Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge

Wilson observes the history of biology. First there was the systemmatic categorization of life forms under Linneus. Then there was the notion of fitness and evolution by Darwin. That this could happen was supported by work on heredity done by Mendeleev. Finally, Watson and Crick developed the structure of DNA. This made it possible to anchor all of biology's observations in the realm of physical sciences. The structures and metabolic processes of cells could be derived from this work. And the functions of organs. And the organization of complex individuals. This alignment, this vision of coherence from the lowest level fundamental laws up through higher and higher levels of complexity, this view that all the highest level processes can ultimately be explained by low level processes is what we understand Wilson to mean by CONSILIENCE. Wilson's has seen how profoundly consilience has altered biological science in his lifetime. And he argues in this book that a lot of other fields of endeavor might be improved by an analogous transformation: psychology, economics, sociology, and the arts. He makes a number of very intersting points. The biggest conceptual problem I have with the book is that Wilson skates around the problems of knowability. He views the world as being ultimately knowable. But those who have a bit of knowledge about quantum physics, turbulent fluid flow, Goedel's incompleteness theorem, or chaos theory understand that many systems that can be described with great accuracy cannot be predicted very well. There's a lot that we cannot know. It's not very clear how consilience's bound's are affected by this limit, for Wilson does not go there. But this is not a problem that should ever keep someone from reading the book. Wilson's knowledge is deep and wide. His reasoning is lucid, his prose articulate. It might be a slight exaggeration to say the book is a steady stream of quotable passages on biology, science, art, knowledge, ethics, religion, and culture; but only a slight one. Almost eighty post-it notes mark the passages in my own copy that I find worthy of quotation. And I'm a very tough critic. This is a monumental book that is mandatory reading for any person who cares about how science might inform any of a host of other human endeavors. There are few areas of human study left untouched by WIlson's analysis. Most of it is hopeful and optimistic; but Wilson airs a number of concerns in the last chapter. Here he talks about the biological future of man and how it is limited by resources. He recounts peaks we have already passed, such as the peak in food production in 1987. He shows how burgeoning populations in the face of limited resources either collapse entirely (the model described by Diamond ) or go through the throes of murderous wars ( the Rwanda model described here) . The final chapter seems to say "Consilience is important. It is crucially important to every field of endeavor. And if we trace

Wilson, a 70-year-old biologist, presents an excellent persuasion of the world through a naturalists eyes, and in the process explains why the naturalist has more justification in his philosophy then a religious person who accepts what he sees without explanation because it would appear too complex, thus must be a result of God. The topics in this book are vast - ranging from theories of consciousness and thought to ethics and religious beliefs and why they exist - Wilson's experience shows. I recommend this book to anyone with a similiar interest in a journey for knowledge and truth (if such a concept is possible). This book should be read with an open mind - anything less would be a naïveté. Some sections, partiularly on epigenitic rules and consciousness, may shock the reader, as they depict reality and life in a way completely different from the normal religious or indifferent view most people have embraced as explanation. If the reader does not wish to broaden his or her horizons and provoke thought, I recommend reading the Regulations for the US Tax Code...for those of us who are intrigued by knowledge and wish to find a true justification for life, then I highly suggest reading Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge.

I first heard of this book at one of those dreary Washington cocktail parties. I was about to leave early as I usually do on such occasions when I heard someone say he had just read the obituary of postmodernism. The remark was sufficiently interesting to make me stay for a bit. Having read the book I now know what the cocktail party sage meant. In reading this book I realized that the postmodern attempt to dethrone science from its privileged place in modern civilization has failed miserably. Far from being just one among many ways of looking at the world, science now seems poised to permit humans to control their own speciation. The entire human future may revolve around that fact. The achievements of science are simply rendering postmodernism uninteresting. I used to be seriously interested in questions of "theory." But after reading this book, I have come to believe that the whole deconstructionist thing has foundered on the shoals of scientific empiricism.Let's get out our hankies but admit that theory is now just "20th century stuff."

As an undergraduate in the early 1980s I was profoundly influenced by the paradigm-shifting academic movement begun by Professor Wilson in his work, Sociobiology. The idea that human social behavior was the product of thousands of years of ancestral genetic competition was a refreshing rejoinder to the dogma espoused at that time in conventional Sociology and Anthropology courses. In the years after university I have watched as Wilson's thesis has gradually achieved greater acceptance. Even many feminists and psychologists who once viewed Wilson's work as an anathema have come to realize that the ideas he popularized have changed forever their fields of study.It was with this background that I jumped into Consilience, hoping for new insight. What I discovered was a cogent argument for the need to break down the very same academic barriers that I recognized years ago as an undergraduate. In another book I read recently, Darwin's Dangerous Idea, the philosopher Daniel Dennett argued that the fallout from Darwin's work on evolutionary natural selection has completely disrupted and changed forever the intellectual landscape in which we live. Wilson makes essentially the same argument, but his book is more often prescriptive than diagnostic. He argues that the same synthesis which has been tenuously achieved in "hard" sciences such as physics, chemistry and molecular biology can be achieved in all branches of learning. He suggests roadmaps for achieving this integration in the social sciences as well as the arts and religion.Most interesting of all is Wilson's discussion of the need for greater understanding of the biological underpinnings of morality and ethics. Wilson correctly recognizes that for all of humanity's scientific and technological achievement, if our species is to thrive well into the future we must come to terms with ourselves and recognize certain truths that our biological history has imposed on us. That recognition will necessarily entail major changes in the way we live, both at the individual and the societal level. Ultimately, however, Wilson is a conservative - not in the ideological sense, but in recognizing the need to preserve many traditions that anchor us to our cultural heritage.This is a wonderful, well-researched, engagingly-written book by one of the most important scientists of the 20th Century. Readers looking for a peek into the future of intellectual discourse need look no further than Consilience.