“Because species diversity was created prior to humanity and because we evolved within it, we have never fathomed its limits. As a consequence, the living world is the natural domain of the more restless and paradoxical part of the human spirit. Our sense of wonder grows exponentially; the greater the knowledge, the deeper the mystery, and the more we seek knowledge to create new mystery. . . . Our intrinsic emotions drive us to search for new habitats, to cross unexplored terrain, but we still crave this sense of a mysterious world stretching infinitely beyond.”

—Edward O. Wilson, Biophilia (Harvard University Press, 1984), 9–10