at Harvard University. In addition to two Pulitzer Prizes (one of which he shares with Bert Hölldobler), Wilson has won many scientific awards, including the National Medal of Science and the Crafoord Prize of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
There’s more to this unbuttoned and intellectually playful book
than its plea for a conservation of ethic and the preservation of
animal species in all their diversity. We get, for example, several
autobiographical glimpses into the background of Professor Wilson…
We see Professor Wilson as a boy growing up in the Florida
panhandle… Elsewhere he astonishes us with a description of the
mating dance of the male Emperor of Germany bird of paradise, and
the degree of genetic congruity between pygmy chimpanzees and Homo
sapiens.
*New York Times*
E. O. Wilson is the entomologist Curator of the Museum of
Comparative Zoology at Harvard. His science writing for the general
public has won him the Pulitzer Prize and his scientific
publications have won him the highest honors American science can
bestow. He is well equipped to engage a subject dear to
nature-lovers which until now has not been identified as a species
trait—biophilia. The freshness of Wilson’s approach lies in its
freedom from the obsessions of the environmentalist movement… While
he shares the conservationist ethic of environmentalists, and seeks
to impart its practical imperatives, he eschews cultism… Let this
highly readable book then be commended to all biophiliacs and
technocrats.
*Times Literary Supplement*
Biophilia is an immensely readable book. Wilson is a master
storyteller, skillful at evoking exotic scenes.
*Washington Post Book World*
A fine memoir by one of America’s foremost evolutionary
biologists…erudite, elegant, and poetic. E. O. Wilson defines
biophilia as ‘the innate tendency [in human beings] to focus on
life and lifelike process. To an extent still undervalued in
philosophy and religion, our existence depends on this propensity,
our spirit is woven from it, hopes rise on its currents.’
Scientifically demonstrating this human propensity would be a task
beyond the scope of today’s biology, and Wilson wisely eschews that
course. Instead, he relies on his own experiences and feelings as a
field biologist, cleverly interweaving them with the facts,
history, and philosophy of evolutionary biology and an eclectic set
of cultural observations.
*Natural History*
Wilson’s own empathy with things illuminates these essays with
fresh perceptions of everyday matters… They are masterpieces of
prose style… Wilson moves fluidly among minute observations of life
forms ranging from leaf-cutter ants to birds of paradise, artfully
pausing for a philosophical reflection here and a folksy anecdote
there.
*Los Angeles Times*
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