Consilience (Magill’s Literary Annual 1991-2005)
At a glance:
- Author: Edward O. Wilson
- First Published: 1998
- Type of Work: Science
- Genres: Nonfiction, Science and technology
- Subjects: Culture, Science or scientists, Creative process, Enlightenment, Learning or scholarship, Mathematics or mathematicians, Biology or biologists, Thought or thinking
Edward O. Wilson’s latest book borrows its title and central term “consilience” from the nineteenth century writer William Whewell. He prefers this term over such alternatives as “coherence” because it is less ambiguous; by it, he means “the intrinsic unity of knowledge”—not merely in the natural sciences but in all branches of learning, from physics and chemistry to the social sciences and the humanities, including ethics and religion. At present, consilience is an assumption, a working hypothesis, that has proven itself in the natural sciences, “from quantum physics...
[The entire page is 2207 words long]
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