{"id":26649,"date":"2016-06-08T14:46:42","date_gmt":"2016-06-08T21:46:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2016\/06\/e-o-wilson-chases-the-great-riddle-of-human-existence"},"modified":"2017-06-04T19:56:59","modified_gmt":"2017-06-05T02:56:59","slug":"e-o-wilson-chases-the-great-riddle-of-human-existence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2016\/06\/e-o-wilson-chases-the-great-riddle-of-human-existence","title":{"rendered":"E.O. Wilson Chases The \u2018Great Riddle\u2019 Of Human Existence"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

For those who missed my 2014 review of E.O. Wilson\u2019s book, \u201cThe Meaning of Human Existence.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

With a title as audacious as \u201cThe Meaning of Human Existence,\u201d even a casual reader couldn\u2019t 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 \u201cexistence\u201d question. And maybe that\u2019s his point.<\/p>\n

After all, the ability to ponder our own existence is 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 \u2014 a renowned biologist, naturalist, author and Harvard University<\/a> 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 cosmology\u2019s progress in understanding the nature of the universe. He also spends a significant portion of the book trashing organized religion in ways that \u2014 in this atheistic age at least \u2014 seem both arbitrary and predictable.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For those who missed my 2014 review of E.O. Wilson\u2019s book, \u201cThe Meaning of Human Existence.\u201d With a title as audacious as \u201cThe Meaning of Human Existence,\u201d even a casual reader couldn\u2019t be faulted for expecting a veritable Rosetta Stone to the cosmos and life as we know it. But in his latest book, Edward [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":380,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cosmology","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26649","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/380"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26649"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26649\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67277,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26649\/revisions\/67277"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}