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| Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge | 
| Authors: Edward O. Wilson, Edward Osborne Wilson
Publisher: Vintage
Category: Book
List Price: $15.95
Buy Used: $0.70
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Avg. Customer Rating:  148 reviews
Sales Rank: 55703
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 384
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.1 x 0.9
ISBN: 067976867X
Dewey Decimal Number: 121
EAN: 9780679768678
ASIN: 067976867X
Publication Date: March 30, 1999
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
Grand thesis, disappointing delivery April 25, 2008
EO Wilson is one of the most brilliant modern biologists I know, and as a physican-biologist I have long been a huge fan. His over-arching thesis for this book, that all human knowledge can be linked and united, from the physical sciences and mathematics to the visual and performing arts, is a revolutionary and important one. Nonetheless, in the course of developing his argument he focuses on very specific examples of the ways in which this knowledge is connected, making it difficult to draw generalizations. Thus, his thesis is by and large inadequately supported, and I found myself yearning for more comprehensive and illustrative arguments. The end of the book, a discussion of the human impact on our planet and how our technological development is unsustainable, is a non sequitur, but nonetheless marvelously written, and an important topic -- written several years before Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth.
With all this in mind -- four stars. I would have given five, if only Professor Wilson had supported his brilliant thesis in a more comprehensive manner.
God's dream for Science March 8, 2008
11 out of 11 found this review helpful
Anybody who has participated in University education can attest to its disarray. None of the disciplines communicate, and if they do it is only to hurl invective. I cannot count the number of times I have met a very bright student of history who was completely unaware of evolutionary psychology; or how many times I have talked to evolutionary psychologists who couldn't tell you what happened in 1066. The state of affairs is truely sad. We are learning more and more about less and less. We are seeing the blades of grass, but missing patterns in the fields.
E.O. Wilson's dream is to put an end to this nonsense. Consilience is the ambitious idea that all human knowledge fits together naturally- like a lego construction. There is no need to act as if humans are not a part of nature- we are.
The goal of uniting knowledge under rigorous scientific methodology and darwinian theory is laudable.
Here is a quick example of how it could work:
Let us say I wished to study love. Who de we love? Why? Etc.
From an evolutionary view, I could ask why natural selection would create a species where two members pair bonded.
From the neuroscientific view, I could explore the brain mechanisms and neurotransmitters responsible for creating this feeling.
From a Sociological view, I could look at who pairs up with whom, what effects it has on the surrounding society, and how love's expression has changed over time.
ETC.
ETC.
In the traditional view, their would be no inherent connection between the different answers reached by different disciplines. In the consilient view, they all belong together and interconnect. If the sociological view is not consilient with what is known about human biology and neuropsychology than one or both views must be wrong. From the view of consilience, the more our mutually seperate investigations fit together, the more likely our answer is a good one. Not only that, but our answer is much more satisfying.
This is consilience in a nutshell. A way to unite knowledge and provide deeply meaningful and satisfying answers to the question of what it means to be human, while not losing any scientific rigour.
My only qualm with the idea of consilience is its almost metaphysical nature. Anybody who does research and actively reads scientific journals knows just how hard true consilience would be to achieve. There are so many methodologies, units of analysis, debates, uncertainties; and there is SO MUCH information. It is hard to see how all of it can be united in a reasonable manner. I wish that more people would work toward such a goal, but academics, like the rest of us, have egos and niches to carve out.
In the end, E.O. Wilson's vision remains an ideal yet to be realized. Is it realistic? Probably not. Is it worth striving for? Like true love, it most certainly is.
 Reductionist Science and Transcendentalism February 17, 2008
As an earlier reviewer (Howard Taylor) probably correctly points out, there are many mysteries reductionist science may never lead us to fully understand. That is, assuming that we are even competent to achieve this mysteriously exalted state: assuming the human mind is not just another circumscribed object with no more of a chance to encompass a full understanding of anything else than any other object in the Universe. Anyhow, be that as it may, our very awareness of these unresolved mysteries is to a large extent the result of reductionist science. Getting to a point where you know something is complex or even intellectually intractable is a sort of understanding. Seen in that light, it's hard to argue that reductionist science has failed to increase our understanding. In my opinion, reductionist science has gotten us a lot further than have the millions of transcendentalist mystics who ever sat cross-legged humming on some mountain top; or the legions of true believers who ever pressed forehead to tile in abject submission to unconquerable ignorance. And a capitulation to complete ignorance is what transcendentalism finally boils down to. You may get a nice wooly-headed buzz from it, but it doesn't help you to know that you don't know. Reductionist science will, at very least, get you that far. E.O. Wilson is, if not on the right track, quite possibly on the only viable one available to our poor species at this point in time.
A third Pulitzer Prize"? December 3, 2007
Wilson already has two Pulitzer prizes. With this book he could, and should, get a third. Not just in Letters, but in Science - if there is such a category for that prize. Wilson not only places science and culture in an evolutionary context, which makes them both more understandable than either, together with the other, was before, and he provides leads and notes to his sources for anyone who wants to follow up. He writes with enviable clarity, untangling, what are often, convoluted, subtle arguments, which upon reflection, often become self evident. The Science that he brings to bear is always fully explained, and at just the right level. There are few books that change the way we look at the reality around us - this is one of those books.
Where do you stand? Where do we? November 19, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
My reading of the then most recent book by this reknowned entomologist, widely accorded the title of "father" of sociobiology, was immeasurably heightened by knowing that I would be able to toss him some questions the next day, albeit indirectly. My friend, colleague, and boss, John Huie, would be interviewing Mr. Wilson first thing Monday morning, for the environmental journal I edited -- what an opportunity! CONSILIENCE offers a grand vision of the future of science as perceived by a brilliant and fearless thinker. Wilson believes that, just as physics and chemistry have deepened biologic understanding, so biology is poised to inform the social sciences and the arts, to bring all human knowledge into one coherent world view. His explanation of the way genetic and cultural evolution shape each other is very difficult to confute. Wilson is not without his critics, many quite heated. Wendell Berry even went so far as to write a book (Life Is a Miracle: An Essay Against Modern Superstition, Counterpoint; New Ed edition, 2001) refuting his stance, which utterly removes God (gods, etc.) from action beyond that of Prime Mover, and posits our experience of self (soul) as a construct of perception. Perhaps most deeply unsettling to many is his suggestion that free will probably doesn't exist, but since we will probably never be able to prove it, the illusion is secure. A profound statement from one of our era's heaviest intellectual hitters, I highly recommend this book no matter which side you might take on its fundaments.
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