Prologue: Exploring the Meaning of Science and Defining Rigor in the Social Sciences.

Most of the issues that vex humanity daily . . . cannot be solved without integrating knowledge from the natural sciences with that of the social sciences and humanities. Only fluency across the boundaries will provide a clear view of the world as it really is, not as seen through the lens of ideologies and religious dogmas or commanded by myopic response to immediate need.... A balanced perspective cannot be acquired by studying disciplines in pieces but through pursuit of the consilience among them. (Wilson, 1998a, p. 13) 0 In his pursuit of consilience, E. 0. Wilson was not describing the transcendental acceptance of multiple perspectives, but the rigorous pursuit of unified knowledge through the accumulation of objective evidence. Wilson is an empiricist whose view of the world has been formed not by introspection into what ought to be but from close inspection of what is. As a sociobiologist, Wilson sees human reasoning and behavior as intertwined with the natural sciences. He uses the term consilience to mean "literally a 'jumping together' of knowledge as a result of the linking of facts and fact-based theory across disciplines to create a common groundwork of explanation" (Wilson, 1998b, p. 53). Consilience is implicit in the natural sciences: The disciplines of biology, chemistry, and physics have formed complex hybrids such as chemical physics, physical chemistry, and molecular genetics over the past century. Outside the natural sciences, however, reductionism is not popular, and Wilson (1998a) has admitted that "to many scholars in the social sciences and humanities it is a vampire in the sacristy" (p. 267). However, according to Wilson (1 998a), to better understand complex systems, science is already turning toward synthesis with the social sciences through cognitive neuroscience, human behavioral genetics, evolutionary biology, and the scientific exploration of environmental influence. The ultimate goal is not the discovery of fundamental laws, but the development of "people able to put together the right information at the right time, think critically about it, and make important choices wisely" (p. 269). For professionals in the field of human behavior, Wilson's pursuit of consilience raises some basic questions: What is the relationship between science, the social sciences, and the humanities? How is this synthesis across disciplinary borders important for improving the quality of human life? The Public Space: Stepping into the Foyer These questions reminded me of a private conversation with my father, Edmund J. Balsdon, that illustrates a cross-disciplinary synthesis that had a powerful effect on human welfare. The 911 emergency telephone response system is now global, but I remember its first incarnation as 440-1234. My father created the concept as part of New York City's crime prevention efforts initiated by Mayor-Elect John V. Lindsay during the 1960s. My father was an imaginative thinker, a scientist by training and an artist and poet by avocation. As an electrical engineer for the New York Telephone Company in the 1930s, he developed the prototype for the contemporary beeper, an early phone pager called "The Bell Boy." Thirty years later, he was thrust into what we called the "foyer" of his field-the public space where the engineer leaves the lab and mixes his ideas with those of others who have also left their private space to mutually address a common cause. My father was asked to serve as a member of the multidisciplinary Law Enforcement Task Force, along with a cross-section of city residents and representatives from business, industry, education, and the justice system. He represented the communications industry and applied his knowledge of physics and his creative imagination to the problem of crime control in a city in which the police force was being criticized for corruption and neglect. The result was a centralized telephone number that could be called from anywhere in the city to report emergencies and get a quick response-the prototype of 911. …