"A dazzling journey across the sciences and humanities in search of deep laws to unite them." —The Wall Street Journal
reviews
Oct 10, 2010
Jimmy
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I was shelving in western philosophy the other week (I don't really have a choice against eavesdropping on bookstore conversations, and they're pretty much all inane to the point of inflicting brain atrophy on the listener, i.e. me). As I walked down the aisle with a handful of Wittgenstein, a customer approached. Sure enough he had a lame excuse for a beard, and deliberately mussed-up hair atop his excessively squinty facial constitution; fucking college kids. As I looked down I saw, of all
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Sep 11, 2007
Rob
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for me, this was so horrible that after 100 pages i simply could not bring myself to go on. i guess this book was written for congressional staffers to read, and all the flowery language was supposed to "inspire" them to tell their boss to give scientists lots and lots of money.
basically, i think Wilson knows he is never going to do any good science again, so the next best thing is to write a book about how scientists (i.e. himself) are the angels of humanity.
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basically, i think Wilson knows he is never going to do any good science again, so the next best thing is to write a book about how scientists (i.e. himself) are the angels of humanity.
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May 05, 2008
Michael
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E.O. Wilson is one of the few people in the 20th century who can actually claim to have given birth to a movement that did not disappear. His early work in Sociobiology, once roundly rejected by liberal academia, became the nucleus of the stunningly successful discipline of evolutionary psychology in the 1990s and beyond. In Consilience, Wilson sets himself the impossible task of arguing that all human knowledge can be reduced to key scientific principles. This is a somewhat different task than
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Aug 18, 2007
Jeff
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With the way things are in academia, nobody in the world could be qualified to write this book. The disciplines are too boldly demarcated, it is often said, each a small nation state prowled about by a tight pride of leonine experts who snap at ignorant layman invaders. But accomplished scientist and human nature theorist E. O. Wilson is a dove among the hawks who perceives a need for increased cooperation among all branches of human knowledge. All of them, which he arranges vertically with p
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Aug 09, 2011
Wilson begins by professing his fantasy of The Ionian Enchantment, a belief in the unity of all knowledge. In that sense, science is religion liberated and writ large, which aims to save the spirit not by surrender but by the liberation of the human mind. Consilience is the key to the unification agenda of all knowledge. Most of the issues that vex humanity daily – ethnic conflict, arms escalation, overpopulation, environmental damage, endemic poverty – cannot be solved without integrating knowl
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Oct 07, 2011
Ivan
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Loved it! Loved it! Loved it! E. O. Wilson's writing is such a delight. The book argues for mutual cooperation between biology and other branches of knowledge, as well as for protection of and conservation in the planet. Here's the concluding paragraph:
"I believe that in the process of locating new avenues of creative thought, we will also arrive at an existential conservatism. It is worth asking repeatedly: Where are our deepest roots? We are, it seems, Old World, catarrhine prim More...
"I believe that in the process of locating new avenues of creative thought, we will also arrive at an existential conservatism. It is worth asking repeatedly: Where are our deepest roots? We are, it seems, Old World, catarrhine prim More...
Jan 03, 2011
Sam
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I don't agree with the overall thesis, nor do I agree with the way the arguement is made. I am especially skeptical of Wilson's use of history and art - fields of inquiry which he seems to be grossly oversimplifying in the service of his arguement. He may well be as versed in 18th century French history or the contemporary novel as he is in science, but if so this book does not establish it. There are some truly eye-rolling moments in his discussion of the Enlightment and in his two page dismiss
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May 05, 2010
New York Times columnist David Brooks has chosen to discuss Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge by Edward O. Wilson on FiveBooks as one of the top five on his subject – Neuroscience, saying that:
“…In Consilience Wilson makes the prediction that a lot of the disciplines we have separated human behaviour into are obsolete, and that we are on the verge of unifying knowledge in an inter-disciplinary way. And that is actually happening with neuroscience: there’s a field of neural economics, More...
“…In Consilience Wilson makes the prediction that a lot of the disciplines we have separated human behaviour into are obsolete, and that we are on the verge of unifying knowledge in an inter-disciplinary way. And that is actually happening with neuroscience: there’s a field of neural economics, More...
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Jul 22, 2009
Allisonperkel
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This may be one of the best popular science books I've ever read. Put simply, Prof. Wilson if trying to lay out the claim that all sciences: the social and the hard, at there base level, share some common epigenetic features.
His arguments span several disciplines: from biology to physics to religion to economics to ethics. His arguments are compelling, and he freely admits that he may be overreaching or that the the commonalities may be too reduced to be of much value, yet the probl More...
His arguments span several disciplines: from biology to physics to religion to economics to ethics. His arguments are compelling, and he freely admits that he may be overreaching or that the the commonalities may be too reduced to be of much value, yet the probl More...
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Sep 07, 2011
Vastine
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E.O. Wilson has gone from promising new star in natural science to a a pariah in the 70's and 80' (his classed at Harvard were often subject to protesting) to a two time Pulitzer prize-winning writer of general science. I am glad to see he has lived long enough to see his reputation be saved from an ignorant past. The theme of this book is that science needs to stop examine the trees without seeing the forest. That is that disciplines need to see beyond their own gardens. It is an idea that
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Nov 29, 2009
I've been meaning to read Wilson for a while now, but I regret starting with this. While his wish to unite the various academic disciplines into a single corpus of knowledge seems to come from the right place, his actual efforts to explain what such a system would look like are dull, meager, and at times poorly reasoned. His effort to show linkages between the natural sciences and the humanities in particular falls completely flat. A few paltry examples culled from his own research, while intere
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Jan 28, 2009
I love Wilson's thinking and writing. This ranks up there with Guns Germs and Steel as favorite non-fictions of mine, although I suppose that list has grown to include many thought-provoking histories and science books, etc.
Best of all is Wilson as interdisciplinarian, which is the essential thesis in this text. He provides a great model for intellectual curiosity in all of us.
I had the honor of taking one of his courses when I was in college, but sadly it yielded my w More...
Best of all is Wilson as interdisciplinarian, which is the essential thesis in this text. He provides a great model for intellectual curiosity in all of us.
I had the honor of taking one of his courses when I was in college, but sadly it yielded my w More...
Jul 07, 2009
David
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This was a tough read mainly because of the density of the topic. But it was a masterpiece of scholarship. In making his case for a convergence of biological-physical sciences with social-humanity studies, Wilson traverses the gamut of human knowledge. From a history of the enlightenment philosophies to genetics, neurology to theology, ecology to economics, and more, he overturns stones from many disciplines, showing their interconnectivity and interspersing the dialogue with quotes from Baco
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Dec 03, 2008
Candice
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I am very glad that I finally got around to reading this! I had to read the ethics and religion chapter of this book in a social/moral development class at UW. I remember being blown away by Wilson's ideas on human nature and its interaction with science. His proposition, that the social sciences should be informed by the natural sciences to form a united base of knowledge, makes intuitive sense to me. My future research in grad school will be focused on the biological basis of human behavior, s
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Oct 23, 2010
Bryan
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I liked this book overall, but probably not as much as I thought I would.
I like, for example, the contrasts he makes between the different branches of learning. I think there's definitely something to the argument he gives that a lack of communication between the different branches of the humanities and between the humanities and the sciences, hinders our progress in those fields. I think we kind of take it for granted now that math, physics, chemistry and biology all work together, bu More...
I like, for example, the contrasts he makes between the different branches of learning. I think there's definitely something to the argument he gives that a lack of communication between the different branches of the humanities and between the humanities and the sciences, hinders our progress in those fields. I think we kind of take it for granted now that math, physics, chemistry and biology all work together, bu More...
Feb 22, 2010
Matthew
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"The human condition is the most important frontier of the natural sciences. Conversley, the material world exposed by the natural sciences is the most important frontier of the social sciences and humanities. The conslience argument can be distilled as follows: the two frontiers are the same." So concludes a remarkable book on the unity of the great branches of learning and the future of the human species.
It's an ambitious work and not without fault. For the average r More...
It's an ambitious work and not without fault. For the average r More...
Feb 25, 2010
I received this book as a gift; I was intrigued because it seemed to be a synthesis, a book about really big ideas, like Gödel Escher Bach or Guns Germs and Steel. There's a certain sensation of my horizons expanding, my perceptions widening, which is the apex of my experience in reading nonfiction.
The central idea, the "unity of knowledge", wasn't completely unfamiliar to me, but what affected me most profoundly in the book was its full-throated, high-octane defense of the More...
The central idea, the "unity of knowledge", wasn't completely unfamiliar to me, but what affected me most profoundly in the book was its full-throated, high-octane defense of the More...
Dec 31, 2009
Michael
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The summer before my freshman year at SMU, the required reading list included C. P. Snow's 1959 tract, The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution, which described the gulf separating the humanities and the sciences. When I entered the university in the fall of 1965, the curriculum was integrated in an attempt to bridge that gulf. All students were required to take an ambitious program of arts, sciences, humanities, and mathematics that included required courses for all in "The Nature of
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Jun 18, 2009
Aaron
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The word 'flowery' comes up often in reviews of this book, with good reason. This is not good news for a book claiming to be advancing a scientific theory.
If there is any scientific point being made here, it is simply that culture is a product of evolved human brains, and so culture can in theory be linked back to genetics. If you've read The Extended Phenotype (Dawkins), it's that idea applied strongly to humans, but in a writing style I can only describe - using Wilson's own words, More...
If there is any scientific point being made here, it is simply that culture is a product of evolved human brains, and so culture can in theory be linked back to genetics. If you've read The Extended Phenotype (Dawkins), it's that idea applied strongly to humans, but in a writing style I can only describe - using Wilson's own words, More...
Sep 09, 2010
Todd
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“Scientists are people who know more and more about less and less, until they know everything about nothing.”
In a world where most achedemics are narrowly focused on their specific area of expertise, E.O. Wilson is one of the few scientists who has the ability to not only make new discoveries in his field (he’s an entomologist specializing in the study of ants), but to draw broad, universal conclusions about the way the world works from this research (inventing the field of sociobiol More...
In a world where most achedemics are narrowly focused on their specific area of expertise, E.O. Wilson is one of the few scientists who has the ability to not only make new discoveries in his field (he’s an entomologist specializing in the study of ants), but to draw broad, universal conclusions about the way the world works from this research (inventing the field of sociobiol More...
Jun 28, 2008
Jeffrey
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Here's a little quaint story written by a Harvard biology professor. He believes in his intellectual fury that in order to find the meaning of life (the meaning of life, the universe, and everything--yes, Deep Thought, the answer is greater than 42!) one has to look beyond science. Science at this time is today's philosophy . . . with math. No longer do we merely conject with reason alone. It must be combined with the more perfect language of math, a language that often dictates to the scientist
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Mar 23, 2008
Well, Wilson’s been on my to-read list for a while, but I just never could get very far in Sociobiology or Biophilia. Thankfully we still have the random nature of used (and new) bookstore browsing in addition to web searches. Being obsessed with ancient Greek philosophy, Wilson got me with the title of his first chapter – The Ionian Enchantment. Yes, that’s something I understand – maybe it’s a disease, but I sensed a somewhat kindred spirit. Then as I browsed a bit I remembered that his pr
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Feb 10, 2008
Matthew
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The entire thesis of Consilience is one so shockingly obvious that I was astounded to discover that true controversy surrounded it. The thesis is simply that all realms of knowledge, from biology and geology to psychology and politics, are ultimately reducible in explanation to more fundamental explanations in another discipline - physics. This seems abundantly obvious in virtually every discipline I could imagine:
Example: My psychology is determined by physical states (both biolo More...
Example: My psychology is determined by physical states (both biolo More...
Oct 12, 2011
Derek
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Consilience is all over the map, trying to incorporate & unify everything into one big all-knowing theory: magic, fear of snakes, facial gestures, phoneme construction, mother-infant bonding, schizophrenia, prisms, incest, cave painting, etc. problem is unlike the likes of Deleuze & Guattari (who also tend to navigate wide & seemingly random waters), E.O. Wilson merely recapitulates & attempts to claim as his own, offering no insight. & ultimately, in your opinion, like most scientists since Dar
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May 02, 2010
Jeff
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E.O. Wilson has written a compelling case for the unification of all knowledge through an empirical scientific world view in which everything that we know through observation, rational thought, and experience can be explained and better understood through a study of the biological roots of our human nature. He suggests that as animals humans evolved in both our physical natures and in our culture within the strictures of our genetic identities.
He lays out a powerful idea that dese More...
He lays out a powerful idea that dese More...
Aug 15, 2010
Colin
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Wilson attempts to demonstrate how science underpins all of the higher-order aspects of human behavior. That is, a complete understanding of neuroscience and biology in general would allow for a complete understanding of the arts, humanities, and really just human behavior. Intuitively I think he could be on to something, but the complexity of such biological systems as the human brain may render the complete scientific understanding necessary for such an expanded understanding of high culture i
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Apr 17, 2010
Dan
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E.O. Wilson is a brilliant human being and this book shows it. Consilience is an attempt to connect different areas of human understanding and human exploration. Basically it tries to show how taking an empirical, scientific approach to other divisions of human knowledge will make it easier for us to understand our world. A wonderful book for those looking to bridge the gaps between the humanities, social sciences, arts, and natural sciences.
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Jul 19, 2007
Julie
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This really is a great book... 'cept I took WAY too long for me to read it, and probably not long enough to think about it. Wilson really does try to present both sides of an argument when dealing with issues such as science's possible/probable role in human behavioral structures. He creates provocative images that one can't easily forget. For being a science nerd, he's a great writer.
It's 3 stars because, while I really enjoyed it, I wouldn't "push" it on anyone. And yeah More...
It's 3 stars because, while I really enjoyed it, I wouldn't "push" it on anyone. And yeah More...
Aug 21, 2009
Rick
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I've read this book a few times over many years; now I'm looking to find out if the social intelligence might be inside our bodies, among the critters which colonize us in anti-individualistic response to our internal sea's chemical signals. Or if we must conclude that even we are not so individual as we seem. I get why Tom Wolfe must like this guy, but I still don't get why liberals must hate him. I think it was us liberals who caused all the harm by insisting that some get labeled "needy"
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Oct 30, 2008
Charlie
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Wilson shoots for the moon and scores. Of course there will be many incensed reviews, given all the toes he steps on through the course of the book.
But what he was trying to accomplish is so provocative, so profound, that I can't help but be awed. It is a call to arms against postmodernism, and a demonstration of how much poorer we are for having abandoned certain ideals of the Enlightenment.
He fulfills and elucidates the materialist stance that the universe is a physic More...
But what he was trying to accomplish is so provocative, so profound, that I can't help but be awed. It is a call to arms against postmodernism, and a demonstration of how much poorer we are for having abandoned certain ideals of the Enlightenment.
He fulfills and elucidates the materialist stance that the universe is a physic More...
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