Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge

by Edward O. Wilson

methods. The key to the exchange

hybridization, not some unpleasantly self-conscious form of scientific art

concealed in darkness because of conflict between

independent of human experience

human inventions.

Which is correct cannot be learned by pure logic;

objective evidence.

Moral reasoning, I believe, is at every level intrinsically consilient with the natural sciences.

transcendentalists,

contrivances

believe in the independence of moral values, whether from God or not, versus I believe that moral values come from humans alone; God is a separate issue.

They tend to view natural law as a set of principles so powerful as to be self-evident to any rational person,

In short, transcendentalism is fundamentally the same whether God is invoked or not.

natural law theory,

we can do better, by taking empiricism

hereditary

reaching precise form in each culture according to historical circumstance.

objective knowledge.

sentiments,

That too takes a great deal of knowledge consilient with the natural and social sciences. The empiricist argument, then, is that by exploring the biological

The choice between transcendentalism and empiricism will be

or it will shift toward

Ethicists instead favor a fretful passage from the particular into the ambiguous, or the reverse, vagueness into hard cases.

it is difficult to explain the ineffable,

Causal explanations of brain activity and evolution, while

can lead more directly and safely to stable moral codes than transcendentalism,

And yes—lest I forget—I may be wrong.

affirm the logic of theism, because if the existence of a law-giving God is conceded, the origin of ethics is instantly settled. So please consider carefully the following argument in favor of theism. “I

nucleus of the scientific method, we are constantly reminded, is the rejection of certain propositions in favor of others in strict conformity to fact-based logic.

That knowledge, however, can cover only part of reality.

instructs us to reach out to the mysteries that are comprehensible through faith alone.

which reduces human beings to little more than intelligent animals, gave intellectual justification to the genocidal horrors of Nazism and communism.

Design would seem to be a simpler explanation than the random self-assembly of millions of kinds of organisms.

religion has an overwhelming attraction for the human mind,

Religion rises from the innermost coils of the human spirit.

nourishes love, devotion, and, abo...

religious belief has another, destructive side, equaling the worst excesses of materialism.

symbiosis with military aggression.

No doubt membership in state-sponsored religions has always been deeply satisfying in many psychological dimensions,

moderate the more barbaric tenets

‘No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, which is the good he seeks.’

A better life later on, either an earthly paradise or resurrection in heaven, is the promised reward that cultures invent to justify the subordinating imperative of social existence.

necessary device of survival in social organisms.

And when the martyr’s righteous forebrain is exploded by the executioner’s bullet and his mind disintegrates, what then? Can we safely assume that all those millions of neural circuits will be reconstituted in an immaterial state, so that the conscious mind carries on? “The smart money in eschatology is on

there is an afterlife, the seventeenth-century French philosopher reasoned, the believer has a ticket to paradise and the best of both worlds.

Consider the wisdom of turning the wager around as follows: If fear and hope and reason dictate that you must accept the faith, do so, but treat this world as if there is none other.

nonbelievers are less law-abiding

or productive citizens than believers

“True character arises from a deeper well than religion.

principles are fitted together into what we call integrity,