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3.0 out of 5 stars
Interesting, but Not Persuasive, May 26 2004
The thesis of Wilson's book is that DNA and the genome project are the underlying feature of all knowledge, bringing unity or consilience among so-called disparate studies.For example, in the study of culture: "culture helps to determine which of the prescribing genes survive and multiply from one generation to the next. Successful new genes alter the epigegentic rules of populations. The alter epigenetic rules change the direction and effectiveness of the channels of cultural acquisition." The social sciences should study genetic populations not individuals, because universal behavior is that which is most persistent and relevant to human behavior. Individual variants, while interesting in themselves, must be variants of universal human behavior in order to be fully understood and known in their relative context. Our knowledge, therefore, is limited to universals, not specifics. The imaginative arts starts with the real world genetics, claims Wilson, and builds upon it with coherent metaphors that give art and science their vibrance. The creative impulse is the flip side of science that must build itself up with archetypes, themes, and symbols that inspire relaxation and reinforce science's advancements. Religion is a hold over from centuries of man's evolution, in that, in the wild pre-man had to worry about being killed as well as killing other species. This holdover of genetic dominance and subordination finds its expression in the fear of some mythical beast, in this case of god. Our evolutionary hardwire leads individuals to substitute the myth that some supernatural being exists, even though the logical and positivistic basis for such a dominant being are now rationally debunked. The book is articulate, provocative, and covers a wide spectrum of ideas, but I didn't find all the arguments particularly persuasive. I thought the argument on the arts more of a meditation on archetypes than an argument of universal knowledge through genetics. The social sciences too was seemingly lame; knowledge as that limited to universals is a throw back to Aristotle. and seems to limit the daunting variety of humankind. The most successful was the religion and ethics; one can easily be ethical without a supreme being handing out punishment and rewards, and belief in god gets people nowhere but false comfort. One thing that irritated me was the lack of specific footnotes for the copious use of others' works; instead they are summarized in notes at the end of the book.
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4.0 out of 5 stars
Unity of Knowledge must be empirical AND transcendent, April 29 2004
Biologist Edward O. Wilson's "Consilience" earns 4 stars for effort and sincerity. From his epiphany with Darwinism, Wilson carries the reader forward through a revival of rational empiricism ("the rational mind cannot free itself to engage in pure reason" p. 113) toward a unitary understanding of everything.In doing so, Wilson rejects the longstanding trend of relativism. "Scientists and philosophers have largely abandoned the search for absolute objectivity." ... "I think otherwise and will risk heresy". (p. 60) In the consilience world view "all tangible phenomena, 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." (p. 266) Neither religion with its tribalism, nor philosophy with its confusions, nor the social sciences with their disunity, nor any transcendental appeals are needed to explain the universe. Wilson believes that biology will eventually explain man fully. Not just physical traits, but psychological and social ones as well: emotions, habit, social behavior, art, the inclination toward religion, and even the process of reason itself; will all be understood through genetics, psychobiology, and the brain sciences. "Religion is instinctive; its sources run deeper than ordinary habit and are in fact hereditary, urged into birth through biases in mental development encoded in the genes." (p. 257) There is a section where Wilson contrives transcendental arguments to compare to his empirical reasoning. One senses strongly that Wilson is out of his field here. But there are many valuable elements in the book. For example, Wilson identifies the emerging phenomenon of gene-culture coevolution. Up to the present age, genetics has determined the evolution of human culture. Now human beings are poised to intervene in their own genetic evolution. "Homo sapiens is about to decommission natural selection, the force that made us." (p. 276) The concluding chapter focuses on the environment and appears out of place. Apparently Wilson wants to highlight man's responsibility in his own survival. He strives to bring the reader back to his beginning theme: "The legacy of the Enlightenment is the belief that entirely on our own we can know, and in knowing, understand, and in understanding, choose wisely." (p. 297) But in the end, the reader is left hanging. What good is faith in consilience if humanity self-destructs for lack of wisdom? Beneath the pretense of his grandiose idea, Wilson retains an element of humility. He admits that he may be wrong. And yes, he is wrong. A clear reading of "Ethical Values in the Age of Science" http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0521076196/103-1543219-7023851 by Paul Roubiczek (note especially pp. 170-171) reveals the flaws in Wilson's foundations and reasoning. Principal among those flaws: he disregards internal reality and he applies science where it does not apply. Wilson's motive to find underlying consilience is admirable. His complaints against bad religion, poor philosophy and visionless social sciences are understandable. But a true, coherent understanding of everything must include both the physical realm AND that which transcends it. Wilson's insistence that consilience must be EITHER empirical OR transcendental is wrong. (...)
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2.0 out of 5 stars
". . . oh you mighty gods!", April 6 2004
Wilson's book is labeled "science in the grand visionary tradition of Newton, Einstein, and Feynman." Although the author quickly evangelizes us with a conveniently Wilsonian Einstein ("Ionian to the core"), we would do well to consider that actual tradition of Newton, Einstein, and Feynman. Newton believed, as had Aristotle, that the unity of knowledge is not realized within the disciplines of natural science, but might be approached through First Philosophy and that natural science is, by constitution, wholly human and thus wholly theoretical and tentative. Einstein, like his friend Kurt Gödel being something of a Platonist, believed that there does exist true mystery beyond the grasp of natural science (he saw natural science itself as a spiritual dance with a genuine mystery). Feynman surely fought his own battles with a personal scientism, yet he insisted that "all of the things we say in science, all of the conclusions, are uncertain, because they are only conclusions. They are guesses . . . and you cannot know. . ." Wilson weakly pretends to concur, but his thesis here ultimately pleads that we reject such clear-eyed humility. He has been called Darwin's heir -- fitting in that he has a nineteenth century understanding of what science actually is. (Please read on. . .)
Wilson is a sometimes venerated academian "captured by the dream of unified learning." In 'Consilience', he unfortunately parrots some pompous foolishness. Science is not honestly served by donning rose-colored glasses and crowning itself -- inevitably, if "not yet" -- functionally omniscient (although this idea has a certain popular constituency!). I habitually read science and am fortunate to have several friends who are scientists. My interests often bring me into company with still other scientists. I relate this as foundational to my observation that many scientists have less difficulty accepting the absolutely tentative nature of human knowledge than does Mr. Wilson. Beyond the arrogance concomitant to the general argument of 'Consilience' (i.e., imperialistic institutional "science" IS the omniscient priesthood to whom all unenlightened inferiors will bow in subjection, even if "not yet"), it is rife with internal contradiction and both logical and historical failure. Human science is a human discipline. Humans, including scientists, are innately prone to error, narrowness of thought, constraints imposed by personal beliefs and psychologies, and variously motivated "dreams" (witness Wilson's). Humans, including scientists, are subject to temporal, cultural and industrial influences and pressures. Within these industrial influences we must include those of academia, i.e., the industry of education and its market-entangled paradigms (the author pretends to understand this, but obviously does not). Human science has never been precisely true or whole, nor is there any purely scientific reason to believe that this is possible, read Feynman in this regard, or Whitehead or Schrödinger, or even Wittgenstein whose view of science was essentially opposite Whitehead's. (For contemporary commentary see Paul Davies, Roger Penrose, Thomas Kuhn or, for that matter, nearly any sober physicist.) Human science has historically never gotten to the conclusive "bottom" of ANYTHING (we still don't have a completed theory of gravitation!), nor do we know that, in principle, such a grandiose insight is attainable (even if, at some point, we believe we have attained it). Our presumably most accurate scientific insights (Maxwell's electromagnetic theory or Einstein's energy-matter equation, for example) ask deeper questions. Within material science's own dictums remains that which lies beyond the reach of empirical science, which, for example, will never examine the alleged primordial "quantum void" from which the material world is supposed to have fortuitously sprung. Suppose the 'holy grail' of material reductionism were captured, the fabled Theory of Everything. It would provide a ground for a self-referenced circle of pragmatic "knowledge" -- but the ontological mystery would remain, smiling silently in nearby shadows, whispering to those willing to hear, "and why, oh mighty genius, do you suppose this IS?" Further (and the truth hurts), "science" has rarely been purely beneficial. Science discovered how to harness nuclear energy but doesn't know what to do with the dangerous waste it creates in doing so, nor what to do with the fact that certain humans desire to apply this discovery murderously. Science discovered antibiotics but doesn't know exactly how they can be used wisely rather than foolheartedly (and dangerously). Although few recognize it, bio-engineered food crops increasingly present a related dilemma. Science discovered various insights with which industry and technology-drunk consumers are now scraping holes in the ozone layer. Parroting convenient bombast, Wilson would blame theism (p 268, Consilience, 1999)! Intimating that such things don't really reflect an endemic ignorance within human "knowledge" so much as they provide examples of what science does "not yet" know, highlights a pathological delusion. Wilson's claims here are not grounded in history, in science, or in pure logic, they are classic 'true belief'. Human science is wonderful, yet finally human, and when we humans are most intoxicated with our own genius, we inevitably prove that we are dangerously ignorant jesters.
We have barely scratched the surface of the body of error in this thesis, but I will desist. (Please read Wendell Berry's sagacious rebuttal of Wilson's Consilience.) Yes, science is a highly valuable means of approaching and approximating truth, but belief in "the unity of knowledge" does not logically suggest that human "genius" can ultimately encircle it. The natural domain of pure materialism is natural science, the human interrogation of the material world. The appropriate methodology of natural science is reduction. Virtually no one disagrees on these points. Scientism, unsupported by either natural science or logic, demands that this domain and method equate to the whole of reality and evangelizes this doctrine as the sovereign of all knowledge. Sobriety rejects Wilson's delusions of grandeur, pretensions of benevolent genius, imperialism of denied ignorance.
This book deserves broad critical attention precisely because it is valuable to see how foolish those popularly seen as wise often are, how unscientific an acclaimed scientist can be."I see not how certainty can be obtained in any science." - Newton
"We cannot make the mystery go away by 'explaining' how it works." - Feynman
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