I have read very little EO Wilson, but I’ve been informed at several cocktail parties that I probably am, or would be, a fan of his stuff. This is probably true <3
I do think myrmecology is awesome, and my understanding is that EO Wilson got pretty into that :-)
Consilience as described there seems like “a reasoning tactic that any bright person with common sense probably derived for themselves when they were eleven or so”?
However, also… when I read about the unity of science I find myself puzzled by the way people seem to be dancing around in weird ways. Like Wikipedia currently says:
Jean Piaget suggested, in his 1918 book Recherche[12] and later books, that the unity of science can be considered in terms of a circle of the sciences, where logic is the foundation for mathematics, which is the foundation for mechanics and physics, and physics is the foundation for chemistry, which is the foundation for biology, which is the foundation for sociology, the moral sciences, psychology, and the theory of knowledge, and the theory of knowledge forms a basis for logic, completing the circle,[13] without implying that any science could be reduced to any other.[14]
It seems weird. There is ONE THING, which is “all of it”.
That thing is a certain way and that thing is internally consistent and able to be understood. Right? It is out there. It is “the territory”. It is what it is.
This is one of those things that “goes without saying” most of the time, except instead of being about how “the social world can be non-fake” (as in Sarah’s essay there) I’m talking about how “the world itself can be non-fake as well!”
Any ways of measuring or thinking about what exists that are right will gain consistency with each other by virtue of being “about that one thing that is a certain way”.
Any true and real contradiction between any two fields of study making claims about reality means (1) at least one of them is wrong or else (2) humans have finally discovered a glitch in the matrix, such that the seemingly academic question has just teleported us from two adjacent laboratories having a collegial debate about the halflife of protons (or whatever)… all the way to chapel perilous (in the Wilsonian sense).
However, from the ways that EO Wilson comes up, and that summary of Piaget, I don’t get the sense that they are taking “reality being real” for granted? Or maybe they aren’t talking to an audience that takes “reality being real” for granted?
I instead somehow get a sense that they are trying to manage status hierarchies between squabbling academic departments (or something)?
I have read very little EO Wilson, but I’ve been informed at several cocktail parties that I probably am, or would be, a fan of his stuff. This is probably true <3
I do think myrmecology is awesome, and my understanding is that EO Wilson got pretty into that :-)
Consilience as described there seems like “a reasoning tactic that any bright person with common sense probably derived for themselves when they were eleven or so”?
However, also… when I read about the unity of science I find myself puzzled by the way people seem to be dancing around in weird ways. Like Wikipedia currently says:
It seems weird. There is ONE THING, which is “all of it”.
That thing is a certain way and that thing is internally consistent and able to be understood. Right? It is out there. It is “the territory”. It is what it is.
This is one of those things that “goes without saying” most of the time, except instead of being about how “the social world can be non-fake” (as in Sarah’s essay there) I’m talking about how “the world itself can be non-fake as well!”
Any ways of measuring or thinking about what exists that are right will gain consistency with each other by virtue of being “about that one thing that is a certain way”.
Any true and real contradiction between any two fields of study making claims about reality means (1) at least one of them is wrong or else (2) humans have finally discovered a glitch in the matrix, such that the seemingly academic question has just teleported us from two adjacent laboratories having a collegial debate about the halflife of protons (or whatever)… all the way to chapel perilous (in the Wilsonian sense).
However, from the ways that EO Wilson comes up, and that summary of Piaget, I don’t get the sense that they are taking “reality being real” for granted? Or maybe they aren’t talking to an audience that takes “reality being real” for granted?
I instead somehow get a sense that they are trying to manage status hierarchies between squabbling academic departments (or something)?