With a title as audacious as The Meaning of Human Existence, even a casual reader couldnt be faulted for expecting a veritable Rosetta Stone to the cosmos and life as we know it. But in his latest book, Edward O. Wilson offers no philosophically-satisfying answers to this age-old existence question. And maybe thats his point. <\/p>\n
After all, the ability to ponder our own existence is all at once a blessing and a curse. Neither sharks nor swallows seem to worry about too much more than their next meal. Yet in fifteen chapters, Wilson a renowned biologist, naturalist, author and Harvard University professor emeritus, strips humanity of its soul. <\/p>\n
Wilson is steadfastly averse to spiritual intangibles; somewhat skeptical about ever fully understanding consciousness, yet overly sanguine about cosmologys progress in understanding the nature of the universe. He also spends a significant portion of the book trashing organized religion in ways that in this atheistic age at least seem both arbitrary and predictable. <\/p>\n
Instead, Wilson advocates a larger role for a reciprocal meeting of the minds between the humanities and science itself. <\/p>\n
Courtesy W.W. Norton <\/p>\n
The time has come to consider what science might give to the humanities and the humanities to science in a common search to the great riddle of our existence, writes Wilson. <\/p>\n
In some ways he may have a point lifes intangibles bubble to the surface whenever I see a well-acted scene from Chekhovs The Cherry Orchard or hear a well-played steel guitar. <\/p>\n
And to his credit, Wilson offers the kind of grand sweeping essays that we usually get piecemeal in books typically written by theoretical physicists pondering the imponderables. <\/p>\n
We were created not by a supernatural intelligence but by chance and necessity as one species out of millions of species in earths biosphere, Wilson argues. Humanity arose as an accident of evolution, a product of random mutation and natural selection. <\/p>\n
But except for those who view evolution along the narrowest terms, do chance and necessity and supernatural intelligence have to be mutually exclusive? <\/p>\n
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E.O. Wilson Chases The 'Great Riddle' Of Human Existence<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" With a title as audacious as The Meaning of Human Existence, even a casual reader couldnt be faulted for expecting a veritable Rosetta Stone to the cosmos and life as we know it. Continue reading