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 population dynamics back to the fundamental laws using ideas from consilience, we will soon discover that this field of study more than any other desparately needs the illuminating effects offered by this approach. Like a pack of hyenas eying a single child on the savannah at dusk, the problems are staring at us. They are undeniable. They will not go away. The longer we turn our back on them, the more desperately we risk losing everything to them."
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Top reviews from other countries
- CristoferReviewed in Spain on September 6, 2024
Worth the read, but the book’s physical quality is not the best there is.
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