Unlike many of his noisy critics, Wilson is unwilling to exclude humanity from the forces of Darwinian evolution. Consilience seeks to expand thinking about evolution's impact on the entire human condition. He harks back to the ideas of the Enlightenment, particularly those of Condorcet, who he equates with Jefferson, in taking the broadest view of the world and the place of humanity within it. From here, Wilsion expounds on the process of science and how it has been validated. Even with its triumphs, science has not displaced the humanities, nor, in Wilson's view, should it. Various pressures separated the natural sciences and philosophy after the Enlightenment. In today's world, the breach has been widened by the "post-modernists" who flatly deny any universal aspect of human behaviour. Wilson is particularly harsh on the "deconstruction" movement of recent years. It must be noted here that any natural scientist who has read Derrida and comprehends him is worth rallying to and following. Wilson's call rejects post-modernism and urges a bridging of the abyss separating the natural sciences and the humanities.

Wilson's Bridge is constructed of known materials established in a new way. Rebutting the false critics who label him a "genetic determinist," Wilson calls for a new study field of "gene-culture coevolution," in which he sees culture created by a "communal mind made up of individual minds which are the product of the genetically structured human brain." The genetic structure permits flexible interaction with the other minds of the community, making the culture evolve along with the individuals. Once this concept is accepted within both the humanities and scientific disciplines, consilience will be successfully launched.

The arts and religions are not excepted from this programme. Wilson urges those in the arts to seek out the evolutionary roots of artistic expression and find new insights for artistic expression. Wilson eschews the organized religions as the final arbiters of ethics. Centuries of debate boil down to a duality: "Either ethical precepts . . . are independent of human experience or else they are human inventions." He further contends that empirical reasoning should look to his gene-culture coevolution concept to better understand what truly underlies ethical precepts. He sees "the current expansion of scientific inquiry into the deeper processes of human thought [will make] this venture feasible." It's an inquiry we should all follow with interest. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]


A million years ahead of its time or impossible?   October 21, 2004
 21 out of 22 found this review helpful

In this ambitious work, Edward O. Wilson, one of the most distinguished scientists of our times, and a man I greatly admire, goes perhaps a bit beyond his area of expertise as he envisions a project that is perhaps beyond even the dreams of science fiction. "...[A]ll tangible phenomena," he writes on page 266, "from the birth of stars to the workings of social institutions, are based on material processes that are ultimately reducible, however long and tortuous the sequences, to the laws of physics."

This in a nutshell is his dream of "consilience." It is also the statement of a determinist. My problem with such a laudable endeavor (and with determinism in general) is this: even if he is right, that the arts and the humanities will ultimately yield to reduction, how do we, limited creatures that we are, do it? It seems to me that in the so-called soft sciences like sociology, economics, and psychology, for example, and even more so in the world of the humanities and the arts, reduction is so incredibly complex that such an attempt is comparable (in reverse order) of putting Humpty Dumpty back together again. It's ironic that Wilson uses almost exactly this metaphor on page 296 to explain why once the rain forests are chopped down, they're gone forever. He notes, "Collect all the species...Maintain them in zoos, gardens, and laboratory cultures...Then bring the species back together and resynthesize the community on new ground." Will this work? Wilson's answer is no. He writes, "...biologists cannot accomplish such a task, not if thousands of them came with a billion-dollar budget. They cannot even imagine how to do it." He adds, still on page 296, that even if biologists could sort and preserve cultures of all the species, "they could not then put the community back together again. Such a task...is like unscrambling an egg with a pair of spoons."

This is exactly how I feel about the consilience of human knowledge. I cannot even imagine how reductionism could help us to understand a poem. There is a dictum among poets that "nothing defines the poem but the poem itself." No amount of reduction will allow us to understand what makes the poem tick. This is because the poem is an experience, a human emotional, intellectual, sensual experience dependent upon not only the literal meaning of the words, but on their connotations, their sounds, their rhythm, their relationships to one another, their syntax, their allusions, their history, their use by other poets, etc., and also what the individual reader of the poem brings to the experience. Reduce the poem and you do not have an understanding of the poem. At best you have an essay on the poem, at worst something alien to the esthetic experience. In essence, I should say that the problem with consilience is that our experience is not reducible.

I have read a lot of what Professor Wilson has written, including On Human Nature (1978), the charming memoir, Naturalist (1994), parts of The Ants (1990) and his controversial, but ground-breaking and highly influential, Sociobiology (1975). And I have read some of his critics, most recently essayist Wendell Berry's Life Is a Miracle (2000) and Charles Jenck's piece in Alas, Poor Darwin (2000). What has struck me in these readings is the disconnection between what Wilson has written and what some critics have criticized him for writing! For example it is thought that Wilson is a strict biological determinist when it comes to human behavior. But here he writes, very clearly on page 126, "We know that virtually all of human behavior is transmitted by culture." Wilson has had to weather more than his share of unfair criticism because, as the father of sociobiology, which some mistakenly see as a furtherance of a rationale for eugenics, he has been made the target of the misinformed. Additionally, Wilson is not the lovable sort of genius we adored in Einstein, nor the heroic scientist overcoming a terrible handicap as in the case of Stephen Hawking, but a slightly nerdish genius from Alabama who spent much of his life crawling around on the ground and in trees looking at ants. Some people make it clear that such a man should not presume to tell them anything about human beings and how we should conduct our lives or how we should view ourselves. But I think they are wrong. Wilson brings unique insights into the human condition, and he has the courage of his convictions. I think he is a man we should listen to regardless of whether we agree with him or not.

Even if its central thesis is wrong, Consilience is nonetheless an exciting book, full of information and ideas, elegantly written, dense, at times brilliant, a book that cannot be ignored and should be read by anyone interested in the human condition regardless of their field of expertise.


From fundamental physics to art, in one easy paradigm   January 12, 2001
 10 out of 13 found this review helpful

In some sense, Wilson's book is trivial -- it is the job of science to identify relationships between phenomena. If it is possible to generate chains of reasoning, cause and effect allowing a seamless transition from pure physics to pure art, then one might anticipate that science will eventually forge such a chain, and scientists may well view this as their greatest triumph. This idea is not new. The real success of Consilience is in elucidating a view of how such a chain might appear and giving some hint of how close we are to completing it. Again, this is not new, but Wilson presents a readable and thought-provoking version that I would happily recommend.


Yet another defence against invisible enemies!   November 17, 1999
 3 out of 16 found this review helpful

"Consilience" is a book that is written with a confidence speaking of a mind at the height of its powers, yet it is a confidence that is misplaced and echoes the spirit of the 19th century fin de siecle when it was thought that science was more or less complete, but for a couple of niggling problems to do with black body radiation and the implications of the Michelson-Morley experiment! Incompleteness is an intrinsic quality that has been the strength of science, yet success has the power to seduce and create the belief that some kind of concilatory breakthrough is very near. Epigenetic rules are waved as a metaphorical banner calling all forms of thought to its flag, and spurning all that does not show allegiance. Everything from religion to art to the humanities is chided for not looking for them, and everything that is clearly not science is dismissed out of hand. Moreover, this dismissal takes the form of badly thought-out sound-bites, which reflects poorly on the

scientific mind. This is the sadness of it, for science has a great deal to offer and many challenges to meet; these will not be approached by imagining enemies in the camp. This has given rise to three major weaknesses in the book. In spite of the tirade against post-modernism and deconstructivism, one cannot help feeling his beliefs in the all-powerful methodology of science springs from his resentment of a backwoods Baptist upbringing. A minor point maybe, but it is not possible to dismiss it out of hand as this book attempts to do; rather it becomes buried between the lines of this book unconsciously and becomes its formative motive. One can never feel that it is truly objective. This attempted excision reflects itself at least twice. Notions of the Oedipus complex as expounded by Freud are quickly dismissed as unscientific (and admittedly for some good reasons) but the fact that it is targeted in the first place is both interesting and ironic. The origin of the Oedipus story is actually a warning that is relevant to the practice of science as outlined here. Sophocles unpacks the implications of attempting to predict the future by showing how such knowledge affects the present with disastrous consequences. Prediction is the left hand of science while the right is manipulation. All concepts as they are used in science are bent to this double-edged purpose. In the process, the position of inertia as an idea becomes paramount for only with the context it creates is it possible to create the possibility of prediction. However, to reduce reality to this concept universally which is what science must do to achieve consilience (and it is bound to be successful), it is necessary to assume the validity of the assumption to be actually true. In effect, there is no place in such a scheme for personal sentiment or dialectic, both elements being absent from the structure of science. That is why it could never be a complete system and why

concilience becomes wishful thinking. However, to make it look as if it works, it becomes an arrogance indeed to assume the possibility of overlaying traditional holism with consilience (which is scientific holism) and expect to "explain" anything at all. Consilience is ultimately concerned with a magic-bullet production line, intellectually acceptable snake-oil cure-alls, while traditional holism emphasises the fundamental link between reality and humanity's participation in it. Yet while attempting to overlay it, this deviant morphism called consilience cannot rid itself so easily of the trappings of traditional holism, for they become unconsciously folded into the structure of this idea of interconnectedness. Consider this image: "Think of two intersecting lines forming a cross and picture the four quadrants thus created...Next draw a series of concentric rings around the intersection..." This web-like metaphor is not new nor original, but is familiar in religion, and the Muslim faith in particular. In fact, the meaning of the word "religion" is taken from just such intersecting lines which means to link back. These are taken to be the human elements regarded as the personal journeys of all people, complete with all their particular sentiments and intents and weaknesses, in contrast to the more law-like structure of the concentric rings. This difference is the dialectic structure that makes it workable, even though these two elements are apparently in opposition. This absence of accomodation in Consilience is reflected in the presence in its web metaphor of types only, or bodies and schools of thought, no matter how disparate. In effect, such imagery belies the dogmatic form that a consiliatory scientific perspective has engendered, making of science a religion of the old school. Modern day science is thus shaped into a form reflecting the same level of autocracy enjoyed by medieval religion. For all his achievements as a scientist, Edward Wilson manages to discredit the two most influential forms of thought in history. It reminds one of Descartes, who in trying to prove the existence of God, did more to promote atheism than any other thinker in history. Humanity is not the sum of its categorial parts, nor is it a colony of ants scaled up. There is always something left out in any thought structure for the sake of the thought structure. Incompleteness leaves room for the human spirit. Conciliation would attempt to do away with it. Of course, this is a post-modernist, deconstructive criticism, a form dismissed out of hand by this book. On the other hand, things do not go away because they are unliked. Fear becomes hidden, not eradicated, and works unconsciously to reflect itself in the subsequent structures made public. Digging them out makes this book an interesting read, but it has little else to offer in terms of understanding or holism.


Well written and good science   October 26, 1998
 1 out of 2 found this review helpful

A superb book, reaffirming Wilson's belief that economics is based on biology like biology is based on physics. Very entertaining to read, with some intriguing new ideas: how will we choose to use our newfound power over our own evolution? But, like Dawkins and so many other great popularisers of science, Wilson has been banging the same drum since before I was born. Move on, guys - anyone who doesn't understand it yet isn't worth bothering with.