Science & Tech Quote by E. O. Wilson

Wilson is doing something more interesting than dunking on religion: he’s drawing a boundary line around what society is allowed to treat as untouchable. “Blind faith” isn’t attacked for being emotional or sincere; it’s attacked for being epistemically lazy. The phrase “no matter how passionately expressed” is a pointed jab at a familiar cultural shortcut: the idea that intensity can stand in for evidence. He’s warning that moral conviction, when insulated from testing, becomes a kind of social immunity card.

Then he pivots to science, but not as a set of facts - as a temperament. “For its part” frames science as a co-equal institution in a pluralistic world, not a conquering ideology. Still, the verb choice is uncompromising: “test relentlessly.” Wilson’s subtext is that human self-understanding has been dominated by inherited narratives - about sin, purpose, identity, hierarchy - that demand reverence instead of scrutiny. Science, in his account, is the machinery that refuses reverence. It asks what those narratives are doing for us, what they cost, and whether they survive contact with reality.

The kicker is “every assumption about the human condition.” Wilson isn’t limiting the remit to lab questions; he’s asserting that anthropology, ethics, and meaning-making are also legitimate objects of empirical inquiry. Coming from a biologist associated with sociobiology and consilience, the context matters: he’s defending the controversial claim that culture and morality are not exempt from biology’s explanatory reach. The line works because it’s both democratic and disruptive: believe what you want, but don’t demand exemption from being checked.