We are not just rather like animals; we are animals. Our difference from other species may be striking, but comparisons with them have always been, a… - Mary Midgley

If we ask how creatures [bees] that act so elaborately against their private advantage can have evolved, the answer lies in their mode of reproduction. Most workers are sterile. The unit of selection is normally the whole community. Its prosperity depends on the efficiency of the workers. An uncooperative strain would simply revert toward the solitary life these insects started from and in which many would still remain..So it is natural to understand their evolution, as we would that of a plant, without reference to the plans or wishes of the individual bees.

We must face unconsidered possibilities and ask ourselves alarming questions–for instance, must we perhaps let the self-destroyer go if he really wants to? Trying to answer this by collecting information about our own neurones would be no more use than doing it, like the Roman augur, by inspecting the entrails of a goat.

Scientism exalts the idea of science on its own, causing people to become fixated on the assumptions that seemed scientific to them during their formative years. This prevents them from seeing contrary facts, however glaring they may be, that have been noticed more lately.