If there were, we would all learn this method and the only limit to our achievements would be how much time and effort we could muster for our projects. Wilson is attempting to portray the state of mind of a scientist who is either on the verge of discovery, or proceeding down a blind alley. He is attempting to come up with a causative relationship between the success of ants and the fact that they are social animals. In his pursuit of this solution, he is following in the tradition of Copernicus, who also came to a great conclusion, based at first on a leap of the imagination, and only followed by mathematical modeling. It's not enough to say there are lots of ants or that they seem to be common.
Quantitative terms allow a kind of specificity that can be tested for accuracy by others.
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