Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge
by Edward O. Wilson
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Book Summary Information
Author: Edward O. WilsonEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Format: Large Print
Published: 1998-10
ISBN: 0786216077
Number of pages: 688
Publisher: Thorndike Press
Book Reviews of Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge
Book Review: OK, I'll Give it Three Stars Because He's One Smart Hombre
Summary: 3 Stars
First of all, those who attempt to come to an understanding as to the origin of the universe, the how and why of it all, ultimately, the answer to the big question--where we came from, why we're here, and where we're going-- . . . well, what's being attempted here needs to be put into perspective.
According to Stephen Hawking, if we find the string theory (or a third theory to tie together quantum and relativity) then we will know the answer to everything. We'll know the mind of God. Now, I must say that even if you aren't religious (like Einstein, but he knew--God doesn't play dice with the universe), you've got to realize that the universe is made of 100's of billions of galaxies. And the great intelligence or organizer of it all (very little chance that such finely tuned matter merely randomly arose out of cosmic chaos) can make galaxies, planets, and stars. Me? I can barely make a good omelet. Case closed.
So my point being, we're basically a peanut trying to keep up with a jaguar (I used to use the ant analogy for my students, until I realized that was too kind). How can we in our infinite ignorance ever understand anything of such complexity?
Well, the answer lies in the non-answer. String theory is not even wrong. What's that mean? There are so many possible outcomes that it can't even be considered. Maybe it's the Great Intelligence telling us by design that the answer lies not in our imperfect mind but in our potentially perfect heart. But that's another argument.
Well, even physicists will tell you they aren't dealing with reality. How can they be when the string theory, in order for it to be worked with, dictates that seven dimensions are required. If our brainiacks need four additional dimensions to describe the ultimate answer to reality--key word there: reality--then I think we've run aground. And nothing at all against the brilliant mind of Edward Wilson but I think all this theorizing, to a great extent, is a waste of time. The same reason I've gotten out of the college / university vacuum. Too much thinking with little real life application.
It all reminds me of Swift's great thinkers in Gulliver's Travles on the Island of LaPuta. Here these men use their fascinating intellect to come up with such inventions as sunlight extractors--taking sunlight from cucumbers--or the feces reader which tells the user whether or not the person being analyzed is telling the truth. What is most interesting of all is that while these great thinkers are coming up with their abstract, impractical inventions the earth below is in shambles--people are starving and wasting away under the cloud of the great Island of LaPuta.
Summary of Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge
"A dazzling journey across the sciences and humanities in search of deep laws to unite them." --The Wall Street JournalOne of our greatest living scientists--and the winner of two Pulitzer Prizes for On Human Nature and The Ants--gives us a work of visionary importance that may be the crowning achievement of his career. In Consilience (a word that originally meant "jumping together"), Edward O. Wilson renews the Enlightenment's search for a unified theory of knowledge in disciplines that range from physics to biology, the social sciences and the humanities.
Using the natural sciences as his model, Wilson forges dramatic links between fields. He explores the chemistry of the mind and the genetic bases of culture. He postulates the biological principles underlying works of art from cave-drawings to Lolita. Presenting the latest findings in prose of wonderful clarity and oratorical eloquence, and synthesizing it into a dazzling whole, Consilience is science in the path-clearing traditions of Newton, Einstein, and Richard Feynman.
The biologist Edward O. Wilson is a rare scientist: having over a long career made signal contributions to population genetics, evolutionary biology, entomology, and ethology, he has also steeped himself in philosophy, the humanities, and the social sciences. The result of his lifelong, wide-ranging investigations is Consilience (the word means "a jumping together," in this case of the many branches of human knowledge), a wonderfully broad study that encourages scholars to bridge the many gaps that yawn between and within the cultures of science and the arts. No such gaps should exist, Wilson maintains, for the sciences, humanities, and arts have a common goal: to give understanding a purpose, to lend to us all "a conviction, far deeper than a mere working proposition, that the world is orderly and can be explained by a small number of natural laws." In making his synthetic argument, Wilson examines the ways (rightly and wrongly) in which science is done, puzzles over the postmodernist debates now sweeping academia, and proposes thought-provoking ideas about religion and human nature. He turns to the great evolutionary biologists and the scholars of the Enlightenment for case studies of science properly conducted, considers the life cycles of ants and mountain lions, and presses, again and again, for rigor and vigor to be brought to bear on our search for meaning. The time is right, he suggests, for us to understand more fully that quest for knowledge, for "Homo sapiens, the first truly free species, is about to decommission natural selection, the force that made us.... Soon we must look deep within ourselves and decide what we wish to become." Wilson's wisdom, eloquently expressed in the pages of this grand and lively summing-up, will be of much help in that search.
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