Book Review

Consilience: The unity of knowledge

N Engl J Med 1998; 339:205July 16, 1998

Article

Consilience: The unity of knowledge
By Edward O. Wilson. 332 pp. New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1998. $26. ISBN: 0-679-45077-7

Edward O. Wilson has already had three careers and has made major contributions to knowledge in all of them. First, as an entomologist, he elucidated the intricacies of behavior and organization in ant societies. Second, as a sociobiologist, he studied the biologic basis of behavior and organization in human societies. Third, as an environmental activist, he crusaded for the preservation of the natural ecologies that human societies are rapidly destroying. With this book he has launched his fourth career, as a philosopher, attempting to assemble the many issues of concern to the human species into a unified intellectual framework. To his framework he gives the name “consilience,” a word invented by the 19th-century philosopher William Whewell, which is derived from a Latin word meaning “jumping together.” Consilience is “a `jumping together' of knowledge by the linking of facts and fact-based theory across disciplines to create a common groundwork of explanation.”

The book is a major contribution to philosophy, whether you agree with it or not. It brings together a rich diversity of ideas and stories, some of them arising from Wilson's professional activities in his three previous careers, others from his omnivorous reading. The 20 pages of end notes provide an annotated guide to a vast literature covering science, history, art, and philosophy. The 12 chapters of the book survey all these areas and many more. Wilson's purpose is to tie them all together into a package, with science serving as the string.

His central theme is the assertion that science can provide a firm foundation and a unified basis for ethics, religion, art, and the regulation of human society. Once we reach a scientific understanding of the biologic origins of religious and cultural quarrels, we shall be able to reconcile our differences and solidify our agreements. All men are brothers, and all women sisters, as seen through the impartial eye of science. The extension of scientific understanding to include the whole of human culture will bring with it an erosion of barriers, a unification of the human species, and a deepened respect for our natural environment.

This is a great and noble vision, portrayed with eloquence and passion. The vistas that Wilson sees lying ahead of us, if we share his faith in the all-embracing wisdom of science, are entrancing. The book, as a statement of the faith of an outstanding scientist and an outstanding human being, is exciting to read. It is full of insights gleaned from Wilson's encyclopedic knowledge of ants and humans. Everyone should read it. And yet, I have to confess that I came to the end of the book unconvinced. Although I admire the vision, I cannot share it. To me, the vision is too tidy. It has too much of the flavor of Plato's republic or More's Utopia, societies ruled by benevolent intellectuals with little tolerance for rebellious spirits.

Wilson's view of human nature is narrow, and his view of science is hierarchical. He has little to say about medicine and law, the two professions that lie on the border between scientific rigor and practical wisdom. He writes with undisguised contempt for the many practitioners of the social sciences — psychology, anthropology, sociology, and economics — who try to understand human behavior without reducing it to biology. He wishes to squeeze the whole of human knowledge into a reductionist mold, reducing ethics and religion to biology, biology to chemistry, chemistry to physics. Being a physicist myself, I know how poorly physics is suited to be the root of the tree of knowledge.

It may well be that Wilson is right and I am wrong. The questions that the book raises are important, whether Wilson's answers turn out to be right or not. I hope his answers are wrong, because I value the diversity of culture more highly than the unity of science, the rebelliousness of people more highly than the consilience of ideas. To me, science is only one of many ways of exploring the human landscape, without any overriding authority over the others. In the end, the future will decide who is right. Meanwhile, you should read this book and make up your own minds.

Freeman Dyson
Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ 08540