Consilience

Edward O. Wilson is widely respected as a leading researcher on ants, biology, and biodiversity. He is also known as an ecologist and the father of sociobiology.

I haven’t read Sociobiology, but I have read several of his other books—On Human Nature, Biophilia, and Naturalist. This book is difficult to read in a second language, but it is worth the effort, even if it takes time.

At the beginning, reflecting on Einstein’s attempt to unify the physics of the micro and the macro, Wilson writes:

 

I found it a wonderful feeling not just to taste the unification metaphysics but also to be released from the confinement of fundamentalist religion.

･･･ science is religion liberated and writ large. ･･･Preferring a search for objective reality over revelation is another way of satisfying religious hunger.　(Chapter 1)


 

These words remind me of Spinoza.

Later he writes:

The greatest enterprise of the mind has always been and always will be the attempted linkage of the sciences and humanities. ･･･Consilience is the key to unification. (Chapter 2)

Wilson argues that human behavior is shaped by what he calls epigenetic rules. All intelligent actions—emotion, love, altruism, literature, art, even religion—follow these rules.

So what are epigenetic rules?

What is human nature? ･･･ It is the epigenetic rules, the hereditary regularities of mental development that bias cultural evolution in one direction as opposed to another, and thus connect the genes to culture. (Chapter 8)

Epigenesis, originally a biological concept, means the development of an organism under the joint influence of heredity and environment.

Epigenetic rules, to summarize very briefly my account in the previous two chapters, are innate operations in the sensory system and brain.

They(epigenetic rules) are rules of thumb that allow organisms to find rapid solutions to problems encountered in the environment. ･･･Typically emotion-driven, epigenetic rules in all categories of behavior direct the individual toward those relatively quick and accurate responses most likely to ensure survival and reproduction. (Chapter 9)

I think this idea is similar to Richard Dawkins’s concept of the meme.

Wilson also discusses Kant and religion:

Ethical codes are precepts reached by consensus under the guidance of the innate rules of mental development. Religion is the ensemble of mythic narratives that explain the origin of a people, their destiny, and why they are obliged to subscribe to particular rituals and moral codes. Ethical and religious beliefs are created from the bottom up, from people to their culture. They do not come from the top down, from God or other nonmaterial source to the people by way of culture. （Chapter11)

He even comments on Kant: 

Kant, even apart from his tortured prose, is so hard to understand. Sometimes a concept is baffling not because it is profound but because it is wrong. It does not accord, we know now, with the evidence of how the brain works. (Chapter11)

And he concludes:

Ethics and religion are still too complex for present-day science to explain in depth. On the other, they are far more a product of autonomous evolution than hitherto conceded by most theologians. (Chapter11)

Most Japanese readers would not be surprised by this book—or even by Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion. Most Japanese accept Darwin’s theory of evolution. I think this reflects the fundamentally secular mentality of Japanese society.

I would say that E. O. Wilson places Darwinism and biology at the center of philosophical inquiry. Many people today feel that biology is one of the most exciting fields in modern philosophy.