I wrote this for the five minute presentation at the symposium in November. I hope to incorporate it into my presentation for the June conference offered by NESBT on the Human’s Relationship with the Land and Each Other – From the Perspective of Anthropology, Ecology, Evolution and Bowen Theory. Having joined a reading/study group with Joanne Bowen two years ago, I find anthropology offers much to consider in its study of the family over the course of time. Consilience seems to act as an invitation to become more open to other disciplines and what they may offer in understanding the human condition. This information comes from E O Wilson’s book Consilience – The Unity of Knowledge.
EO Wilson states: “The greatest enterprise of the human mind has always been and always will be the attempted linkage of the sciences and the humanities”. He describes consilience as the key to unification -“a jumping together of knowledge by the linking of facts and fact based theory across the disciplines to create a common groundwork of explanation”.
William Whewell was the first to speak of consilience in his synthesis, “The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences” written in 1840. He states:
“The Consilience of Induction takes place when an induction, obtained from one class of facts, coincides with an induction obtained from another different class”.
Wilson sees the appeal of consilience as “the prospect of intellectual adventure and given even modest success, the value of understanding the human condition with a higher degree of certainty”.
We have been encamped in an era of specialization where specialties relate to their own discipline as though it has the final word on some aspect of the human condition. What does it take to move beyond your discipline – to learn how others view the human in the context of his environment? What does it take to hear a different viewpoint even within one’s own discipline – a challenge Dr. Bowen faced as he developed a theory based on the human as a biological organism more similar to other living organisms than different from them.
Sir Francis Bacon, a founder of the Enlightenment, focused on the importance of studying nature and the human condition. Bacon saw the great branches of learning to be open ended and always evolving but also believed in the unity of knowledge. Bacon understood the importance of psychology ( a word not used in his time) in scientific research and all other forms of scholarship (E.Wilson). Bacon urged us to observe the world around us as it is and reflect on the best means of transmitting reality as we experienced it. He envisioned a disciplined and unified learning as the key to improvement of the human condition. He lived from 1561-1626.
So what makes it so difficult to think about a more integrated body of knowledge where each discipline begins to inform the other and is in turn informed by the other. As the human continues ( as all living organisms do) to alter his environment to the detriment of his own and other species, we could certainly benefit from a clearer and more integrated understanding of who we are and how we got here. It seems that finding solutions for climate change and survival of self and others demands us to connect with each other in a different way – with greater flexibility and openness in utilizing our shared knowledge to adapt to a changing environment that threatens our survival but also invites us to alter or influence our own evolution as a species.
I am thinking knowledge of the emotional system and variation in DoS could provide a bridge between disciplines, between the physical and social sciences and the humanities. I will add to these ideas when we meet again.
Ann,
Your essay conveys the richness inherent in the concept of consilience. I see many efforts in that direction among Bowen scholars who are working to first, get a working knowledge of another discipline, and second, see the congruence or discrepancy of ideas between Bowen theory and the other fields. Taking on the study of anthropology has for me revealed how much complexity goes into understanding any society. It is a real intellectual workout. The meeting you are planning will be an excellent opportunity for the kind of dialogue that moves toward consilience.
An, I appreciate the history of the concept of consilience before EO Wilson promoted it once again and I’m glad you wrote it up. I believe consilience the “jumping together of facts across disciplines” is a way (the way?) real conceptual contact between the disciplines develops. Bowen wrote about the importance of that. In one of the Kerr Bowen videos, and maybe it’s written somewhere too, and relevant to this session’s focus on schizophrenia, Bowen said he believed schizophrenia would not be understood until the the disciplines are integrated. He did add that he thought the key to integrating knowledge from genetics, psychology, physiology, etc. would be the accurate conceptualization of behavior. Evidence from anthropology on early homo sapiens fills in the gap in knowledge between primate behavior and modern man, and is another test of whether existing concepts hold water. Do the facts and fact based theories jump together?
Ann, a correction – Bowen thought when the accepted sciences could be understood within the same theoretical framework then schizophrenia could be understood. That of course was a natural systems theory. As I think about it, it seems to me that the natural systems framework enables one to see more of when facts across disciplines coincide.
Thanks Ann. Good science is humble. It recognizes that it doesn’t see everything, and doesn’t dismiss scripture, art and literature off hand. Great works record higher stages of human development, which includes a refined feeling component. They are touchstones that we mustn’t discard.