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Related Experiment Videos

How to unify knowledge. Keynote address.

E O Wilson1

  • 1Harvard University, Museum of Comparative Zoology, 26 Oxford Street, Cambridge, MA 02138-2902, USA. ewilson@oeb.harvard.edu

Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences
|June 20, 2001
PubMed
Summary
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This study explores the consilience of knowledge, suggesting human nature

Area of Science:

  • Interdisciplinary studies
  • Philosophy of science
  • Cognitive science

Background:

  • The traditional separation of natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities is challenged.
  • Consilience, the unity of knowledge, is a central question in scholarship.
  • Understanding human nature, specifically epigenetic rules, is key to bridging disciplines.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the intrinsic consilience of all knowledge.
  • To explore the potential for uniting diverse academic branches through a common explanatory framework.
  • To argue for the likelihood and early establishment of knowledge unity.

Main Methods:

  • Analysis of human nature and epigenetic rules across different levels of organization.
  • Empirical investigation of the convergence of natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities.

Related Experiment Videos

  • Examination of hereditary regularities in mental development.

    • Main Results:

    • Human nature, defined by epigenetic rules, offers a bridge between disparate fields of learning.
    • The study of epigenetic rules is progressing across biological, social science, and humanities levels.
    • Examples of epigenetic rules include color vocabularies, incest avoidance, and aesthetic responses.

    Conclusions:

    • The convergence of academic branches is an empirical process, initially light on formal theory.
    • The consilience program provides the means to either establish or refute the fundamental unity of knowledge.
    • The likelihood of knowledge unity is high and its establishment is imminent.