The Meaning of Human Existence by Edward O. Wilson | Book Club

Pages to read: 123
ISBN: 9780871401007 (Originally listed edition)
ISBN: 9780871404800 (Edition I am Using)

While reading the book, consider the below questions:
•What is the raison d’etre of the book? For what purpose did the author write the book?
•What are some limitations of the book?
•What does it mean to have meaning?
•Does human existence have meaning?
•What did the enlightenment do, and what were the limitation of the enlightenment?
•What do humans perceive? What do humans not perceive?
•What are the limits to scientific discoveries?
•What use are the humanities subjects?
•Why do humans want to belong to groups?
•How does evolution work?
•Should extraterrestrial life be considered?
•What are the proximate and ultimate explanations?
•What is the different between natural selection, and inclusive fitness?
•How do plants suppress invaders?
•Are human societies superorganism?
•An extinction paradox? Why is there concern over species extinction?
•Does anyone have free will?

Your questions are important and will take priority. If you have questions about the book's content or related ideas, either let me know what your questions are or raise them during the discussion.

My review of the book:
https://www.inquiryreviews.com/2022/05/review-of-meaning-of-human-existence-by.html

Upcoming event:
https://www.meetup.com/Inquiry-Non-Fiction-Book-Club-for-Inquiring-Minds/events/

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Summary from Goodreads:
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.