Consilience, Edward O. Wilson
Consilience, Edward O. Wilson
3 Rating(s)
List: $25.00 | Sale: $17.50
Club: $12.50

Consilience
The Unity of Knowledge

Author: Edward O. Wilson

Narrator: Jonathan Hogan

Unabridged: 17 hr 35 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 05/15/2018


Synopsis

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.

About The Author

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 is currently Pellegrino University Research Professor and Honorary Curator in Entomology of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University. He lives in Lexington, Massachusetts, with his wife, Renee.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Manny on February 23, 2017

At first, I wasn't sure I liked Consilience. E.O. Wilson is frank about his disdain for philosophy, a literary genre I enjoy, and it seemed to me that he might be one of those brash scientists who writes off everything that isn't science as old-fashioned nonsense. I suppose that characterization isn......more

Goodreads review by Jimmy on April 12, 2014

I was shelving in western philosophy the other week (I don't really have a choice against eavesdropping on bookstore conversations, and they're pretty much all inane to the point of inflicting brain atrophy on the listener, i.e. me). As I walked down the aisle with a handful of Wittgenstein, a custo......more

Goodreads review by Jamie on May 19, 2020

"The central idea of the consilience world view is that all tangible phenomena, from the birth of stars to the workings of social institutions, are based on material processes that are ultimately reducible, however long and tortuous the sequences, to the laws of physics." This is an obvious truth, a......more

Goodreads review by William on December 12, 2017

E. O. Wilson is one of my heroes. He is a life-long scientist with the courage to take on the deniers that his writing brings out. This book was the first of his that I came across almost 20 years ago now. What struck me was the breadth of his consideration of the scope of human discovery. His term......more

Goodreads review by Kunal on May 24, 2020

I may not have come across this remarkable book unless I read the review written by a fellow Goodreads reader, whose opinion I have come to trust. That, to me, is the greatest utility of Goodreads. Reading in an expensive activity, especially at my age. There are only so many books I can manage to r......more


Quotes

"A dazzling journey across the sciences and humanities in search of deep laws to unite them." —The Wall Street Journal 

"An original work of synthesis . . . a program of unrivalled ambition: to unify all the major branches of knowledge—sociology, economics, the arts and religion—under the banner of science." —The New York Times

"As elegant in its prose as it is rich in its ideas . . . a book of immense importance." —Atlanta Journal & Constitution

"Edward O. Wilson is a hero. . . he has made landmark scientific discoveries and has a writing style to die for. . . . A complex and nuanced argument." —Boston Globe

"One of the clearest and most dedicated popularizers of science since T. H. Huxley. . . . Mr. Wilson can do the science and the prose." —Time

"An excellent book. Wilson provides superb overviews of Western intellectual history and the current state of understanding in many academic disciplines." — Slate

"The Renaissance scholar still lives. . . .  A sensitive, wide-ranging mind discoursing beautifully. . . .  Wilson's buoyant intellectual courage is bracing." —Seattle Weekly