Consilience: the Unity of Knowledge [Import] [Hardcover]

Edward O. Wilson (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf; 1ST edition (1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0316645699
• ISBN-13: 978-0316645690
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,164,749 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Regarded as one of the world's preeminent biologists and naturalists, Edward O. Wilson grew up in south Alabama and the Florida Panhandle, where he spent his boyhood exploring the region's forests and swamps, collecting snakes, butterflies, and ants--the latter to become his lifelong specialty. The author of more than twenty books, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning "The Ants" and "The Naturalist" as well as his first novel "Anthill," Wilson, a professor at Harvard, makes his home in Lexington, Massachusetts.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Science as a bedside book, August 31, 2011

By 

Sciamtist - See all my reviews

This review is from: Consilience (Paperback)

This was a book cautiously selected and ravenously read. It is full of the kind of logic that delights the mind and tidies up the loose ends of scientific enquiry. Not for the religious, unless you have an open mind.

This was not a book for dipping into, it is a page-turner and is written in a style that keeps it interesting from front to back. A must read. I have passed it on to many other appreciative colleagues. You will do the same.

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant. maybe a little too brilliant, August 17, 2010

By 

Dan MacKinlay (Sydney, Australia) - See all my reviews

E.O. Wilson is among the world's most eminent scientists, largely for his work on ants. this book reflects some prfound musings about his beliefs that all human knowledge is heading toward a state of "consilience", a kind of ultimate unity. It's pretty much a must-read, whether you agree or not, for anyone who thinks about thought.

My major criticism is that when Wilson wanders into sociobiology, where the complexity of his ideas is probably more appropriate to ants than humans, and the weird analogies with plant life determining future trajectory kind of miss the complexity of development in creatures which have a memory and individual capacity for learning. Ah well. Nobody is perfect.

0 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Insults Christians Right off the bat, March 13, 2009

By 

Amy H. Chu "RumblePie" (Frazier Forest, CA) - See all my reviews
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Anyone who learns to think would not believe the Bible. So he says.
This is a cut beyond excuse.