A bold statement of the scientific world view.
Wilson proclaims that we can unite all of human knowledge under the umbrella of the scientific method.
Wilson follows the ranks of great scientists like Galileo and Darwin into the special hell researved for visionaries by the reactionary thought police. Thanks Ed!

Go here for an example of the thought police in action. See if you can avoid nausea as Eldridge manages to "link" Wilson to millenial feaver loonieness, Hitler's genocide, and the killer-ape hypothesis all before even mentioning a single factual issue raised by Wilson's book. My response to the police action.

Short interview with E. O. Wilson about consilience.

No need to worry. Go back to sleep.
Review by H. Allen Orr
Just in case you were thinking about reading Wilson's book, Orr saves you the trouble:
"impressive but ultimately beside the point"
"quixotic vision of the unity of knowledge"
"vagueness and philosophical naiveté"
"ultimately just superficial-philosophical talk"
"confusion about the legitimacy of higher-level phenomena"
"The leash connecting culture to biology (to use one of Wilson's favorite images) may well be real, but it gets stretched so thin that it's often just not worth worrying about."

Orr informs us that not only is Wilson wrong, he is "obviously wrong": "The hard problem of consciousness, to belabor the obvious, is also a perfectly legitimate scientific question. And it doesn't become any less so by pointing to other, easier, questions."

Obviously, we need book length treatments of 400 year old cultural phenomena (modern science) and lengthy reviews of those treatments in order to deal with topics that are "obviously wrong". Of course, we've heard this all before. For the past 400 years philosophers have been telling the world that science cannot work, cannot produce knowledge, is hopelessly silly and confused. Still, for most of humanity, those of us who have not been indoctrinated into Plato's belief in absolutes, we must wonder why science and technology are booming while philosophers continue to proclaim the failure of science.

"a subtle new species of eliminativism about consciousness"
Philosophy of Mind is currently in the same state that Philosophy of Life was in 60 years ago. Back then, philosophers loudly explained to naive biologists that no matter how much biologists learned about molecules, dead molecules could NEVER explain Life. Philosophers explained that to imagine that Life as "nothing more than" molecular processes is a silly form of eliminativism about Life. But the silly biologists ignored the know-it-all philosophers and went on to show that Life can be explained in terms of molecular interactions. Philosophers must have enjoyed the experience of going down in flames with the Vitalists.....today there is no shortage of philosophers who are ready to line up behind David Chalmers or even Colin McGinn and boldly lecture neuroscientists about the futility of their effort to understand the brain and human behavior.

"consilience isn't science, it is a philosophy, a metaphysical view"
That's right, children, no need to let Mr. Wilson upset you, it is only a bad dream. Go back to sleep now.

Not satisfied to dismiss Wilson's book as silly philosophy? See it condemned as silly politics: "Consilience is much less a book than a political manifesto".

Go here for a short version of the argument for consilience.

Go here for some comments on the relationship between philosophy and science. Did Wittgenstein find an island of stability where philosophy can function as a "second branch of government" in parallel with science? 

Go to John's Book Page.

Go to John's Home Page.