Consilience
I haven't read 'Sociobiology', but I read his some books, 'On Human Nature', 'Biophilia', 'Naturalist'.
This book is DIFFICULT to read in a second language but worth reading even if it took long time to read.
At the beginning of this book, knowing Einstein tried to unify physics of micro and macro, he says;
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)
This words reminds me of Spinoza.
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)
He says that what dictate human being's action is the epigenetic rules. All - intelligent actions, emotion, love, altruism, literature, art, even religion - follow the epigenetic rules. What is the 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 that this concept of the epigenetic rules is similar to 'meme' by Richard Dawkins.
He refers to 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)
･･･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)
･･･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 would not be surprised at this book and even 'The God Delusion' by Richard Dawkins. Most Japanese believe in the evolution theory of Darwin. I think it is exactly the Japanese secular mentality.
I would say that E. O. Wilson put Darwinism and biology in the center of the realm of philosophy. I think there are not a few people who think biology is most exciting in modern philosophy.
I didn’t know the word “consilience”, and looked it up in my dictionary.
ReplyDeleteThe word was not in the dictionary. Then I checked Wikipedia.
I found it a difficult concept to understand well.
Still, I have got some idea from your review.
I think we should very careful not to take scientific facts as ethical or religious theses.
However we can infer or guess some styles of human affairs, such as society, organization, culture and so on, from scientific observations and findings.
Last year I read an interesting book on socio-biology written by a mathematical ecologist YOSHIMURA Hitoshi.
Its title is “Tsuyoimono-ha-ikinokorenai”. If I am allowed to translate it, it may go “The Strong Cannot Survive”.
Human beings have survived and thrived much more than any other animals because they were weak.
It sounds paradoxical.
Human beings were so weak physically that they had to cooperate with each other and this very fact made them survive.
Isn’t it interesting?
And this idea seems to suggest that cooperation is very important.
Thank you for leaving a good comment.
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting.
Most Japanese are indifferent to not only religion but also philosophy.
I think philosophy is very important for us, and often think what the truth is.