Edward O. Wilson's The Meaning of Human Existence: A Philosophical Exploration

Y Altamimi: The author is well articulated and develops his narrative coherently, however I am lost with all the non sense that ‘human are a chance occurrence’ and our consciousness, emotions, feelings and free will are all ‘evolutionary’. How could a single non nucleated celll structure leads to this human being we are today?? I am a physician and follow scientific methods however I can’t accept this ridiculous theory. Hence the book is disappointing and honestly I didn’t want to be biased and give it one start, hence the three.

Australia on Jul 09, 2023

C. Ryan: The best book I have ever read - gives immense insight into how we live, and from a business view, how to build great teams. This is who Dawkins wishes he was, but cannot be, & I thoroughly enjoyed the intellectual sass on that point.

United Kingdom on Jun 11, 2023

Reader2500: This is a used book and I am happy with the condition of the book.

United States on Mar 06, 2023

David Anderson: Edward O. Wilson has written a very important book. In it there is much to learn. But he either intentionally or unintentionally side-stepped the most important issue beyond the social and biological genome one confronting us today: Is there an “Implicate Order” beyond and behind this genomic human cosmological experiment - or is there not? His reference to the “Humanities” to identify the superiority of our species by way of its “consciousness” of the Arts will not do. I sensed in the first pages that he too in his own bones may, as I do, feel this possibility. But then he turns hard right and criticizes – as so many “intellectuals today do - religion. He could move on to David Bohm’s “Implicate Order,” but he does not. I am sure he is quite familiar with Bohm’s conclusion of some form of “Other” and that same conclusion by Bohm’s mentor, Albert Einstein. The cosmic reality is that several hundred thousand years ago he himself in a biological form no more complex than that of a mouse today on his kitchen floor entered a labyrinth with the odds over a billion to one that he would come out of it today as he is today; having the ability to enter into a...

United States on Apr 25, 2016

Lindosland: My heading is tongue-in-cheek, as I've read all of E O Wilsons books over the decades with great interest, but this one disappoints, as does his rudeness to Richard Dawkins! While many of us have fought for, and defended, the idea of group selection as a major factor in the evolution of human beings, Wilson has opposed it, until very recently. Now he embraces 'multi-level selection', which is nothing new, and a natural step once you allow group selection, and he has started a fierce argument with (Professor) Richard Darwins, who sticks by his theory that the gene is the only unit of selection. In a recent interview Wilson said, "there is no dispute between me and Richard Dawkins and there never has been, because he's a journalist, and journalists are people that report what the scientists have found and the arguments I've had have actually been with scientists doing research." This seems quite rude and uncalled for to me, especially coming from a man who, in his book 'Consilience', calls for the barriers between disciplines to be brought down.

Both men seem to have become outdated in their ideas. The word gene has pretty much lost all meaning since the discovery of new...

United Kingdom on Feb 09, 2015

Amazon Customer: I read this book because of its ambitious title, high ratings, and the author’s reputation. In my reading, I look for ideas that help me understand life. I am new to this topic area but think Wilson’s book meets this test.

Wilson is a committed evolutionary biologist. He focuses on how genetics interact with behavior and evolution. He argues that our genes have evolved over millions of years through natural selection. Chance selection has played a miraculous role; statistically, humanity should not exist. Genetic evolution gave rise to larger brains in humans, capable of the memory needed to master language and complex skills, such as hunting, planting, and defending communities. Wilson argues convincingly that genetics underlie human feelings such as fear and that some feelings have been inherited across thousands of generations.

I grew up in a time that emphasized learned, socialized behaviors over our physical composition. Genetics was somewhat discredited because of misguided links with racism. Also, I think we wanted to believe we could overcome our human biology. I take Wilson to suggest that our emotions, loves, hates, fears, appetites, aspirations, and...

United States on Dec 28, 2014

George Rumens: The Background

The intellectual world is preoccupied with post-religious theories upon human belief and behaviour. Unfortunately, so many apparently ‘scientific’ endeavours in this regard are disappointingly grounded upon old religious theory. (Most North American scientists had their childhoods grounded in religions!) The writings of most American scientists are thick with religious imagery and concept. For example all questions asking, “Why are we here?”, and “What is our purpose in life?”, are purely religious questions because they all are based upon the assumption of an ‘Intentional Universe’. But the universe, is and was not, intentional, and so those philosophical questions are without meaning. It is no good questioning the gods’ intentions if there are no gods in the first place.

Three chief lines of enquiry are those of sociologists, those of geneticists and those of biologists in the field of social theory. The first lot, sociologists, appeared to have a had great academic success with the Cosmides-Tooby hypothesis; that the brain is an

“…information-processing machine designed by natural selection to solve adaptive...

United Kingdom on Dec 22, 2014

ronbc: If you’ve read both Consilience and The Social Conquest of Earth, you won’t find many new ideas in Wilson’s latest collection of essays. But you will find them expressed in new, more compact, and perhaps more accessible ways.

Like Consilience, The Meaning of Human Existence argues strongly that the humanities need science (in order to have something real about which to speak) and science needs the humanities (to offer some sort of human meaning to external reality).

Like The Social Conquest of Earth, Wilson’s latest effort argues for the central importance of multilevel selection for the emergence and dominance of human civilizations: “individual selection based on competition and cooperation among members of the same group, and group selection, which arises from competition and cooperation between groups.”

Wilson makes both of these claims in an entirely material context. Early in the book, he states as clearly as he can that he rejects any supernatural explanation of the human story:

Humanity, I argue, arose entirely on its own through an accumulated series of events
during evolution. We are not predestined to reach any goal, nor are we...

Canada on Oct 13, 2014