Rating: 
Summary: "A better quality of life is the universal goal of humanity"
Review: In my education and career background in Electronics Engineering, I'm accustomed to complexities in mathematics, physics and technology---but this excellent book was an INCREDIBLE stretch! Wilson's primary achievements are in biology, but his mastery extends to every field of knowledge. The natural sciences of physics, chemistry and biology; the social sciences of anthropology, sociology, economics, and political science; the humanities, philosophy, ethics, and religion, are all addressed in his attempt to find "consilience," a word he chose over "coherence." Physicists since before Einstein have been trying to formulate a "unified theory" to consistently explain the effects of gravity and electromagnetic fields. Wilson is considerably more ambitious, trying to promote the idea of common scientific theory and method for ALL areas of human knowledge--- and he makes a compelling and interesting case for this concept!!His ideas about genes and culture are a convincing case for evolutionary origins for culture, with strong relationships between the two. He strongly argues that "human nature" has resulted from interaction between genes and environment, and that nature and nurture work together in ways that could be examined more deeply, scientifically, to better understand the roots of culture. He advocates the extension of common scientific method into the social sciences, which he believes have largely failed. The reasonable expectation of these sciences is the ability to predict what will happen if society selects one course of action over another. How are they doing? "Not very well, considering their track record in comparison with the resources placed at their command." Hard to argue with that assessment! "Today various factions favor ideological positions ranging from laissez-faire capitalism to radical socialism, while a few promote---post-modernist relativism that question the very idea of objective knowledge itself." His criticism of the social sciences is harsh, but consistent with my own views. He discusses art, and the potential for better understanding and interpretation through scientific analysis of the mind, psychology, and creativity. Didn't find much insight here. He makes a strong case for biological, evolutionary roots for ethics and religion. He sees a dichotomy between the transcendentalist (god-given rules) and the empiricist (man-developed rules), and summarizes each case in what may have been the most interesting chapter for me. Wilson is unabashedly in the empiricist camp, and characterizes his religious orientation as "deist," but not "theist." (Believes in supreme being, but not concerned with our individual lives). His final chapter is called "To What End?" Here he gets into the state of the world, and describes what another writer has called the "Litany"---the standard forecasts of imminent ecological disaster, with lots of supporting statistics. (For another view of the same statistics, see "The Skeptical Environmentalist," by Bjorn Lomburg.) To describe those who disagree with the apocalyptic view of the environment, Wilson coins the term "exemptionalist" as opposed to "environmentalist", much like another author coined the terms "takers" and "leavers." These kinds of terms are pejorative, and do not advance the discussion of environmental policy issues, in my opinion. (The intellectual equivalent of talk-show hosts who like to talk about environmental "whackos"!) To his credit, Wilson closes this chapter by urging those with differing views of the environment to GET TOGETHER, with the following tacit understanding: "No one can seriously question that a better quality of life for everyone is the unimpeachable universal goal of humanity." A VERY interesting and compelling piece of work. I admire the author for tackling such an ambitious and broad subject, and it will surely be found to be valuable by many!!
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting, but hard to follow
Review: I bought this book for a college assignment, and have had a tough time wading through it. I like the idea behind it, and wish I could understand it better. I may give it another read when I am not carrying 18 units of course work, and can devote more brain cells to it.
Rating:
Summary: Consilliness!
Review: Should be listed under New Age genre rather than science genre! Definitely wide ranging and shows erudition of author in multiple disparate fields which earns 3 stars, but whole hypothesis of merging scientific and non-scientific fields does not sound very plausible to me. Yes I did read the whole book but only suggestion that this might be possible is that there have been minor advances in understanding how the brain works. Appears to be trying to take the startling success of the natural sciences and somehow morph that success over to the social sciences. No plan of action included on how to do this. The problem with the social sciences is that they have not been successful in using the scientific method to disprove erroneous concepts and theories as has occured in the natural sciences so one ends up with all these competing theories that are all treated equally although some are completely wrong. Take economics for example - various economic theories have been tried out in the 20th century with tragic results on most continents but they still have ardent admirers particularly in liberal universities. Why can we not simply and convincingly disprove these theories and advance forward from there? It is as if the flat earth concept had equal weight with the spherical (approximately) earth concept and one could never get past this point. Read this book if you are interested in this sort of thing but do not expect it to explain how everything is going to fit together perfectly in a few years. It will not happen anytime soon and in fact you might want to bet your money on the arrival of the next BIG asteroid before we reach the consilience the author is describing.
Rating:
Summary: High insight to dross ratio
Review: This is one of those books that should be read simply because of its range of ideas and its high insight to dross ratio. It is unnecessary to agree with much in the book to get immense value from it. Dr. Wilson has great understanding of his field, good insight into many others, and a good heart and enthusiasm for most everything else; even for ideas and beliefs with which he disagrees. And that is the same generosity of spirit we should bring to a reading of this book. It provides us with so much to think about that even though it is not a thick book and though it is written very well, it is something we should not read too quickly. We can get much more from it by reading and contemplating his points and arguments. Doing so can help us strengthen our own beliefs even in disagreement with the author. Consilience is the property of unity or agreement or concurrence across disciplines Wilson sees in knowledge that does not occur in false ideas. It is a property that tends to confirm something we think we know as something we can trust as probably true. True things resonate while error tends to exist in its own unsightly and disconnected way. The author demonstrates this for us many times in the brilliant exposition of the natural sciences. He then migrates into other areas we humans value such as the social sciences, art, and ethics (and religion). I personally believe as he does that in the end that truth will be consilient. However, I have several questions I would love to ask him about the edifice he constructs in the second half of the book. His ambitious and speculative vision of where we will end up and the path we will take in getting there is one that I have some problems with. However, I cannot claim he is wrong and I am correct. First, because I cannot claim that I actually understand his points well enough to falsify them (even though I think I can push a couple of his minor points over) and second because I cannot claim to know the future any better than he does. But I can say that this book is something anyone who wants to gain a better understanding of the state of current human understanding should read. It has great value and that is high praise for any book.
Rating: 
Summary: Procrustean argument or prophetic vision?
Review: E.O.Wilson has come up with an arcane word for the title of his book, the meaning of which you will not find in your regular OED. I eventually read elsewhere that CONSILIENCE is the convergence, jumping, or bringing together of knowledge. The long time spent in frustrating dictionary searches has caused me to yield to temptation and toss an equally odd word at Wilson's book in this review. Is it indeed Procrustean by being a created and arbitrary standard that he demands intellectual conformity to, or is he simply ahead of his time and has a real vision of a coming "unity of knowledge"? For persons in the humanities and social sciences this book may sting a little. Wilson is used to criticisms of his own work because of his insistence on using sociobiology as the lens through which he sees all. Long ago after having a jug of water dumped on his head and being told he "was all wet", Wilson seemingly realized that in order to be read he would have to develop a moderate, well reasoned, and mild writing style. You'll never read one of his books and come away thinking "diatribe" or "polemic". He even writes with a recognition and acknowledgement of his own biases. He says here that "ethics is everything" and for Wilson this largely means environmental ethics, and if after reading his book, critics want to say he's a reductionist, Wilson admits he's "guilty, guilty, guilty." Wilson however is quite able to give as good as he gets and the subject of his critical penmanship is the arts, humanities, and social sciences, and their "ideological committments" and lack of a "web of causal explanation." He thus sees them as weak in comparison to the natural sciences and poor templates for explaining all we see around us. Furthermore he looks back on the Enlightenment and says that those thinkers "got it mostly right" and achieved a wholeness in contrast to what we have now where divisions in academia are "artifacts of scholarship." My background is in economics and geography and I don't have a problem with him saying there should be more rigidity and rules in those fields of study, and I agree that there should be more environmental awareness in economics. Maybe Wilson is onto something and sociobiology as a synthesis science might be a forerunner of the blended knowledge that will finally give us a clear view of the Big Picture. Who knows? His argument does tend to falter a bit though when he grasps for the humanities and discusses the laws that might be applicable in art and philosophy. It's a tenuous grip indeed as he is unconvincing in explaining how you achieve "objective truth" by "contemplation of the unknown" which he admits is was philosophy is. And please tell me what law governs the interpretation of a work of art? It's a fascinating book and very well written. It's obvious Wilson has done a lot of research on the subject and he's a brilliant thinker and he may be mostly right. But Einstein the great unifier himself, once said that "imagination is more important than knowledge", so i'm inclined to go with that until Wilson or someone else can prove otherwise..
Rating:
Summary: A strong case for a liberal education
Review: Edward O. Wilson is a most unusual scientist and a rare human being. Consilience starts with a short discription of his boyhood interest in bugs and flowers and birds in the woods, fields and streams of rural Alabama and progresses to philosophy, religion, a wide range of the arts and humanities. He explores the sciences from nuclear physics and atomic structures to astrophysics and eventually the most complex biological systems known, and treats these in such a way that the educated reader can follow his logic and all but the most militantly theistic are compelled to agree with his thesis that there is indeed a potential basis for the unity of knowledge. His eventual plea is for voters to select intelligent and informed representatives. Those who make our laws and provide our political leadership should at least be able to read and discuss a book like Consilience if they are to provide rational policies for the next generations. Indeed, though he does not specifically state this, Dr. Wilson makes a very good case that should such our leaders be selected on the same basis they were in the last election cycle, that there may not be more than a very few generations after us. However, he is an optimist and believes that sooner or later we shall be forced by the rapid gains in new knowledge and new technologies, to select a new type of politician - those who not only will have the brain power to read such a book, but will have the inclination to do so. According to Wilson - and to common sense - if we continue to select presidents and senators and representatives whose reading habits and information sources extend no further than Fox News, CNN, the sports page, the Bible and western novels, we are going to be in deep do do. We soon will have even greater knowledge about how to alter our world and affect even our own evolutionary course. As has been so conclusively demonstrated over the course of the past three hundred years, knowledge and technological progress do not automatically confer wisdom. But Dr. Wilson shows us pretty convincingly that without knowledge, there is no wisdom. Consilience is a tour de force exploration of most of the major fields of scientific and humanistic inquiry over the past three hundred years. I suspect that Wilson is one of only a handful of authors who could have written this book. Give a copy to your candidates for congress, for state representative and your presidentential candidate, and then quiz him or her the next time you run into them. Wilson provides the questions very early in his book.
Rating:
Summary: Daring, breathtaking
Review: What a powerful piece of intellectual work. Wilson courageously unites sociology, biology, and physics under the evolutionary rubric. It's been done poorly in the past, so few intellectuals have dared retread this ground. When it's done this well, there's nothing to fear from seeing Darwin in all things.
Rating:
Summary: Graceful and humane
Review: I can't put Consilience back on my shelf. I keep peeling it open to read all the parts I underlined. EO Wilson spent his life attaining hard-won wisdom, and then just handed it to me. I feel like he answered half of what I've wondered about, defined most of what I've been trying to define. I feel much too young to know the stuff he's teaching me. What a gift.
I firmly believe that human behavior can be significantly illuminated and guided by the "consiliation" of neurobiology, gene theory, evolutionary biology. I think economics and politics will be informed by it. Most significant to me, the arts must learn from it, or risk obsolesence.
Wilson pointed to a breach between the humanities and science that needs reconciliation. We in the humanities must jump into that breach. Storytellers risk ignoring what neurobiology and evolutionary pysychology are telling us about human nature at our own peril.
I come from the humanities. I know how social science folks and artists think. We are proudly ignorant and quick to disdain any news about cognitive science or what primatology suggests about human behavior. Since making art is an intuitive process, we believe that subjecting it to analysis is "reductive," a word I spend a lot of time defending as it has somehow become a diatribe. There is the strong sense that consciousness and art are too sacrelized to be analyzed. Human behavior must remain ineffable to most artist types. But reduction requires resynthesis. Take it apart, put it back together. If it still works, you can say you understand it. That is essence of scientific power.
I hold up EO Wilson as a shining example of the kind of man an education in both the humanities and science can produce. Materialist or no, he is a great soul.
Rating:
Summary: Why you need to know everything
Review: Wilson's premise is arresting to us, because we have placed so much value on specialization and expertise: instead, he advocates not only learning about and from all disciplines, but considering all disciplines when learning from only one. Our popular heros often are narrow specialists; Wilson cleary believes such specialized attention is a poor way to understand anything as complex as our world. Examples of deep understanding acquired through broader study abound. Obviously, Wilson does not argue thay we must know EVERYTHING, but knowing more, and looking and understanding from more perspectives than we are accustomed to using can only help us. Acknowledging the value of breadth as well as depth in education is at the heart of his evangelical message. Consilience is neither fast nor easy to read, but it is worth the investment you make in it.
Rating: 
Summary: Bunk
Review: Edmund O. Wilson is arguing for a unity of knowledge based on reductionism. He argues that biology, physics, art -- just about anything worth knowing or could be known really -- can be united and understood by a few core principles. This is an attractive proposition but the problem is it requires a reductionism which ignores the richness and differences in different forms of knowledge. Wilson argues that western civilization has achieved progess because reductionism has allowed knowledge to expand and progress to explore. Few could argue that reductionism hasn't been vital to the growth of knowledge in physics but reductionism of all knowledge to a few core principles would have the opposite effect: reductionism could limit knowledge instead of providing insight and growth of knowledge. Moreover, he argues (rather clumsily) that science and art could be merged on science's terms.
The first chapters are an interesting read on reductionism but the rest of the book is rather clumsy. Once Wilson leaves biology and reductionism, I question whether he has any specific knowledge of the different disciplines he addresses. His ideas on art are misguided and his argument that objectivity exists is circular. The book will likely find a cult following but its ideas will likely be forgotten. Read this book if you're interested in the debate on reductionism (which is interesting) but most informed readers will find the book flawed.
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