Rating: 
Summary: Philosophy of Science or Religion of Science?
Review: I read the book without much grounding in the various branches of science that the author surveys sweepingly. I suspect that I would have enjoyed it less if I did have more grounding, because I might have assumed a more argumentative mind set, quibbling if the specifics are "truly" as the author asserted, instead of being impressed by the optimistic way that the author put forth his philosophy. The philosophy contained numerous tenets, the most accessable one being the convergence of the banches of science. I was especially uplifted by the hopefulness that this convergence would lead to a clearer view about the meaning of these pursuits. In the end, I thought that my enjoyment was not based on the sense of being persuaded by cogent arguments elegantly posed, but by the identification with an overwhelming optimism that science can shed illumination to the meaning and design of life.
Rating:
Summary: Very good, but time will judge the books true value.
Review: The book discusses much of the usual very good sociobiology of Mr Wilson, intergrated with extensive philosophical excursions; the central theme being harmony, or consilience of knowledge, and the value this brings. It is not easy going, so one would have to be prepared for this kind of thing to get through it, and in that sense the book is primarily for those who are, intellectually speaking, the co-ordinators, the administrators, those who attempt to harmonise thought and people, rather than 'divide and conquer'. If you feel you are of this type, this book is for you. Someone else has described this book as "Wilsons Impossible Dream", and I guess I probably agree. His fundamental thesis is the consilience of knowledge, that is, societys institutional and traditional structures are predisposed to encouraging divergance of thought, with little to encourage convergance, or consilience. I think it may be possible for a paradigm shift to alleviate some of the faults fruitful divergance brings, but it is not going to be easy to bring this about. He does have a strong point in arguing that for too long independent disciplines, especially between the humanities and natural sciences, have been just that, independent. He thinks one way to alleviate this is to use the growing understanding evolutionary theory is bringing to the humanities as a means of harmony-a good idea. What he basically confronts is the limitations of human nature itself-still that isn't cause for being tentative, it's just that it is going to be difficult to achieve. Maybe the times are right, societies may be in such positions in history to do such things. Consequently, historians may be rather interested in this book also. Mr Wilsons reputation in the international academic community is very highly regarded. It may be that he is a true visionary, only time will tell.
Rating: 
Summary: Only one way of knowing?
Review: As the sub-title would suggest Edward Wilson is unhappy with the Postmodernism of our day which believes there is no universal truth but only a relativistic `truth for you' and `truth for me'. With this at least this reviewer is at one with Wilson. Postmodernism places great store on style and surface appearance rather than an argument for a claim of universal truth. But here is the irony. Wilson's book is written in style. It is engaging, non-polemical, full of impressive knowledge of many and varied kinds. Is this why it has won the prize? It can't be because he has made his case for he hasn't! What is the case he seeks to make? In contrast the post-modern outlook Wilson believes in universal truth. However the burden of this book is to take this conviction further than many would want. He believes that all truth can in principle be attained by the reductionist methods of natural science. That is to say that he believes that our conscious awareness of our surroundings, our apparent free-will, the personal knowledge we have of one another, our appreciation of beauty, our perception of right and wrong etc can all be reduced to the laws of physics. In other words he believes that all ways of knowing can in the end be reduced to reductionist science. He is then what some would call a `hard materialist' or `hard naturalist'. He pleads guilty to `ontological reductionism' and `scientism'. (page 9). However unlike Dawkins and Leakey and others, he is not, an anti-religious polemicist. He even concedes that transcendentalism may finally win the argument. However the purpose of his book it to put the case against transcendentalism and for materialist reductionism. He believes there may possibly be a God but this God has no continuing relationship with creation and therefore He is not relevant to anything we do or know . Wilson is then, as he describes himself, a Deist (in the modern sense of the word.) By referring to Kant and other well known philosophers he gives the impression that he is well read in philosophy. This for the case he is making, of course, would be essential. However it is only an impression - though an impression that must have impressed those who award the Pulitzer Prize. His arguments show he has not really got to grips with the age-old discussions. With reference to 20th century philosophy he devotes several pages in chapter 4 to Logical Positivism. It was a form of atheist materialist philosophy that came to prominence in the first half of the 20th century. It failed and Wilson knows that it fails. However he claims that it failed only because it was not known how the brain works. This he tells us is the `whole story' of its failure. What is extraordinary about Wilson's claim is that the state of scientific knowledge had nothing whatsoever to do with the failure of Logical Positivism. It failed because, at its heart, was the so-called Verification Principle. This stated that any statement that cannot in principle be tested by experiment is meaningless. (So, it claimed that moral and aesthetic judgements are meaningless). It was later realised (by Wittgenstein and others) that the Verification Principle itself cannot be tested by experiment and therefore, on its own terms, is meaningless. The failure of Logical Positivism had nothing to do with the then lack of knowledge of the brain and everything to do with it being a self-refuting philosophy. Over and over again his main thesis boils down to the argument that since scientific reductionism has answered many of our questions about the natural world it will, one day, be able to answer all questions. However that simply does not follow! It could conceivably be argued that science's great success makes it possible that one day it will answer all questions. Even this argument for a possible outcome could only be valid if it could be shown that the advance of science is reducing the sense of mystery about the nature of reality. Many would argue that the very reverse is the case. For example with the advent of the very successful quantum physics the mystery of what lies at the foundation of the natural world deepens greatly. The discovery of DNA may well have greatly advanced our understanding of what life is but it exposes new mysteries that previous generations could never have thought of. More of that below. A serious gap in his thesis is his failure even to refer to the great physical chemist and philosopher of science Michael Polanyi. Since Polanyi's main contribution to epistemology runs directly counter to Wilson's views, he, at least, should have tackled Polanyi's arguments. Polanyi believed that it is only living conscious beings that know things. (Books and computers may contain information but do not themselves know anything). Polanyi's conviction was that any theory of knowledge, which reduces the conscious person to mere lifeless atoms in motion, undermines not only the concept of person but also undermines knowledge itself because it is only living conscious beings that know things. His conviction was that all knowledge is personal knowledge but that we persons know things in a different way than we know other persons. We know other persons when we talk to one another living and working in their presence. We could never reach that knowledge by dissecting people - however far our science had advanced. Thus personal knowledge of one another is not reached by reductionist science but is nevertheless real knowledge. Good science in the widest sense uses methods of knowing that are appropriate to the object we seek to know. It is now, and always will be, inappropriate to use reductionist science to know other people. It would not only be inhumane but in the fullest sense of the word unscientific. It is in personal knowledge of one another that we can begin to learn those things that are in principle unknowable by reductionist science - namely what it is like to be that other person. My experience of me as `I' cannot be publicly examined but can nevertheless be revealed to other people with whom I have a personal relationship. My subjective experience of me as `I' in my relation to the outside world is what I call my self-awareness and consciousness. These inherently subjective experiences are what philosophers call `qualia'. However if we presuppose materialism before we begin to examine reality, ultimately there will be no alternative to Edward Wilson's view. But why should we presuppose it? As noted above the farther reductionist science advances into knowledge of the material world the more not less mystery it uncovers. To argue against transcendentalism one must surely tackle such ancient questions as to where the universe came from. This is not a question about a gap in our knowledge of how the universe works but a question that in principle lies at the boundary of science and any transcendent world. I am surprised that Wilson does not tackle it, especially as he seems to claim that one day there will be no questions at all that science cannot answer. (Page 10) He skirts the related question: Why is the universe ordered?' with the words: "fortunate comprehensibility of the universe", and with a description of the world as "surprisingly well ordered". (Page 50) The adjective `fortunate' and the adverb `surprisingly' immensely underrate the issue. Surely we must agree with Einstein that the origin of the comprehensibility of the universe is itself incomprehensible. In other words science's presupposition of order is right but it cannot say where that order came from. If Einstein is correct then there is no way that Wilson's thesis can be correct. It fails at nature's foundation. It is in his treatment of mind and consciousness that he tackles another fundamental issue. If he can explain these in materialistic terms he has gone along way to showing that one day beauty, culture, morality and religion will all be explicable from physics. Before I get to his treatment of mind and consciousness there is something to be said about the nature of life and evolution. Wilson gives us a very impressive description of the cells of life.
Rating: 
Summary: Empiricism disproved
Review: This is a brilliantly argued and beatifully written book, which also betrays a profound misunderstanding of time. Time is never the present tense; it is always past or future, i.e., when nothing ever comes to be. This is why secularism cannot go beyond description to explanation. Hopkins called it "eunuch time," for a good metaphysical reason, lodged as it is in Einstein (intuitively) and in Aquinas (cognitively). See the book, Einstein and Aquinas: A Rapprochment (The Hague, 1969. Wilson has rushed into metaphysics with scant background, (where angels fear to tread!). This is the error that the Greek sophists made confronting Socrates. He "mince-meats," them, which is what he would do to Wilson, with his sad and foolish attempt to press biology into metaphysical service. It was a good but doomed try to endow secularism with existential efficacy. Still I enjoyed the book immensely, both stylistically and because of its attempt at a catholicity of understanding. J. Kiley, author of "Is The Pope Catholic? Answer? No.
Rating:
Summary: A thourough read covering a variety of subjects
Review: Wilson, a 70-year-old biologist, presents an excellent persuasion of the world through a naturalists eyes, and in the process explains why the naturalist has more justification in his philosophy then a religious person who accepts what he sees without explanation because it would appear too complex, thus must be a result of God. The topics in this book are vast - ranging from theories of consciousness and thought to ethics and religious beliefs and why they exist - Wilson's experience shows. I recommend this book to anyone with a similiar interest in a journey for knowledge and truth (if such a concept is possible). This book should be read with an open mind - anything less would be a naïveté. Some sections, partiularly on epigenitic rules and consciousness, may shock the reader, as they depict reality and life in a way completely different from the normal religious or indifferent view most people have embraced as explanation. If the reader does not wish to broaden his or her horizons and provoke thought, I recommend reading the Regulations for the US Tax Code...for those of us who are intrigued by knowledge and wish to find a true justification for life, then I highly suggest reading Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge.
Rating:
Summary: Creating World Brain and the Virtual Intelligence Community
Review: Our answer to Levy, but an order of magnitude more practical and steeped in some of the best endnotes I've ever enjoyed. Consilience is the "jumping together" of knowledge across boundaries, and the greatest enterprise of the mind. He begins with an example, showing how biology, ethics, social science, and environmental policy must all come together to properly resolve a global environmental issue, but actually do not-the learned individuals are fragmented into four separate communities, and within those communities further fragmented into nationalities and cliques and jobs, and it is our greater loss for we cannot arrive at the best policy without being able to integrate the knowledge across all these boundaries. He emphasizes that the public must be educated and have access to this unified knowledge, not just the policymakers. He poses, and then answers across the book, this question: "What is the relation between science and the humanities, and how is it important to human welfare?" In my own mind, Edward O. Wilson has defined both national and global intelligence writ large, and done so in way that suggests the "virtual intelligence community" is a very practical and achievable vision.
Rating:
Summary: Wilson's Impossible Dream
Review: Without a doubt, Wilson's new book is a pleasure to read--it maps out a very enticing thesis that begs to be proven. The problem is, the begging is in vain. His claim that the world of human knowledge will eventually condense into one unity, supported under the umbrella of natural science, is nothing short of fantastical. The notion that science will ultimately explain the intricacies of human behavior, from the development of civilization to the details of social interactions, is extremely far-fetched and difficult to prove. Nonetheless, for readers looking to expand their minds and think incredibly big, the book is a fun read.
Rating:
Summary: Integrating knowledge
Review: This is an extraordinarily important book for all researchers, regardless of discipline. Wilson's idea is that much of the progress in physical and life sciences is due to "consilience" (the interlocking of perspectives, as in astrophysics, biochemistry, etc.) He makes an entirely convincing case for this point. His strictures about the social sciences and the humanities are also well taken, if less well documented. He suggests that each of the disciplines pretty much goes its own way, either ignoring or discounting the the other disciplines, a powerful point. His call for congress between the humanities and the sciences is particularly well argued. The one lapse in the book is in his consideration of the social sciences. He seems to forget his majestic thesis when he proposes that a crude sociobiology will explain most human conduct and behavior. Where has he been the past 50 years? This lapse is a small one compared to the sweep and power of the rest of the book, however. I consider this book a must-read for all those who seek new knowledge, even if the outcome is only to debate the issues he raises.
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Summary: The future of science is Consilience
Review: The future of science is Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge. As specialties continue to converge, expect to see theoretical physics cross over to help explain molecular neuroscience, and don't be surprised to find neurosurgeons helping to create superhuman intelligence. A theory of everything will, necessarily, include biology as well as nanotechnology, brains as well as psychology, desire as well as enlightenment. E.O. Wilson has written the introduction to the culmination of human wisdom.
Rating:
Summary: The Obituary of Postmodernism?
Review: I first heard of this book at one of those dreary Washington cocktail parties. I was about to leave early as I usually do on such occasions when I heard someone say he had just read the obituary of postmodernism. The remark was sufficiently interesting to make me stay for a bit. Having read the book I now know what the cocktail party sage meant. In reading this book I realized that the postmodern attempt to dethrone science from its privileged place in modern civilization has failed miserably. Far from being just one among many ways of looking at the world, science now seems poised to permit humans to control their own speciation. The entire human future may revolve around that fact. The achievements of science are simply rendering postmodernism uninteresting. I used to be seriously interested in questions of "theory." But after reading this book, I have come to believe that the whole deconstructionist thing has foundered on the shoals of scientific empiricism. Let's get out our hankies but admit that theory is now just "20th century stuff."
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