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Liveright
October 2014
On Sale: October 6, 2014
209 pages
ISBN: 0871401002
EAN: 9780871401007
Kindle: B00J8R3IC8
Hardcover / e-Book
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Non-Fiction
National Book Award Finalist. How did
humanity originate and why does a species like ours exist on
this planet? Do we have a special place, even a destiny in
the universe? Where are we going, and perhaps, the most
difficult question of all, "Why?" In The Meaning of Human Existence, his most
philosophical work to date, Pulitzer Prize–winning biologist
Edward O. Wilson grapples with these and other existential
questions, examining what makes human beings supremely
different from all other species. Searching for meaning in
what Nietzsche once called "the rainbow colors" around the
outer edges of knowledge and imagination, Wilson takes his
readers on a journey, in the process bridging science and
philosophy to create a twenty-first-century treatise on
human existence—from our earliest inception to a provocative
look at what the future of mankind portends. Continuing his groundbreaking examination of our
"Anthropocene Epoch," which he began with The Social
Conquest of Earth, described by the New York
Times as "a sweeping account of the human rise to
domination of the biosphere," here Wilson posits that we, as
a species, now know enough about the universe and ourselves
that we can begin to approach questions about our place in
the cosmos and the meaning of intelligent life in a
systematic, indeed, in a testable way. Once criticized for a purely mechanistic view of human life
and an overreliance on genetic predetermination, Wilson
presents in The Meaning of Human Existence his most
expansive and advanced theories on the sovereignty of human
life, recognizing that, even though the human and the spider
evolved similarly, the poet's sonnet is wholly different
from the spider's web. Whether attempting to explicate "The
Riddle of the Human Species," "Free Will," or "Religion";
warning of "The Collapse of Biodiversity"; or even creating
a plausible "Portrait of E.T.," Wilson does indeed believe
that humanity holds a special position in the known universe. The human epoch that began in biological evolution and
passed into pre-, then recorded, history is now
more than ever before in our hands. Yet alarmed that we are
about to abandon natural selection by redesigning biology
and human nature as we wish them, Wilson soberly concludes
that advances in science and technology bring us our
greatest moral dilemma since God stayed the hand of Abraham.
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