The Meaning of Human Existence

Challenging a purely mechanistic view of human existence, Edward O Wilson examines what makes human beings supremely different from all other species.

Searching for meaning in what Nietzsche called "the rainbow colours" around the outer edges of knowledge and imagination, Edward O. Wilson bridges science and philosophy to create a twenty-first-century treatise on human existence. Once criticised for his over-reliance on genetics, Wilson unfurls his most expansive and advanced theories on human behaviour. Whether attempting to explicate "the Riddle of the Human Species", warning of "the Collapse of Biodiversity" or creating a plausible "Portrait of E.T.", Wilson believes that humanity holds a special position in the known universe. Alarmed, however, that we are about to abandon natural selection by redesigning biology and human nature as we wish them, Wilson concludes that advances in science and technology bring us our greatest moral dilemma in millennia.

Auteur

Edward O. Wilson (1929-2021) was the author of more than thirty books, including Anthill, Letters to a Young Scientist, and The Conquest of Nature. The winner of two Pulitzer Prizes, Wilson was a professor emeritus at Harvard University and lived with his wife in Lexington, Massachusetts.

Résumé
Challenging a purely mechanistic view of human existence, Edward O. Wilson examines what makes human beings supremely different from all other species.