Consilience and Integration of Knowledge: A Critical Analysis of E. O. Wilson's Proposal
Abstract
Consilience is a term popularized by the entomologist Edward O. Wilson in 1998 as a key piece of a program aimed at unifying knowledge and fostering dialogue among the scientific, social, and humanistic disciplines. Wilson’s proposal received polarized reactions: its aspirations of synthesis were praised but it was also severely accused of reductionism. This paper analyses Wilson’s concept of consilience, by attending to its antecedents and explaining the mechanisms of extension from biology to culture. I conclude that, although consilience can serve as a source of inspiration for interdisciplinarity, it presents methodological and conceptual inconsistencies that hinder its applicability to the social sciences and humanities, which raises doubts about its viability as an integrative model of knowledge unification.
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