For me, the peculiar qualities of faith are a logical outcome of this level of biological organization.

But once the ants and termites jumped the high barrier that prevents the vast variety of evolving animal groups from becoming fully social, they dominated the world.

The global conservation organisations are doing everything they can on modest budgets. They essentially promote setting aside reserves and parks around the world.

Perhaps the time has come to cease calling it the 'environmentalist' view, as though it were a lobbying effort outside the mainstream of human activity, and to start calling it the real-world view.

Science offers the boldest metaphysics of the age. It is a thoroughly human construct, driven by the faith that if we dream, press to discover, explain, and dream again, thereby plunging repeatedly into new terrain, the world will somehow come clearer and we will grasp the true strangeness of the universe. And the strangeness will all prove to be connected, and make sense.

The students of biodiversity, the ones we most need in science today, have an enormous task ahead of molecular biology and the medical scientists. Studying model species is a great idea, but we need to combine that with biodiversity studies and have those properly supported because of the contribution they can make to conservation biology, to agrobiology, to the attainment of a sustainable world.

Individual versus group selection results in a mix of altruism and selfishness, of virtue and sin, among the members of a society.