Philosophy Now Forum

Toni Vogel Carey on discovering interconnections.

http://philosophynow.org/issues/95/Consilience

Toni Vogel Carey writes "I find Herschel and Whewell’s consilience more interesting and insightful than Wilson’s". But he doesn't make it very clear why or what the difference is between the two viewpoints.

The way Carey explains Consilience makes it difficult to understand what it is. He tells us that it is about and includes 'connectivity', 'spontaneous order', 'unintended consequences', 'surprise', 'reason' and the 'invisible hand'. He also says that it prepares us for the realization that we have been stupid for not noticing something earlier. (Niels Bohr would have loved that one.) His writing is all over the place. It's dizzying. He mentions numerous philosophers that seem unconnected. Whewell did say that Consilience meant a "jumping together" of knowledge. But it seems that in his writing about it Carey took Whewell's meaning far too literally, because of his jumping around so much, like on a trampoline.

One thing I think I understand about Consilience is that you can take the explanation of a phenomenon in one discipline to explain a phenomena in another, unconnected discipline. For instance, Darwinism was originally and solely intended to explain evolutionary biology. But Herbert Spencer used it in a unintended manner, to also explain a social evolution and survival, as in social Darwinism rather than natural Darwinism. Entropy is another example that was originally intended to explain a natural phenomenon but is also applied to the social occurrence of decline and disorder. However, some people are vehemently opposed to this form of knowledge because it their minds it pollutes and erodes fiefdoms.

I am thinking that there is a pragmatism in the use of consilience. I am also thinking that consilience is connected to the 'complemetarity principle'.

It would be nice to be able to engage the authors of articles so we might get a better understanding of what they are talking about. Anyway, I will give it another read.

With all the talk about the pros and cons of Thatcherism lately I can't help from wanting to connect it to Consilience.

I mean, Thatcherism was made public policy and consilience in some form can't be avoidable in creating public policy.

In his book Consilience Edward O. Wilson writes, "For best results, cultivate the individual, not groups".

I wonder how he came to that conclusion? It seems counterintuitive. But Adam Smith said the same thing. Did both of them arrive at the idea through a consilience of induction? According to Toni Vogel Carey they would have. But how?

William Whewell, the chief introducers of Consilience said, "The Consilience of Induction takes place when an Induction, obtained from a class of facts, coincides with an Induction, obtained from a different class. This Consilience is a test of the truth of the Theory in which it occurs".

Wilson explains that consilience literally means the "jumping together of knowledge by the linking of facts and fact-based theory across disciplines to create a common groundwork of explanation."

Consilience was devised to explain phenomena, something that is difficult to explain. That is perhaps why it too is difficult to comprehend and untangle. It seems to me that phenomena is something like Consilience, in that phenomena is induced in much the same way, by the collision of several disciplines or senses. Perhaps the phenomenon of consciousness is best explained through Consilience, by the jumping together of our senses.

I think the majority agree with Wilson's idea, that for best results, cultivate the individual, not groups. All we have to do is look at what happen under communism where the group was cultivated over the interest of individuals. Communism declined and collapsed. In contrast, liberal democracy flourishes because it cultivates the individual over the group. But how to explain that phenomenon in a tangible and simple way?

I am convinced I know why communism collapsed, leaving liberal democracy as sole heir to human governance. But I am still having difficulty explaining it in a consilient manner, with the induction of facts from both the natural sciences and the humanities. My theory involves Hegel and thermodynamics. Both have to do with change, something communism shunned and liberal democracy embraces. And the reason for cultivating the individual over the group is because individuals instigate change, not groups.

The lack of Change is a good explanation for the collapse of communism and the ascendancy of liberal democracy. It is a common denominator. It is simple and parsimonious. It is is also pragmatic. Consilient explanations like parsimony and pragmatism. That's what makes for a credible argument, because its simplicity is unifying.

I am really having difficulty distinguishing the difference between Stephen Jay Gould's idea of consilience and Edward O. Wilson's idea of it. As far as I understand it has to do with their different approaches to analysis and synthesis. Gould gives more emphasis to synthesis and Wilson to analysis. Wilson is more a reductionist than Gould. But I don't think understanding the difference between them is not going to help us understand consilience or it benefits.

Consilience is about the unification of knowledge, that of science with the humanities. Until we have that unification, Wilson believes, we will not be able to solve the world's problems. So perhaps when we have that knowledge we will be able to stop ourselves from polluting and degrading the planet.

Our moral enhancement will more likely to come from consilience than from the absurd biomedical, artificial means Julian Savulescu and Ingmar Persson proposed in an earlier issue of PN.

Wilson is a biologist. So I am thinking that the "jumping together" of knowledge he talks about will involve biology. According to Wilson our predisposition is in our genes. And over the centuries we have altered our predispositions, like racism and sexism, through enlightenment and knowledge.

It is difficult to connect the dots in this article about Consilience, where it comes from and what it means. But one thing that seems to make sense is Carey's connection between Darwin's natural selection and Adam Smith's invisible hand, saying that natural selection is invisible, acting like the invisible hand of nature. Similarly, Smith's metaphorical invisible hand acts like a natural selector in the social context.

The premise behind Consilience is the unification of knowledge, that of natural science and the humanities. Darwin represents natural science and Smith the humanities. And there lies a consilience since Smith's invisible hand works as a natural selector of human economic activity, selecting the behaviours that works best for the mutual benefit and progress of the whole, like nature does. Natural selection and the invisible hand have tended to pick those traits and activities that advance both the human species and society. From studying this parallel we can get a better picture of why Civilization has evolved as it has - with its gravitation to capitalism and materialism, in order to survive and continue like Nature.

This consilience brings up an unsettling thought, which Herbert Spencer first uttered, that the world is about the "survival of the fittest". However, humanity has intervened by implementing civilizing forces, making human existence not as red in the tooth and claw as Spencer imagined it to be.

Carey mentions Adam Smith's invisible hand as being in the realm of consilience. However, the way he tells it it is difficult to understand how the invisible hand is an agent of consilience. One term he could have used to make it easier to understand is metaphor since Smith meant it as such to help explain the positive social outcome of individuals acting in their own self-interest.

Consilience is about bringing together two or more unrelated subjects in order to understand phenomena better. Metaphors are often used to help one understand phenomena better. And that is what Smith did when using a human body part to explain economic activity. Science is full of metaphors to help explain what is going on. Shakespeare also used the consilient powers of metaphors as a means of animation in his plays.

The two predominate governing systems in the world today are democracy and capitalism, which reside and occur in tandem in all developed countries. But people are confused by the coexistence of the two systems because they appear to contradict each other: democracy champions equality but capitalism does the opposite. To help explain this perplexing situation historian Niall Ferguson took a consilient approach and borrowed an analogy/metaphor from the field of genetics. He posed the idea that democracy and capitalism (liberal democracy) could be the "double helix" (DNA) of the modern world. I believe he is right.

Plato is on the cover of this issue. Was he a consilience thinker? Sure! To explain how he saw the city state and its function he turned to an unrelated subject, the human anatomy. He described the city state as a body, with organs that had their specific duties. Humans have their place, just like human body parts have their place and division of labour.

Architecture is a work of consilience. It embraces science principles and the humanities as consilience is said to do. Consilience in this field is the "jumping together" of the natural/engineering sciences and human aesthetics to create a structure that is both functional and elegant. The result is pure consilience itself.

Talking about architecture, Philosophy Now, as far as I recall, has never done a cover issue on architecture. It is a huge field that impacts humans as humans don't even realize. It could include articles on architectural histrionics, with the likes of Victor Hugo and his sense of it. Perhaps it could include Prince Charles' views on it and his intense dislike for modern architecture. Perhaps Prince Charles could be interviewed for it or maybe even write and article on the subject and his beloved experimental town of Poundbury in Dorset.