The Unity of Knowledge. Edward O. Wilson. Alfred A. Knopf, 1998. L ike his hero Francis Bacon, Edward O. Wilson here takes all knowledge for his province and composes an eloquent summons to the reform of learning. Knowledge, Wilson argues, is one at bottom.
Science consists of strictly causal explanations of empirically established laws.
Investigation encounters no fundamental boundary between the history of the physical universe and of humanity, nor between science and the humanities. The goal of consilience is to achieve progressive unification of all strands of knowledge in service to the indefinite betterment of the human condition. This is a noble vision. Wilson sees its origin in the Ionian Greek belief that the cosmos is an orderly whole running by laws discoverable in thought. His own inspiration is the commitment of the 18th-century Enlightenment to enlisting secular knowledge in the advancement of human welfare and rights.