Consilience

Consilience, the sudden "jumping together of everything " as Edward O. Wilson describes it in his book is a work of extraordinary insight and vision. Wilson is on a quest for the new golden grail, the unity of all knowledge, which has been the dream and inspiration of scientists, artists, and philosophers for ages. Einstein yearned for a theory of everything, and String Theory of the physicists metamorphed into M Theory as an explanation of all things cosmic and microscopic.

But Wilson sees the 21st century as an opportunity for the true unification of all knowledge, in which our understanding of genetic codes evolve into epigenetic rules that explain evolution, human nature, society, and culture, providing an undergirding of the physical sciences to support the social sciences, the arts, and humanities.

In the 21st Century there will be two ways to know the world absolutely: Science and the Arts. This is the culmination of the age of enlightenment begun in the 16th Century, but betrayed by those who stole the Enlightenment for the sake of seizing power.

Coevolution is an ongoing process and becomes a way of describing from a scientific perspective the interaction of genes with the environment to create the mind, and ultimately culture itself.

Wilson's work is compelling and elegant. It is a book about everything. but posited on a scientific structural foundation. Consilience is the recognition and understanding that everything is profoundly connected and can be perceived and described from any point in the spectrum of our knowledge and understanding.