Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge

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Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, Mar 30, 1999 - Science - 384 pages
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NATIONAL BESTSELLER • "A dazzling journey across the sciences and humanities in search of deep laws to unite them." —The Wall Street Journal

One of our greatest scientists—and the winner of two Pulitzer Prizes for On Human Nature and The Ants—gives us a work of visionary importance that may be the crowning achievement of his career. In Consilience (a word that originally meant "jumping together"), Edward O. Wilson renews the Enlightenment's search for a unified theory of knowledge in disciplines that range from physics to biology, the social sciences and the humanities.

Using the natural sciences as his model, Wilson forges dramatic links between fields. He explores the chemistry of the mind and the genetic bases of culture. He postulates the biological principles underlying works of art from cave-drawings to Lolita. Presenting the latest findings in prose of wonderful clarity and oratorical eloquence, and synthesizing it into a dazzling whole, Consilience is science in the path-clearing traditions of Newton, Einstein, and Richard Feynman.
 

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LibraryThing Review

User Review  - Cheryl_in_CC_NV - LibraryThing

Oops. Started reading, found I was nodding my head... yup, not only do I already agree with the theme of the book, but I've heard enough of the argument before, and besides the book was written going on two decades ago. Oh well. There are other fish in the pond... Read full review

LibraryThing Review

User Review  - brleach - LibraryThing

A few promising moments, but most of the time it is either trite or based on a fundamentally misguided understanding of the topics he's addressing. Read full review

Contents

The Ionian Enchantment
3
CHAPTER
15
The Natural Sciences
49
Ariadnes Thread
72
The Mind
105
From Genes to Culture
136
CHAPTER 8
178
CHAPTER 9
318
CHAPTER 10
335
To What End?
349
Index
357
Copyright

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About the author (1999)

Edward O. Wilson was born in Birmingham, Alabama in 1929. He is the author of two Pulitzer Prize-winning books, On Human Nature (1978) and The Ants (1990, with Bert Hölldobler), as well as many other groundbreaking works, including Consilience, Naturalist, and Sociobiology. A recipient of many of the world’s leading prizes in science and conservation, he was a Pellegrino University Research Professor and Honorary Curator in Entomology of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University. He died in 2021.

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