Words&Dirt

This is probably my favorite of the books I’ve read by Edward O. Wilson, although it did not alter my worldview as profoundly as On Human Nature did when I read it back in early 2012. Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge is an eloquent explication of the ideas and dispositions I hold in highest regard. It is arguably the most enterprising work of an ambitious career, which makes it both stunning as well as outlandish. Despite my awareness of numerous respectable critiques of Wilson’s propositions and methods, I must confess to being swept away by the sheer grandeur of this vision. Such reverie no doubt dulled my critical faculties, although I will still attempt to outline some areas of disagreement between Wilson and myself.

First, however, I will share Wilson’s definition of consilience and provide a brief sampling of the topics he addresses in order to flesh it out. “The central idea of the consilience world view,” Wilson writes, “is that 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” (291). It follows that all natural phenomena can ultimately be explained (and perhaps altered) by scientific inquiry. Although I will concede that this idea might eventually be revealed as unverifiable or even outright false, I’ll also cop to participating in a recent discussion with a friend in which we both agreed that it’s hard to communicate clearly with (let alone trust) anyone who doesn’t believe that the universe––at whatever level of chemical, biological, or technological organization––is “dominoes all the way down.”

If you can get on board with the cause-and-effect essence of consilience, then this book will be a fun ride through one of humanity’s greatest living brains. Drawing from an interdisciplinary set of sources, Wilson weaves seemingly disparate ideas and observations into one impressive (if not comprehensive) intellectual web. Here are some of my favorites:

• A healthy balance of praise and admonishment directed toward the existing scientific establishment
• A concise and informative summary of the Enlightenment’s historical significance
• An engrossing theory of gene-culture evolution (now deepened by Wilson’s recent work on “multilevel selection”)
• An examination of the problem of subjective experience (qualia) that is more accessible and scientifically informed than that of most philosophers (especially non-contemporary ones)
• A fascinating description of the mental mechanisms that produce dreams
• A careful look at the strengths, limitations, and hubris of modern economics
• A healthy and empirically-driven respect for the humanities and the arts
• A remarkable ability to embrace the difficult reality that humans are stone-age dingbats who’ve nevertheless developed complex societies and technologies that allow us to throw our weight around like little gods

While Consilience is certainly teeming with information that is accurate and still relevant more than 15 years after original publication, it also contains some inconsistencies and less than brilliant moments. One problem is that, like many other interdisciplinary thinkers, Wilson fails to map out how societies can actively pave the way for the practice of consilient inquiry. He aptly exposes the shortcomings of academic hyper-specialization, but fails to offer a practical model for how individuals are supposed to overcome the suffocating dichotomy faced by curious individuals from all backgrounds: learn everything about one thing or learn a little about everything. Wilson’s assessment is accurate but frustratingly vague: “We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom. The world henceforth will be run by synthesizers, people able to put together the right information at the right time, think critically about it, and make important choices wisely” (294). It follows that the training of competent “synthesizers” ought to be one of humanity’s major priorities, but Wilson gives no account of the necessary steps we should take to realize this goal. If synthesizers play a key role in bringing consilience about, then we need to know: what are the conditions most conducive to the flourishing of syncretic people and communities? 

Wilson’s critique of the social sciences is a similar jumble of incomplete insights. He musters a terrific takedown of postmodern relativism, but also downplays the massive and potentially insurmountable obstacles that render complex systems opaque to traditional tools of scientific analysis. I concur with Wilson that the social sciences and arts are theoretically reducible to causative rules, but am more skeptical that we are anywhere close to possessing the knowledge and/or technology to tackle these disciplines the way we currently do physics and chemistry. Wilson admits that “the social sciences are hypercomplex” and “the magnitude of the technical problems facing the social theorists is…extremely daunting,” but doesn’t take seriously enough the possibility that humanity (at least in its current form) might prove incapable of properly examining problems of sufficiently intractable complexity (199, 227). In the face of climate change and potential ecosystem collapse due to human consumption, it seems even less likely that the tools required to collect, aggregate, analyze, and act on the data most relevant to these hypercomplex problems will be produced in time to turn the tide. If ecosystems and human communities become too unstable to support scientific projects, it won’t matter if consilience is true or not because we won’t have the resources to find out.

My hand-wringing is not meant as a justification for nihilism or a refutation of Wilson’s consilient ambitions, but it does serve to reveal one of his great blind spots: the contingency of the foundation on which the scientific project is constructed. Wilson, in other works as well as this one, is inconsistent in his assessment of exactly how fragile humanity’s continued quest for knowledge might be. He is comfortable pronouncing that, “Every contour of the terrain, every plant and animal living in it, and the human intellect that masters them all, can be understood as a physical entity” (258). He doesn’t hesitate to assure us of humanity’s eventual moral progress:

New answers might be found for the truly important questions of moral reasoning. How can the moral instincts be ranked? Which are best subdued and to what degree, which validated by law and symbol? How can precepts be left open to appeal under extraordinary circumstances? In the new understanding can be located the most effective means for reaching consensus. No one can guess the form the agreements will take. The process, however, can be predicted with assurance. It will be democratic, weakening the clash of rival religions and ideologies. History is moving decisively in that direction, and people are by nature too bright and too contentious to abide anything else. And the pace can be confidently predicted: Change will come slowly, across generations, because old beliefs die hard even when demonstrably false. (280)

Wilson’s steadfast optimism and faith in progress make me love him all the more; I cannot, however, personally adopt such positions with his unequivocal zeal. I fervidly hope these visions come to pass, but refuse to labor under the false god of their supposed inevitability. Wilson’s personal view appears inconclusive; despite these overly sanguine moments, he devotes much of the book’s final chapter to a compassionate but disquieting tour through the myriad contemporary threats to the viability of human communities and biodiversity.

I am passionate about my melioristic worldview, but I also try to take it with a grain of salt. That grain of salt inflames the wounds of history, reminding us that all human endeavors take place under the penumbra of a stayed execution. We can pray the axe does not come down, can even invent ways to keep it hovering above us for a while longer, but we cannot stop it forever. Still, why not get consilient while we wait?

Rating: 9/10