Rating: 
Summary: Enchanted: Ionian Style
Review: "Ionian Enchantment" the term that refers to the conviction that there is a single theory uniting all of science, that is, that all of science can be explained by a small number of natural laws. Rather than address Wilson's arguments (as this has been quite (over?)done by other reviewers), I'll limit this review to a more mundane, less intellectual, general assessment of this splendid achievement.In Consilience E. O. Wilson offers us a work of the highest importance and scope, told in the sober yet urgent style characteristic of his writing. Wilson, ever the sage, calmly yet firmly pleads us to realize what our common futures have in store - and recognize what really matters most to all of us - for the sake of our own survival as well as - more importantly - that of our planet. Wilson's style evidences a stunningly large foundation of wisdom from which Wilson draws pearl after pearl. The book is broken down into twelve chapters. I found the first five wonderfully fascinating ("The Ionian Enchantment," "The Great Branches of Learning," "The Enlightenment," "The Natural Sciences," and "Ariadne's Thread"). The following three quite technical and as such dense ("The Mind," "From Genes to Culture," and "The Fitness of Human Nature"), and the next two quite boring ("The Social Sciences" and "The Arts and Their Interpretation"). Much like the first five, the last two were positively engrossing ("Ethics and Religion" and "To What End?"). In all, the positives of the book (content and style) far outweigh my perceived negatives (density and the very occasional boring subject matter). Consilience, in my opinion, is a must read. Consilience may or may not be a realistic goal (and perhaps a mere fantasy), but, in Wilson's own words, "A united system of knowledge is the surest means of identifying the still unexplored domains of reality." Even if Consilience is but a dream, there can be no serious doubt that striving for its realization furthers the highest goals of scientific discovery.
Rating:
Summary: Will he "See" the rose?
Review: “Consilience” is the culmination of a lifetime of thinking about nature and man’s attempt to understand the world he lives in and his place in it. His book “The Ants” earned he and his coauthor Bert Holder a Pulitzer prize and his theories on socialbiology upset many of the dogmas that were, and still are to some extent, well entrenched in the scientific establishment. Now nearing the end of a long distinguished career, he sees that all knowledge is interconnected and that in order for mankind to have a true understanding of the world he must attempt to understands his place in the context of all the forces at work in the universe. His writing style and his public appearances on PBS show that Mr. Wilson is a gentleman in the true sense of the word. His arguments for his point of view are always well reasoned and supported with real life examples and although he sometimes pokes gentle fun at different points of view, he is always respectful of the opinions of others. He is above all a humanist and what impresses me most, is how he can maintain his optimism about human progress in spite of everything he knows. I really enjoyed the book and admire the man. I wonder though, if when his time to leave this world finally comes, whether or not he will have an epiphany like the author Marino on his deathbed in the story “The Yellow Rose” by Jorges Luis Borges. “Then the revelation occurred, Moreno saw the rose … and he realized it lay within its own eternity, not within his words, and that we might speak about the rose, allude to it, but never truly express it, and that the tall, haughty volumes that made a golden dimness in the corner of his room were not (as his vanity had dreamed them) a mirror of the world, but just another thing added to the world’s contents.”
Rating:
Summary: Enchanted: Ionian Style
Review: "Ionian Enchantment" the term that refers to the conviction that there is a single theory uniting all of science, that is, that all of science can be explained by a small number of natural laws. Rather than address Wilson's arguments (as this has been quite (over?)done by other reviewers), I'll limit this review to a more mundane, less intellectual, general assessment of this splendid achievement. In Consilience E. O. Wilson offers us a work of the highest importance and scope, told in the sober yet urgent style characteristic of his writing. Wilson, ever the sage, calmly yet firmly pleads us to realize what our common futures have in store - and recognize what really matters most to all of us - for the sake of our own survival as well as - more importantly - that of our planet. Wilson's style evidences a stunningly large foundation of wisdom from which Wilson draws pearl after pearl. The book is broken down into twelve chapters. I found the first five wonderfully fascinating ("The Ionian Enchantment," "The Great Branches of Learning," "The Enlightenment," "The Natural Sciences," and "Ariadne's Thread"). The following three quite technical and as such dense ("The Mind," "From Genes to Culture," and "The Fitness of Human Nature"), and the next two quite boring ("The Social Sciences" and "The Arts and Their Interpretation"). Much like the first five, the last two were positively engrossing ("Ethics and Religion" and "To What End?"). In all, the positives of the book (content and style) far outweigh my perceived negatives (density and the very occasional boring subject matter). Consilience, in my opinion, is a must read. Consilience may or may not be a realistic goal (and perhaps a mere fantasy), but, in Wilson's own words, "A united system of knowledge is the surest means of identifying the still unexplored domains of reality." Even if Consilience is but a dream, there can be no serious doubt that striving for its realization furthers the highest goals of scientific discovery.
Rating: 
Summary: A great book by an important thinker
Review: As an undergraduate in the early 1980s I was profoundly influenced by the paradigm-shifting academic movement begun by Professor Wilson in his work, Sociobiology. The idea that human social behavior was the product of thousands of years of ancestral genetic competition was a refreshing rejoinder to the dogma espoused at that time in conventional Sociology and Anthropology courses. In the years after university I have watched as Wilson's thesis has gradually achieved greater acceptance. Even many feminists and psychologists who once viewed Wilson's work as an anathema have come to realize that the ideas he popularized have changed forever their fields of study. It was with this background that I jumped into Consilience, hoping for new insight. What I discovered was a cogent argument for the need to break down the very same academic barriers that I recognized years ago as an undergraduate. In another book I read recently, Darwin's Dangerous Idea, the philosopher Daniel Dennett argued that the fallout from Darwin's work on evolutionary natural selection has completely disrupted and changed forever the intellectual landscape in which we live. Wilson makes essentially the same argument, but his book is more often prescriptive than diagnostic. He argues that the same synthesis which has been tenuously achieved in "hard" sciences such as physics, chemistry and molecular biology can be achieved in all branches of learning. He suggests roadmaps for achieving this integration in the social sciences as well as the arts and religion. Most interesting of all is Wilson's discussion of the need for greater understanding of the biological underpinnings of morality and ethics. Wilson correctly recognizes that for all of humanity's scientific and technological achievement, if our species is to thrive well into the future we must come to terms with ourselves and recognize certain truths that our biological history has imposed on us. That recognition will necessarily entail major changes in the way we live, both at the individual and the societal level. Ultimately, however, Wilson is a conservative - not in the ideological sense, but in recognizing the need to preserve many traditions that anchor us to our cultural heritage. This is a wonderful, well-researched, engagingly-written book by one of the most important scientists of the 20th Century. Readers looking for a peek into the future of intellectual discourse need look no further than Consilience.
Rating:
Summary: Unity of Knowledge must be empirical AND transcendent
Review: 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. (...)
Rating:
Summary: A Thought Provoking Read
Review: Edward Wilson's book provides a fascinating tour through the many branches of human learning. While it is certainly possible to argue with his thesis that science will eventually link and provide greater understanding of the humanities and social sciences, the book is extremely well researched and deserves to be read more than once. On the one hand, giving the increasing specialization in higher learning, it is very refreshing to see someone arguing for greater cross-disciplinary thinking. However, as important as I think that goal is and despite the efforts of groups such as the Santa Fe Institute, it seems hard to believe that we are as close to establishing those linkages as Mr. Wilson seems to think. My one major issue with the book is the last chapter "To What End?". Here Mr. Wilson goes on a far left environmentalist diatribe. Given the limitations of our understanding which Mr. Wilson has been illustrating up to that point, his conclusions imply a level of knowledge that I found unconvincing. Even setting aside that many of his contentions are highly debatable at best, I felt that this chapter seemed tacked on - it didn't flow from the chapters that preceded it. That aside, Consilience should prove a worthwhile investment of time for anyone who believes in a multidisciplinary approach to learning.
Rating: 
Summary: more praise than practice
Review: I think E.O. Wilson's powers as a populizer are overstated. Carl Sagan, Richard Dawkins, Stephen Gould, Daniel Dennett, Philip Kitcher and Michael Ruse have written more lucidly on science, especially evolution. Two of my three stars go to this book as a broad intellectual history, where it succeeds. As for the book's main argument, that all the strands of human knowledge can and should fruitfully converge, I am less convinced. The writing is part of the problem. Even when the individual sentences are well-assembled and the words well-chosen, which is is usually the case, Wilson tends to change topics and allow arguments to dissolve before completion. The controversial portion of the argument seeks to establish that assorted fields like economics, ethics, and the arts can be somehow improved if they are more firmly grounded in "real" psychology and a "real" apprehension of human nature, conceived as products of humankind's evolutionary history. How would these fields be improved under conditions of consilience, according to Wilson? Applied to a quoted passage from Milton's Paradise Lost, Wilson points out that Milton's description conforms to evolved, hard-wired conceptions of beauty. Fine. So what? Says Wilson: "Works of enduring value are truest to these [evolved] origins. It follows that even the greatest works of art might be understood fundamentally with knowledge of the biologically evolved epigenetic rules that guided them." Well, no, it doesn't necessarily follow -- for starters, knowledge of origins doesn't necessarily confer understanding -- this sounds like the beginning of what might be an intriguing inquiry; unfortunately, however, this is presented as a conclusion in this book. It is entirely possible that others will come along to flesh out one or more of the intriguing inquiries begun in this book. In turn, such treatments may create truly useful linkages that are currently unknown or barely understood. E. O. Wilson will deserve credit for having sketched the frame of such inquiries. But if you are looking for consilience per se, and not just an encomium to the idea of it, keep looking.
Rating:
Summary: disappointing
Review: If the very idea that chemical and physical or biological and social phenomena could be causally connected takes you by surprise, then I strongly recommend this book to you. If you are like me, however, spending most of your days doing science and arguing for conceptual compatibility between psychology, biology and economics, you will find very few original ideas in this book, that has very few ideas altogether anyways.
The first part of the book is historical and it is pretty readable, especially if you are anxious to get to the real stuff. But the real stuff is very slow in coming, as the shocking truth that cell biology has something to do with cell chemistry, and that mind has something to do with the brain is very gradually (it takes about 200 pages) revealed to us. Unfortunately, apart from these general truisms you will find little else. I can recall only one example that is sort of worked out down the hierarchy from social to physical - the presence of serpents in rituals of some primitive peoples in distant corners of the world, something, I dare say, of no importance to anyone but a few scientifically minded shamans and a handful of anthropologists. And this is the general nature of the examples that Wilson uses to illustrate his rare points: they are little known, inconsequential or drawn from the least vital of the classical works (e.g. Milton's "Paradise Lost").
Although the book as a whole is relatively well structured, particular chapters are most often just loose patchworks of independent essays that share somewhat similar themes. This makes the book extremely repetitive and hard to follow as, despite most of its assertions ringing true, it is in a great need of a solid argument. One would expect the book that purports to show advantages if not inevitability of consilience to teem with examples, yet there are very few of them, each of them then being grossly overused in turn (e.g. Westermarck effect is referred to dozens of times, almost as if this were a book on sexual development).
All those flaws culminate in the chapter on arts. There is no even mention of the possibility that arts have something to do with status, and there is virtually no mention of music, movies and literature - as far as this book goes, the arts are about cave drawings and Mondrian's personal development. On the top of it, Wilson reinforces already very entrenched and unfortunate habit of hyperhumility towards the arts and artists (which exists precisely because interest in art is associated with status), insisting many times that arts and science are complementary, that what we get from arts we can not get from science etc. This of course, and perhaps sadly, is not true, if only because 1) one of the reasons for arts (especially literature and movies) is their transmission of social knowledge 2) increasingly, there are more reliable (scientific) sources for this knowledge 3) time available to us for learning is limited.
As some sort of partial compensation for the reading for the thousandth time that human nature is relevant for social phenomena, comes the penultimate chapter on ethics. It is refreshing to see one of the major figures in sociobiology pointing out the fallacy of the so-called naturalistic "fallacy" that so many evolutionary psychologists enthusiastically embrace. Wilson puts the matter succinctly: there is no other place for ought to come from but is. This does not mean that every particular act is right, but it does mean that it is wrong only if we say so. But even this chapter is too long for this simple, if important point. Almost no ethical implications of what we actually know about human nature are worked out - the chapter proceeds as if we know nothing about gender and race differences, origin of mental illness, cognitive biases and child development again into the wordy and uninformative hodge-podge.
In several places Wilson laments over intellectual specialization that is common among contemporary inteligenzia. It seems to him that we need more synthesizers, but that is hardly as obvious as he appears to think. Distributed systems have had considerable success in many areas and it is quite possible that scientific enterprise is best served by thousands of specialists oblivious to the regularities in the greater project that they are a part of. Besides, even a relatively poorly researched book like this one depends on the work of at least several dozens specialists, and there are probably not much less synthesizers that could have written it. I therefore expect that we will soon be reading a more successful attempt at the same topic.
Rating:
Summary: A million years ahead of its time or impossible?
Review: In this ambitious work, Edward O. Wilson, one of the most distinguished scientists of our times, and a man I greatly admire, goes perhaps a bit beyond his area of expertise as he envisions a project that is perhaps beyond even the dreams of science fiction. "...[A]ll tangible phenomena," he writes on page 266, "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."
This in a nutshell is his dream of "consilience." It is also the statement of a determinist. My problem with such a laudable endeavor (and with determinism in general) is this: even if he is right, that the arts and the humanities will ultimately yield to reduction, how do we, limited creatures that we are, do it? It seems to me that in the so-called soft sciences like sociology, economics, and psychology, for example, and even more so in the world of the humanities and the arts, reduction is so incredibly complex that such an attempt is comparable (in reverse order) of putting Humpty Dumpty back together again. It's ironic that Wilson uses almost exactly this metaphor on page 296 to explain why once the rain forests are chopped down, they're gone forever. He notes, "Collect all the species...Maintain them in zoos, gardens, and laboratory cultures...Then bring the species back together and resynthesize the community on new ground." Will this work? Wilson's answer is no. He writes, "...biologists cannot accomplish such a task, not if thousands of them came with a billion-dollar budget. They cannot even imagine how to do it." He adds, still on page 296, that even if biologists could sort and preserve cultures of all the species, "they could not then put the community back together again. Such a task...is like unscrambling an egg with a pair of spoons."
This is exactly how I feel about the consilience of human knowledge. I cannot even imagine how reductionism could help us to understand a poem. There is a dictum among poets that "nothing defines the poem but the poem itself." No amount of reduction will allow us to understand what makes the poem tick. This is because the poem is an experience, a human emotional, intellectual, sensual experience dependent upon not only the literal meaning of the words, but on their connotations, their sounds, their rhythm, their relationships to one another, their syntax, their allusions, their history, their use by other poets, etc., and also what the individual reader of the poem brings to the experience. Reduce the poem and you do not have an understanding of the poem. At best you have an essay on the poem, at worst something alien to the esthetic experience. In essence, I should say that the problem with consilience is that our experience is not reducible.
I have read a lot of what Professor Wilson has written, including On Human Nature (1978), the charming memoir, Naturalist (1994), parts of The Ants (1990) and his controversial, but ground-breaking and highly influential, Sociobiology (1975). And I have read some of his critics, most recently essayist Wendell Berry's Life Is a Miracle (2000) and Charles Jenck's piece in Alas, Poor Darwin (2000). What has struck me in these readings is the disconnection between what Wilson has written and what some critics have criticized him for writing! For example it is thought that Wilson is a strict biological determinist when it comes to human behavior. But here he writes, very clearly on page 126, "We know that virtually all of human behavior is transmitted by culture." Wilson has had to weather more than his share of unfair criticism because, as the father of sociobiology, which some mistakenly see as a furtherance of a rationale for eugenics, he has been made the target of the misinformed. Additionally, Wilson is not the lovable sort of genius we adored in Einstein, nor the heroic scientist overcoming a terrible handicap as in the case of Stephen Hawking, but a slightly nerdish genius from Alabama who spent much of his life crawling around on the ground and in trees looking at ants. Some people make it clear that such a man should not presume to tell them anything about human beings and how we should conduct our lives or how we should view ourselves. But I think they are wrong. Wilson brings unique insights into the human condition, and he has the courage of his convictions. I think he is a man we should listen to regardless of whether we agree with him or not.
Even if its central thesis is wrong, Consilience is nonetheless an exciting book, full of information and ideas, elegantly written, dense, at times brilliant, a book that cannot be ignored and should be read by anyone interested in the human condition regardless of their field of expertise.
Rating:
Summary: 5 years later it has become a reference
Review: Multidisciplinary conciliation for deductive rather than reductive reasoning is convincingly shown by EOWilson to be the necessary path to understand complex systems, with Biological systems as the premier application. I read Wilson's consilience for the first time 5 years ago and its proposition has had a growing influence on my own interpretation of the increasing profusion of molecular methods to analyze Biological Systems. The reading is fluent and the content is priceless. This book already deserves to be viewed as an authoritative landmark - a must read.
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