Edward O. Wilson

An expert on sociobiology and biodiversity argues for the fundamental unity of all knowledge in the face of the increasing fragmentation and specialization of knowledge over the past two centuries

The Unity of Knowledge

Consilience

A 21st-century philosophical argument against mechanistic views of human life outlines expansive and advanced theories on human behavior to consider how humans are supremely different from all other species. By the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of On Human Nature. 75,000 first printing.

The Meaning of Human Existence

"An acclaimed biologist and author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Ants discusses how morality, religion and the creative arts are biological in nature and defends his theory that the origin of the human condition is due to group, not family, selection. "

The Social Conquest of Earth

The classic story of how life on Earth evolved and how the diversity of the species is threatened unless whole ecosystems are rescued. Color plates.

The Diversity of Life

Honorary Curator in Entomology and University Research Professor Emeritus Edward O Wilson

Preface 1 Dilemma 2 Heredity 3 Development 4 Emergence 5 Aggression 6 Sex 7 Altruism 8 Religion 9 Hope Glossary Notes Index.

First Edition

On Human Nature

Weaves together more than twenty letters that illuminate the author's career and his motivations for becoming a biologist, explaining how success in the sciences depends on a passion for finding a problem and solving it.

Letters to a Young Scientist

Our world is far richer than previously conceived, yet so ravaged by human activity that half its species could be gone by the end of the present century. These two contrasting themes--unexpected magnificence and underestimated peril--have originated during the past two decades of research. In this timely and important new book, one of our greatest living scientists describes exactly what treasures of the natural world we are about to lose forever and what we can do right now to save them. Destruction of natural habitats, the rampant spread of invasive species, pollution, uncontrolled population growth and overharvesting are the main threats to our natural world. Wilson explains how each of these elements works to undo the web of life that supports us, and why it is in our best interests to stop it. THE FUTURE OF LIFE is a magisterial accomplishment - both a moving description of the world's astonishing animals and plants and a guidebook for the protection of all its species, including our own.

The Future of Life

Half-Earth concludes Edward O. Wilson's trilogy begun by The social conquest of Earth and The meaning of Earth's existence.

Our Planet's Fight for Life

Half-earth

"Creativity is the unique and defining trait of our species; and its ultimate goal, self-understanding," begins Edward O. Wilson's sweeping examination of the humanities and its relationship to the sciences. By studying fields as diverse as paleontology, evolutionary biology, and neuroscience, Wilson demonstrates that human creativity began not 10,000 years ago, as we have long assumed, but over 100,000 years ago in the Paleolithic Age. Chronicling the evolution of creativity from primates to humans, Wilson shows how the humanities, in large part spurred on by the invention of language, have played a previously unexamined role in defining our species. Exploring a surprising range of creative endeavors--the instinct to create gardens, the use of metaphors and irony in speech, the power of music and song-- Wilson proposes a transformational "Third Enlightenment" in which the blending of science and humanities will enable a deeper understanding of the human condition and how it ultimately originated.

The Origins of Creativity

Bert Hölldobler

From the Arctic to South Africa - one finds them everywhere: Ants. Making up nearly 15% of the entire terrestrial animal biomass, ants are impressive not only in quantitative terms, they also fascinate by their highly organized and complex social system. Their caste system, the division of labor, the origin of altruistic behavior and the complex forms of chemical communication makes them the most interesting group of social organisms and the main subject for sociobiologists. Not least is their ecological importance: Ants are the premier soil turners, channelers of energy and dominatrices of the insect fauna.

The Ants

When this classic work was first published in 1975, it created a new discipline and started a tumultuous round in the age-old nature versus nurture debate. The controversy surrounding the book's publication--and surrounding its central claim that human social behavior has a biological foundation--reverberates to this day. In the introduction to this twenty-fifth anniversary edition, Edward O. Wilson shows how research in human genetics and neuroscience over the past quarter of a century has strengthened the case for a biological understanding of human nature.

The New Synthesis, Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Edition

Sociobiology

Asserting that religious creeds and philosophical questions can be reduced to purely genetic and evolutionary components, and that the human body and mind have a physical base obedient to the laws of physics and chemistry, Genesis demonstrates that the only way for us to fully understand human behavior is to study the evolutionary histories of nonhuman species. Of these, Wilson demonstrates that at least seventeen--among them the African naked mole rat and the sponge- dwelling shrimp--have been found to have advanced societies based on altruism and cooperation.Whether writing about midges who "dance about like acrobats" or schools of anchovies who protectively huddle "to appear like a gigantic fish," or proposing that human society owes a debt of gratitude to "postmenopausal grandmothers" and "childless homosexuals," Genesis is a pithy yet path-breaking work of evolutionary theory, braiding twenty-first-century scientific theory with the lyrical biological and humanistic observations for which Wilson is known.

The Deep Origin of Societies

Genesis

The Pulitzer Prize-winning author presents the adventures of Raff, a modern-day Huck Finn in Alabama, whose love of ants transforms his life and those around him as he fights condo developers intent on destroying an endangered tract of land.

A Novel

Anthill

The author, a professor of entomology at Harvard, looks back on his life, education, and career, and discusses his work

Naturalist

The Pulitzer Prize-winning authors of Ants present a lavishly detailed account of the extraordinary lives of social insects that draws on more than two decades of research and offers insight into how bees, termites, and other insect societies thrive in systems of altruistic cooperation, complex communication, and labor division. 50,000 first printing.

The Beauty, Elegance, and Strangeness of Insect Societies

The Superorganism

İnsan Varlığının Anlamı

" Ants are the most warlike of all animals, with colony pitted against colony. . . . Their clashes dwarf Waterloo and Gettysburg," writes Edward O. Wilson in his most finely observed work in decades. In a myrmecological tour to such far-flung destinations as Mozambique and New Guinea, the Gulf of Mexico's Dauphin Island and even his parents' overgrown yard back in Alabama, Wilson thrillingly evokes his nine-decade-long scientific obsession with more than 15,000 ant species. Wryly observing that "males are little more than flying sperm missiles" or that ants send their "little old ladies into battle," Wilson eloquently relays his brushes with fire, army, and leafcutter ants, as well as more exotic species: the Matabele, Africa's fiercest warrior ants; Costa Rica's Basiceros, the slowest ants in the world; and New Caledonia's Myrmecia apicalis, the most endangered of them all. A personal account by one of our greatest scientists, Tales from the Ant World is an indispensable volume for any lover of the natural world.

Tales from the Ant World

Nancy Pick

Mark Sloan

The combination of Ikebana and haiku is a more than successful one. The similarities between the arts go far beyond their Japanese origins. The seductive simplicity of haiku, its subtleties and sparse use of words, its silences and depth of meaning, its rhythms and seasons... these are only some of the characteristics that haiku shares with Ikebana.Both Ikebana and haiku have the power to move people. They evoke emotions using material that has carefully been trimmed of the superfluous. Their minimalism is convincing and reveals the essence. They manage to hold our gaze and temporarily slow down our daily rhythm. Both Ikebana and haiku invite us to see more than what the visible world has to offer. Members of the centre for poetry in Ghent, led by Hedwig Aerts, made a selection of their favourite traditional haiku by master poets such as Basho, Issa and Shiki. On the occasion of this book, they also created some new personal haiku. Poetical Ikebana is the floral translation of these haiku, a collection of evocative floral design that stirs the senses and touches the heart."

The Stories Behind the Harvard Museum of Natural History

Rarest of the Rare

Homo Creator

A study of insect sociology, presenting individual investigations of wasps, ants, bees, and termites, and discussing caste, behavior, communication, symbioses, and other topics.

Edward O. Wilson

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