Michael Polanyi College
Documentation
Concilience
By Edward O. Wilson
Chapter 1
The Ionan Enchantment
Edward O. Wilson saw science by the study of ants, frogs, and snakes, as a wonderful way to study outdoors.
Linnaeus: Swedish naturalist who invented modern biological classification.
Linnaean System
-Start separating specimens of plants and animals into species.
-Then this species resembling into one another into groups the Genera.
-Families into orders
-phyla
-The six kingdoms.
All of this is like a army the author explains.
His Thoughts , those of a modern biologist , travels along a chain of causal events :
-From mutations that alter genes to evolution that multiplies species, to species that assembly into faunas and floras.
IONAN ENCHANTMENT: Belief in the unity of sciences- a conviction , far deeper than a mere working proposition, that the world is orderly and can be explained by a small number of natural laws.
Thales of Miletus was considered by Aristotle the founder of physical science.
Wilson mention Einstein as the architect of grand unification in physics.
At the end of the chapter Edward O Wilson, describe how he left believing in Jesucrist as salvation. He isn’t agnostic or atheist he mention that he is no more a Baptist.
He mention that he prefer to believe in the source of the Ionian Enchantment as Preferring a search for objective reality over revelation that is another way of satisfying religious hunger.
His central tenet is the unification of Knowledge.
When we have unified enough certain knowledge, we will understand who we are and why we are here.
I understand the point of Wilson but at a opinion of my life I voluntary choose to believe in the fundaments of salvation by grace through Jesucrist. I like to explore all the knowledge and science but at the end I have the conclusion that you need to have faith in either ways. The important is to be open to learn and discover new ideas.
The Great Branches of Learning
Chapter 2
Assumptions of a lawful material world, the intrinsic unity of knowledge and the potential of indefinite human progress.
This assumptions are thinking of the Seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Consilience: key to unification “Coherence”.
-The value of understanding the human condition with a higher degree of certainty.
Enviromental Policy Ethics
Social Science Biology
Confusion: Defined by Francis Bacon as the most fatal of errors, which “occurs wherever argument or interference passes from one world of experience to another”.
Astronomy, geology and evolutionary biology are examples of primarily historical disciplines linked by consilience to the rest of natural science.
Collaboration between Scientist and Philosophers specially when they meet between biology, social sciences and the humanities.
Two great branches of learning in the twenty –first century:
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Natural Science
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Creative Arts
“Consilience is the means by which the single mind can travel most swiftly and surely from one part of the communal mind to the other."
The continuous quote was one of the part of this chapter that makes me understand more in the program that I am and how it is connected with this book.
“ In education the search for consilience is the way to renew the crumbling structure of the liberal arts."
Integration of Natural Sciences with Social Sciences.
Ideal unity of learning: This was something that I am experience in the Michael Polanyi College. Now I am living a education that help me connect every knowledge with each other and that’s make me discover knew things that help in my day a day of my life and also to understand the world better and be a more happy person.
For Wilson every College student should answer the question :
“What is the relation between science and the humanities, and how it is important for human welfare?”
Something important that Wilson describe is to have a balanced perspective, but the only way to achieve that is through the pursuit of the consilience among them.
Also another important detail that I like was mention in the last lines of this chapter and is about Enterprise.
He think that enterprise is important because it gives ultimate purpose to intellect. It promises that order, not chaos lies beyond the horizon.
Chapter 3
The Enlightnment
Historical period come to end when its ideas no longer dominate.
For the author the enlightenment end when Marquis de Condorcet died.
Who is called the prophet of the laws of progress.
-The French Revolution drew its intellectual strength from men and women like Condorcet.
- Those unwilling to make commitment to the perfect society than to risk the infection of dissent.
- Napoleon and the soldiers of the Revolution were determined to spread the Enlightenment by conquest.
Mind map of the life of Marquis de Condorcet:
- He was inspired by the idea, central to the Enlightenment agenda, that what had been accomplished in mathematics and physical can be extended to the collective actions of men.
- The concept of social action might be quantitatively analyzed and even predicted . (This was original by Condorcet)
-With other friends he founded the antislavery organization Society of the friends of the blacks.
-He was polymath with a near photographic memory.
- Have reputation as the youngest of the philosophers.
I like this part mentioned by Wilson about Condorcet :
That Condorcet believes that the human mind is molded wholly by its environment, so that the humans are free to make themselves and the society as they please.
- One of this great writings he wrote in Yale.
Sketch for a Historical picture of the progress of the Human Mind.
He believed that history is an evolving material process.
- If knowledge can be consolidate , so might the “perfect” society be designed- one culture, one science—whether fascist, communist or theocratic.
Chapter 4
The Natural Sciences
Edward O. Wilson described that Science is neither a philosophy nor a belief system. It is a combinations of mental operations that has become increadingly the habit of educated peoples, a culture of illuminations hit upon by a fortunate turn of history that yielded the most effective way of learning about the real world ever conceived.
"Science is the organized systematic enterprise that gathers knowledge about the world and condenses knowledge into testable laws and principles. "
The love of complexity without redctionism makes arte; the love of complexity with reductionism makes science.
The imperfections of science Wilson describted towhithstanding , is the sword in the stone that humanity finally pulled.The question it poses, of universal philosophy and religion.
I really think that the progress of this world needs an explanation and science is the one that explain it with arguments and proves. The continuously search of the true is what makes science. For me is amazing the discoveries of science and I really believe that the world has became a better world because of the development of sciences.
But also I recognize that science doesn’t have the answer for all and in that point I choose to have faith to God. Where we come or who create the world are questions that the science can’t explain already so in there we as a humans have the choice to have faith in science or in God.
Chapter 5
Ariadne´s Thread
“Consilience among the branches of learning is the Ariadne´s thread needed to travese it. Theseus is humanity, the Minotaur our own dangerous irrationality. Near the entrance of the labyrinth of empirical knowledge is physics, compromising on e gallery, then a few branching galleries that all serachers undertaking the journey must follow.“
“There is another defining carácter of consilience: It is far easier to go back through the branching corridors tan to go forward.
Consilience synthesis: reconstitute and predict the knowledge gain by reduction and by how nature assembled something in the first place.
Rediction: dissect a phenomena into its elements this is the most easy way of consilience.
Chapter 6
The Mind
La mente la vemos como algo muy vago vague. Y por separarlo por mucho tiempo como una prregunta mas filosofica que cientifica se a limitado los alcances que tiene la palabra -..The concept of mind has limited. However, in the last few years there has been an effort to study the mind as a multidisciplinary approach.
For a long time a line was drawn by the dualism proposed by Descartes. It was only until recent years that the line between body and mind has been blurred, making the study of the mind a mixture of the social and the natural science.
Previously philosophy was the social science that studied the mind. However, the rise of the neurological sciences has demonstrated that the mind has strong, physical (bodily) connections.
The mind as the brain. His evolution and composition has been the study of many scientists from the 1900 century to the present day. Studying the brain has helps to determine that subjects such as behavior, emotion, and reasoning have a physical determined place within the brain.
Even thought the brain as an organ has been studied the question of “what is mind?” is not responded by scientist very often.
So Edward O. Wilson ventures into a concept where mind is a stream of conscious and subconscious experiences, where consciousness is “ the virtual world composed” by scnearios that are a virtual reality caused by a constant stimulation of the nervous system.
Chapter 7
From Genes to Culure
What Wilson explain to us in this chapter i show the human behavior is transmitted by culture and how it culture is improving or being reconstructed in each different generation.
He make us top ut attention tho the ideas that sorround this rare phenom of what culture is .
Culture includes ideas, patterns and values.
Culture is learned, based in symbols and all culture comes from another one. Wilson is trying to establish the centered of Consilience .
The epigenetic rules are described as regularities of sensory perception and the mental development that anímate the acquisition of culture.
Is incredible how this is related with the MPC this days because we are havin conflicto with our rubrics and how we are creating our own culture of learning here at MPC.
Important Quotes of the chapter:
“We know that virtyally all of human behavior is transmitted by culture”
“We are trapped, we sometimes think, for ultimate good or evil, not just by our genes but also by our culture”.
“In summary, the language isntinct (This is related with Steven Pinger in Word&Rules) consist of precise mimicry compulsive loquacity,near-authomatic mastery of syntax, and the Swift acquisition of a large vocabulary. “
“Episodic memory recalls the direct perception of people and other concrete entities throughtime, like images seen in a motion picture. Semantic memory, on the other hand, recalls meaning by the connection of objects and ideas to other objects and ideas, either directly bu their images held in episodic memory or by the symbols denoting image”.
Chapter 8
The Fitness of Human Nature
Wilson dedicates this chapter to what is human nature and the epigenetic rules are described in here. They are the hereditary regularities of mental development htat bias culture evolution in on edirection as opposed to another.
Evolutionary priciples basic cathegories:
Kin selection: natural selection of genes based on their effects on individuals carrying them plus the effects the presence of the genes has on all the genetic relatives of the individuals, including parents, children, siblings, cousins and others who still live and are capable of reproducing.
Parental investment: behavior towards offspring that increases the fitness of the latter at the cost of the parent’s ability to invest in other offspring.
Mating strategy: influenced by the cardinal fact that women have more at stake in sexual activity than men, because of the limited age span in which they can reproduce and the heavy investment required of them with each child conceived.
Status is central to all complex mammal societies, humanity included.
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Territorial expansion and defense: Is the contribution to survival and the future reproductive potential especially of tribal leaders. Humanity is a territorial species.
Contractual agreement: so thoroughly pervades human social behavior, virtually like the air we breathe, that it attracts no special notice-until it goes bad.
“The territorial instinct arises during evolution when some vital resource serves as “density-dependent factor.”
“The incest avoidance case may illustrates the manner in which the coevolution of genes and culture has woven not just part but all of the rich fabric of human social behavior.
Chapter 9
The Social Sciences
Social scientist are expected to tell us how to moderate ethnic conflict, convert developin contries intor prosperous democracies, and optimize world trade. But what Wilson proposes here is that the understanding of the roots of all this things are poor.
There is a progress in social sciences but very slow. Cooperation is sluggish at bestbut all the roots of it fail to understand one another and encourage to them.
The crucial difference between the two domains is Consilience: The medical sciences have it and the social sciences do not.
History of economic theory:
Periods in evolution of economics
1:Classical era
2.Marginalist era
3.Era of model building
Qualities of definitions of good theories:
Passimony
Generality
Consilience
Predicteveness
Chapter 10
The Arts and Their Interpretation
Interpretation is the logical channel of consilient explanation between science and the arts.
The ultimate goal of science:
Synthesis of the elements to re-create their original assembly is the other half of scientific procedure.
One of the most important things of Consilience is to unified arts and science.
Arts are the expression of the human condition by mood and feeling, calling senses to play all of it.
The Coevolution of cultures and genes has been developed during the human evolution, the natural selection molded by the epigenetic rules, the universals emerged in the evolution of culture and the arts that are focused toward certain forms and themes.
If the arts are steered by inborn of mental development, they are end products not just of conventional history but also of genetic evolution.
“The dominating influence that spawned the arts was the need to impose order on the confusion caused by intelligence.”
Chapter 11
Ethics & Religion
Documenting this chapter I remember some of the teachings of Kitty Ferguson in Fire in the Equations.
Wilson decides to discuss ethics and religion and this by two different ideologies.
Transcendentalists: Those who think that moral guidelines exist outside the human mind.
Empiricist:
-The ones who think them contrivances of the mind.
-Believing ethics to be a human creation only, can either be an atheist or else believe in a creator deity.
In a simplest way:
I believe in the independence of moral values, whether from God or not,
Versus
I believe that moral values come from humans alone; God is a separate issue.
The decisions of being empiricist or trascendalist are crosscutting decisions made in metaphysical thought.
Based in the evidence of science, all is logical and can be proved.
For me and is my point of view my moral values are based on the evidence that I have from God that is the bible, I cant prove that this is the real truth. But for me it makes myself be a good person and encourage myself to improve in everything I do and help me construct a culture of peace and love. I respects the ones that believe that science have the answers but also I understand that no one of us could have the answer for the real truth we only have faith to believed in both empiricist or trascendalist.
MPC Standards
“The eventual result of the competition between the two world views, I believe, will be the secularization of the human epic and of religion itself. However the process plays out, it demands open discussion and unwavering intellectual rigor in an atmosphere of mutual respect.”