Edward O. Wilson (1929–2021)

A difficult book that tests your definitions of science, progress and beliefs. The author crosses issues looking both ways and taking careful account of the scientific ecosystem and into the broader human condition.

The term consilience is applied to many scenarios so it is not always crystal clear. The author suggests that extending our investigation into the natural world by connecting activities to their biological, neuroscientific fundamentals we could understand social sciences like even economics as emergent from principles that go as far down as the physical sciences.

The author’s definition of free will is my favoured one that ultimately the argument on its existence is pointless given the impossibility of reconciling the scale of degrees of freedom, sensitivity to natural phenomena. Those that state it does not exist have no realistic way to demonstrate as much.

The book initially does not indicate what the big picture choices of values could or should be. It is not tech positivist but rather science method-ist bridging to all areas of human activity. The idea is we should study all without limits in the key of biological sciences particularly looking at impact of heredity and adaptation.

In the first part of the book the author takes as a fundamental truth a certain kind of enlightened progress. The idea is that consilient knowledge would help humanity “advance”. The problem with this is the author does not address how some areas of study themselves can be pandora boxes for important risks. From dividing society to technological developments that increase existential risk. Though the author underlies the importance of ethics there is little dedicated to precautionary principle, particularly where in the bioscience we have already run into problems.

At the end of the book the author introduces the problematic balancing of the growth based economies of the world and the impact on environment. This end is a sudden twist to the plot becaus now we take into implicit consideration the values of sustainability of civilisation. This consideration and focus should have been a lens from the beginning of the book as it would reframe consilience and its potential controversies around the bigger risk of environmental collapse.

I am surprised that the author does not directly address how some new ideas, technology and knowledge can increase existential risks over the long term. Consilience between areas of knowledge is not exempt from this problem. Case in point the author describes economics with a glossy picture (very different from my own) and explains that connection to psychology and neuroscience can unlock a whole new world of possibilities. I would say that since publicatiom many neuroeconomics learnings are applied in an exploitative way. Who cares? But this is the sort of activity could drive tail risks way up…

Basically across most of the text what is good for the author is a kind of evolutionary transformation of knowledge. But in this area he does not consider the risks in some of his ideas and directions. And when we reach the drama of the final chapter and it presenting only the space for a narrow escape for humanity I wonder how he can reconcile that it would be thanks to consilience that humanity “survives”?

Basically the issue is scientific investigation according to whatever style or means is almost always a consequence of a political direction. It seems simplistic to think consilient knowledge would solve these problems alone.

… (mere)