(Earlier posted on Facebook)
Quick plug for Edward O. Wilson’s new book, THE MEANING OF HUMAN EXISTENCE, which is as expected a grand if concise philosophical summary of this important scientist’s views on the big issues of science and philosophy — though it is also a rather slender volume that summarizes and glosses the ideas in books Wilson has written over his entire career, from ON HUMAN NATURE (1978) to THE DIVERSITY OF LIFE (1992), CONSILIENCE (1998), the recent THE SOCIAL CONQUEST OF EARTH (2012) (in which he changes his earlier mind and takes a still controversial position on the importance of ‘group selection’ in evolutionary theory), and even his 2010 novel ANTHILL. I’ll be rereading this and taking notes and extracting passages, to be posted here and/or on my blog.
(And there are several passages that directly or indirectly relate to how science fiction addresses these big issues.)
http://www.amazon.com/Meaning-Human-Existence-Edward-Wilson/dp/0871401002/
