Novelists From The United States

"Protected areas provide hope that the creatures of Ed Wilson's dream of an encyclopedia of life, or the census of marine life, will live not just as a list, a photograph, or a paragraph."

"His critics accuse him of a reductionist and mechanistic view of culture and morality, with dangerous eugenic and racist overtones, while his admirers claim that his work is Darwinian in scope and that... he is the target of philistines who object to his conclusions on ethical and emotional, rather than scientific, grounds."

"Wilson himself argued that it would be in the best interest of humanity if organized religions as we know them would disappear. There is, however, a misunderstanding. Wilson was not an atheist, nor was he against asking religious questions. Since his main interest were ants, it is to his interesting we should turn to understand more about his ideas on religion."

"Religion, Wilson theorizes, is so prevalent because it provided a definite evolutionary advantage for those early humans who adopted it. ...when our apelike ancestors gradually became more intelligent, individuals could rationally begin to question the power of their leader. ...a dangerous, dissipative force on the tribe. ...Thus, according to Wilson, a selective pressure was placed on intelligent apes to suspend reason and blindly obey the leader and his myths..."

"You see, if E. O. Wilson says that Indian scientists should do taxonomy, now of course, someone will say that you are preventing them from doing the sort of high science that is done elsewhere. So it should not come from there, it should come from us. I think that we must recognize where we have the advantages and where we have the disadvantages."

"Recently, E.O. Wilson's sociobiology has offered the traditionalist view on gender in an argument which applies Darwinian ideas of natural selection to human behavior. Wilson and his followers reason that human behaviors which are "adaptive" for group survival become encoded in the genes, and they include in these behavjors such complex traits as altruism, loyalty, and maternalism. They not only reason that groups practicing a sex-based division of labor in which women function as child-rearers and nurturers have an evolutionary advantage, but they claim such behavior somehow becomes part of our genetic heritage, in that the necessary psychological and physical propensities for such societal arrangements are selectively developed and genetically selected. Mothering is not only a socially assigned role but one fitting women's physical and psychological needs. Here, once again, biological determinism becomes prescriptive, in fact a political defense of the status quo in scientific language. Feminist critics have revealed the circular reasoning, absence of evidence and unscientific assumptions of Wilsonian sociobiology. From the point of view of the nonscientist, the most obvious fallacy of sociobiologists is their ahistoricity in disregarding the fact that modern men and women do not live in a state of nature. The history of civilization describes the process by which humans have distanced themselves from nature by inventing and perfecting culture. Traditionalists ignore technological changes, which have made it possible to bottle-feed infants safely and raise them to adulthood with caretakers other than their own mothers. They ignore the implications of changing life spans and changing life cycles. Until communal hygiene and modern medical knowledge cut infant mortality to a level where parents could reasonably expect each child born to them to live to adulthood, women did indeed have to bear many children in order for a few of them to survive. Similarly, longer life expectancy and lower infant mortality altered the life cycles of both men and women. These developments were connected with industrialization and occurred in Western civilization (for whites) toward the end of the nineteenth century, occurring later for the poor and for minorities due to the uneven distribution of health and social services. Whereas up to 1870 child-rearing and marriage were co-terminus-that is, one or both parents could expect to die before the youngest child reached adulthood-in modern American society husbands and wives can expect to live together for twelve years after their youngest child has reached adulthood, and women can expect to outlive their husbands by seven years." Nevertheless, traditionalists expect women to follow the same roles and occupations that were functional and species-essential in the Neolithic."

"Specifically, sociobiology entails using explanatory principles and empirical findings derived from evolutionary biology to describe and explain social behavior among animals, including humans. It also draws on and incorporates thinking and research in ecology, especially behavioral ecology. The contributions of biologists such as R. A. Fisher, W. D. Hamilton, Robert Trivers, and George Williams were foundational for the development and emergence of sociobiology, and that emergence culminated with the publication of Sociobiology: The Modern Synthesis by Edward O. Wilson in 1975. This chapter explores the impact of sociobiology on theory and research in sociology during the nearly four decades since the publication of Wilson’s opus. Wilson’s book is a tome, stretching to twenty-seven chapters and 697 pages of text. Had it not been for the fact that the title and subject of Chapter 27 was “Man: From Sociobiology to Sociology,” it might have been recorded in the annals of science as a magisterial synthesis of much of what was then known about the evolution of social behavior in animals, but its influence may not have extended much beyond a few other fields such as biological anthropology or comparative psychology. But by expanding the scope of his analysis to include humans, Wilson provoked one of the great intellectual and scientific debates of the late twentieth century and helped stimulate the development of entirely new programs of research in the social and behavioral sciences."

"Wilson clearly laid down a radical biosociological research programme, claiming that sociology should be reduced to biology. This idea has profoundly influenced sociobiology and its reception in the larger public. Because of his claims to 'biologicize' culture and even ethics and the changes in evolutionary biology, which he at least co-provoked, sociobiology was soon singled out for criticism. But this challenge to other subject areas also inspired interesting new theories for instance in psychology or in philosophy."

"Since 1978, when a pail of water was dumped over my Harvard friend E. O. Wilson for saying that genes influence human behaviour, the assault against human behavioural genetics by wishful thinking has remained vigorous. But irrationality must soon recede. It will soon be possible to read individual genetic messages at costs which will not bankrupt our health systems. In so doing, I hope we see whether changes in DNA sequence, not environmental influences, result in behaviour differences. Finally, we should be able to establish the relative importance of nature as opposed to nurture."

"A man must know when to retreat from a woman, but a wise man knows that sometimes he must stand and face her."

"Death is lighter than a feather, duty heavier than a mountain."

"Anger narrowed the vision and made for foolish choices."

"A man’s word must be as good as an oath sworn beneath the Light or it was no good at all."

"By the Creator at the moment of creation. May we shelter safe beneath the Light, in the Creator’s hand."

"Only the dead could afford oblivion."

"What could not be changed must be endured."

"At the end of time, when the many become one, the last storm shall gather its angry winds to destroy a land already dying. And at its center, the blind man shall stand upon his own grave. There he shall see again, and weep for what has been wrought."

"The more tragic things get, the more I feel like laughing."

"[Aviendha] didn't trust change. It couldn't be spotted or stabbed; it was more silent than any scout, more deadly than any assassin. No, she'd never trust it, but she would accept it."

"We can't go back, Mat. The Wheel has turned, for better or worse. And it will keep turning, as lights die and forests dim, storms call and skies break. Turn it will. The Wheel is not hope, and the Wheel does not care, the Wheel simply is. But so long as it turns, folk may hope, folk may care. For with light that fades, another will eventually grow, and each storm that rages must eventually die. As long as the Wheel turns. As long is it turns...."

"How was he to cause war, as the prophecies say he must? How was he to break the nations and bind them to him? How could he 'slay his people with the sword of peace' or 'bind the nine moons to serve him' if he was locked away? Do the prophecies say that he will be 'unfettered'? Do they not speak of the 'chaos of his passing'? How can anything pass at all if he is kept in chains?"

"Sometimes, a wife must do what her husband cannot."

"The end is near," Moridin said. "The Wheel has groaned its final rotation, the clock has lost its spring, the serpent heaves its final gasps. He must know pain of heart. He must know frustration, and he must know anguish. Bring these to him. And you will be rewarded."

"Ravens and crows. Rats. Mists and clouds. Insects and corruption. Strange events and odd occurences. The ordinary twisted and strange. Wonders. The dead are beginning to walk and some see them. Others do not, but more and more, we all fear the night. These have been our days. They rain upon us beneath a dead sky, crushing us with their fury, until as one, we beg, "Let it begin.""

"Let the lord of chaos rule."

"There is some delight in ale and wine And some in girls with ankles fine But my delight, yes always mine Is to dance with Jak O’ the Shadows We will toss the dice however they fall And snuggle the girls be they short or tall Then follow lord Mat whenever he calls To dance with Jak O’ the Shadows."

"To fight the raven you may make alliance with the serpent until the battle is done."

"The boy was dead eager, which could soon lead to plain dead."

"A beautiful battle is one you don't have to fight."

"A man should never give promises in bed."

"We rode on the winds of the rising storm, We ran to the sounds of thunder. We danced among the lightning bolts And tore the world asunder."

"Sometimes, pain is all that lets you know you're alive."

"You can never know everything, and part of what you know is always wrong. Perhaps even the most important part. A portion of wisdom lies in knowing that. A portion of courage lies in going on anyway."

"Any day you wake up, maybe you die."

"We are dead men. Dead men should be quiet in their graves, but they never are."

"I thought I could build, I was wrong. We are not builders, not you, or I, or the other one. We are destroyers. Destroyers."

"A man who trusts everyone is a fool, and a man who trusts no one is a fool. We are all fools, if we live long enough."

"I think the woman was born in Far Madding in a thunderstorm. She probably told the thunder to be quiet. It probably did."

"I would not mind you in my head, if you were not so clearly mad."

"I killed the whole world, and you can too, if you try hard."

"The dead are never silent."

"When a woman plays the fool, look for the man. That was one of Lini's favorites. Another was, Kittens tangle your yarn, men tangle your wits, and it's simple as breathing for both."

"On the heights, all paths are paved with daggers."

"The more bosom a woman displayed, the less she wanted you to look. Openly, at least."

"It is the enemy you underestimate who kills you."

"Wounds to the pride are remembered long after wounds to the flesh."

"The weak must be bold cautiously."

"When you leap from a cliff, it is too late for anything but holding to your courage. And hoping there's a haywain at the bottom to land in."

"What woman could I hate enough to marry her to the Dragon Reborn?"

"A jealous wife is like a hornets’ nest in your mattress."