Amazon.com
The biologist Edward O. Wilson is a rare scientist: having over a long career made signal contributions to population genetics, evolutionary biology, entomology, and ethology, he has also steeped himself in philosophy, the humanities, and the social sciences. The result of his lifelong, wide-ranging investigations is Consilience (the word means "a jumping together," in this case of the many branches of human knowledge), a wonderfully broad study that encourages scholars to bridge the many gaps that yawn between and within the cultures of science and the arts. No such gaps should exist, Wilson maintains, for the sciences, humanities, and arts have a common goal: to give understanding a purpose, to lend to us all "a conviction, far deeper than a mere working proposition, that the world is orderly and can be explained by a small number of natural laws." In making his synthetic argument, Wilson examines the ways (rightly and wrongly) in which science is done, puzzles over the postmodernist debates now sweeping academia, and proposes thought-provoking ideas about religion and human nature. He turns to the great evolutionary biologists and the scholars of the Enlightenment for case studies of science properly conducted, considers the life cycles of ants and mountain lions, and presses, again and again, for rigor and vigor to be brought to bear on our search for meaning. The time is right, he suggests, for us to understand more fully that quest for knowledge, for "Homo sapiens, the first truly free species, is about to decommission natural selection, the force that made us.... Soon we must look deep within ourselves and decide what we wish to become." Wilson's wisdom, eloquently expressed in the pages of this grand and lively summing-up, will be of much help in that search.
Book Description
"A dazzling journey across the sciences and humanities in search of deep laws to unite them." --
The Wall Street Journal
One of our greatest living scientists--and the winner of two Pulitzer Prizes for
On Human Nature and
The Ants--gives us a work of visionary importance that may be the crowning achievement of his career. In
Consilience (a word that originally meant "jumping together"), Edward O. Wilson renews the Enlightenment's search for a unified theory of knowledge in disciplines that range from physics to biology, the social sciences and the humanities.
Using the natural sciences as his model, Wilson forges dramatic links between fields. He explores the chemistry of the mind and the genetic bases of culture. He postulates the biological principles underlying works of art from cave-drawings to Lolita. Presenting the latest findings in prose of wonderful clarity and oratorical eloquence, and synthesizing it into a dazzling whole,
Consilience is science in the path-clearing traditions of Newton, Einstein, and Richard Feynman.
Customer Reviews:
Call in the Devil's Advocate!.......2007-09-21
This book tries to pull everything and everyone on earth into itself and, using scientific methods, organize them all - or plan their organization - into one big master survey and plan.
Dr. Wilson is a real polymath. He's brilliant, intellectually honest, and benevolent. But I didn't always get the feeling that he had really digested all the material he had used, especially the parts about philosophy and art.
I have to admit I don't usually read this type of book. I came to it via Tom Wolfe's excellent collection of essays, "Hooking Up." In the essay, "Sorry, Your Soul Just Died," Wolfe says sociobiologists (such as Wilson) contend that, not only is there no God, but also, no soul and no free will. Wolfe, though no scientist, is a wise observer of human nature, and his exploration of the ramifications of the trickle-down effect of this and other, similar scientific theories (in "Hooking Up" and another book, "I Am Charlotte Simmons") are well worth examining.
But I think both Wolfe and Wilson himself overestimate the strength of sociobiology's (and consilience's) arguments. For one thing, Wilson himself seems, excuse me, but not at all a critical thinker, at least not as far as non-hard science texts are concerned. I mean, here's a guy who, as he says in the beginning of the book, read the Bible, cover-to-cover, twice, and still believed it was literally true until he went off to college. Didn't it occur to him to ask, at least, where Cain's wife came from?
Wilson talks about how science and the arts will someday be conjoined theoretically so that, for instance, biological and neurological principles will be used to understand how a painting is analyzed. But he greatly oversimplifies the task of analyzing a painting. Many people who are not real art lovers think that we are taught art appreciation like we are taught biology: that it's a matter of memorizing why this painting is significant, why it is art, what its meaning is, as if there is an objective consensus which, once reached, is definitive. They completely leave out the individual response, or else, plot it on a bell curve. But I think most artists, writers, etc., would say art is all about subjective (and even preferably untaught) response. Off-the-curve responses are just as legitimate as typical ones. And the rules are constantly shifting, because art is based on expectation of response of the observer by the artist.
An example of Wilson's formulaic attitude is found on page 28, when he starts a section with, "All histories that live in our hearts are peopled by archetypes in mythic narratives..." as if that were established fact. I know that's a major theory nowadays - even the Disney scriptwriters use it - but I don't accept this dry cutting-and-bundling as fact. Besides, how is this proveable in the scientific sense? It would have to been done through survey, which is inherently subjective. Or somehow found in our genes, which hasn't been done yet.
In general, throughout the book, Wilson over-depends on Delphic decision-making: when faced with a difficult subject, such as art, you survey the opinions of the top experts, choose the opinion which seems most true, then treat that opinion as if it were established fact. I don't think these opinions can be relied upon: they tend to reverse every generation, and often are arrived at, not by rational debate, but by the intellectual bullying by the loudest and most politically cut-throat of the faculty members of some "top" university. Devil's advocates are in short supply in such places!
In regards to the contention that, if neurobiology can in the future completely predict an individual human's behavior, then that would prove we have no soul... well, Wilson backs off that question by saying that it'd be too much work to do this, and that no one would bother. (!) But he seems to suggest that the brain will be so well understood that science will be able to predict virtually all mental responses. (He didn't give examples, so I was left wondering: predict what? presidential elections? who should marry whom?)
And, does Wilson really have a grasp of how complex thinking is? As far as I can see, he seems to think it's sort of like mapping the Earth's oceans and all their inhabitants and all interactions - (my analogy, not his). Then you could, for instance, know where an individual whale could be found at any time. In fact, it's even more of a problem when you consider that, every time we have a chat, read a book, or look at a painting, we're interacting with another brain or, in effect, mixing our ocean with another planet's, separately evolved ocean. That whale would be awfully slippery, even if you did tag him with tracking device! Throw in self-awareness (the whale knows he's being hunted?) and the thing seems impossible.
Let me say, the book is very readable, and well worth reading for its explanation of epigenetic rules - the proof that we are hard-wired, so to speak, to, for example, find incest repulsive. These certainly will be, as Wilson states, useful in banishing the "There Is No Absolute" theory that has so weakened the productivity of intellectual thought lately. But the idea that we can discover all these rules and then build a more consistent code of ethics is, I think, naive. What if we find a gene that makes some people homosexual, and another that makes other people repulsed by homosexuals? Scientists are not Solomons.
Wilson says that a better knowledge of ourselves through the understanding of epigenetic rules will make us happier. I think it could certainly contribute. But it's far from a panacea. What about the Dostoyevskian idea that suffering is what makes us compassionate? Or Socrates' question, "What is the Good Life?") These are very vital moral questions demanding consideration.
It would be great if Wilson could get together with Tom Wolfe.
Interesting & over-rated.......2007-06-22
This is a thoughtful book: one that I would have no problem recommending to anyone interested in the philosophy of science. There are useful, sometimes original insights by this scientist & would-be philosopher. However, Wilson consistently over-reaches his mark, delves into areas of which he admits he has little understanding or interest. Wilson's constant use, or abuse, of deconstruction theories in general, and Jacques Derrida, in particular, as the straw-men to his arguments is a good example. He acknowledges he has read little of the the work, and what he has read he had little interest in - personally, I doubt very much he completely read the three Derrida books that he cites in his notes.
This becomes most obvious in the chapter "The Social Sciences", in which Wilson launches a bizarre and bitter attack on ideology, Marxists, and the worst of them all, it seems, cultural relativists. At least, these are the terms Wilson uses to describe any social science or theorizing that does not overtly recognize the pre-eminience of biology, i.e., genes. Wilson seems to be refighting academic battles of the late 60s-early 70s. Interestingly, when Wilson discusses his theory of gene-cultural coevolution, he will cite the most research research and scientists, yet when he discusses "social science" in this chapter, the most recent writers he can come up with are Franz Boas and Sigmund Freud. He doesn't mention Derrida in this chapter. It reads like he wrote this chapter as an essay in 1972. The intellectual dishonesty in this chapter is shocking when compared to the rather reasoned arguments he presents to this point.
Wilson is strongest when giving his perspectives on the historical importance of biology as it has informed the social sciences. Another strength of the book is the very detailed bibliographical information in his notes that will be useful to readers who want to follow-up on authors and studies cited by Wilson.
A sketch of the future of social science.......2007-01-01
Edward Wilson, the founder of sociobiology and evolutionary psychology, is now retired. This has given him time to absorb himself in the social sciences and arts: literature, sociology, anthropology, theology, psychology and economics. What would these be like if they were informed by the concept that individual and social behaviour is constrained by an evolutionary history, whose drivers are increasingly understood?
Wilson believes they would be a great deal different, and Consilience is his attempt to imagine the future reconceptualisation of the humanities within an overarching scientific (Darwinian) framework. Does it work? Yes, mostly, if you are scientifically trained: probably not at all if you are not.
I suspect most adherents to the `Standard Social Science Model' will simply conclude that Wilson is just making endless category errors in trying to insert sociobiological constraints into the high domains of culture, ethics and theology. But sometimes you have to just come off the fence: they would be wrong in this judgement. Nevertheless, the current generation of social science academics will never accept Wilson's approach. The eventual triumph of sociobiology (if anyone will still be using the term) will be the end-point of generations of research.
Where does Wilson fall short of his own high standards within his own paradigm? I think in a couple of areas.
1. On p. 127 the philosopher David Chalmers is quoted as distinguishing the `easy' from the `hard' problems of consciousness research. Everything is hard of course, but investigating how, for example, vision works is a research programme in signal processing and pattern recognition which has been producing results for more than thirty years. This is one of Chalmers `easy' problems. A `hard' problem is the experience of agonising pain. We think, for example, we know in principle how to make a robot which could see: there are few people who believe they could sketch out an architecture for a computer which could honestly be said to experience pain (and thus be tortured). Wilson completely fails to address this issue in his glib assertion that `the hard problem is conceptually easy to solve' (p. 128). No it's not.
2. One of the shocking consequences of an evolutionary analysis of humanity is that there is no point to any person's life, or to humanity as a whole, other than the successful reproduction of genetic material - something we share with any bacterium. Even as we know this to be true, we instinctively shy away from it, looking for deep meaning here, there, anywhere ... . We never find it, but we 'know' it must be somewhere. One of the triumphs of evolutionary psychology is to identify the `instinct' for deep meaning in life with the sanctification of tribal or community life, which is a powerful asset in group cohesion, and therefore strongly selected for. The dilemma is that even though we understand scientifically why we feel this way, that understanding does nothing to address the emotional need. Somehow we need a deep belief in the meaning of life (usually expressed through some kind of religion or group values) even though scientifically we know this is simply an effective adaptation for group cohesion. Wilson concurs that there is absolutely no solution to this problem, but still, mysteriously, dabbles in `deism'.
A key dilemma which will confront future generations, not so far away, is the power to change the human genetic code. But if there is no point to human existence, there can be no guides as to which way to change it (once obvious defects have been fixed). Wilson accepts the point but limits speculation - there is a whole book's worth of thinking to do about this issue, but perhaps it's too early for it to be written.
People have been kind about Wilson's merits as a stylist. I didn't find the book a gripping read: the writing is rather discursive and lacks bite. In this it shows its own ancestry as a compilation of articles and talks. `On Human Nature' is much better, as it seems to have real emotion around it - a response to his critics - and a more polemical style.
Wilson is currently a lobbyist for conservation and against climate change. The final chapter on this topics is superb, and a welcome antidote to over-familiar `save the planet' narratives driven by inaccurate science and fuzzy emotionalism.
Don't judge this book by it's title. .......2006-12-05
This is a pretty good science book.
But the bias is clear. Wilson argues for consilience of all of academia under science, largely ignoring any contributions that the other approaches to knowledge may contribute. Wilson explains how the arts, political science, psychology, history, etc., could benefit from science. He does a pretty good job of discussing that. But he is completely blind to how these other approaches to knowledge might help science.
I read the book hopeing for some insight into how all the different ways of seeing the world might be reconciled, and instead I just find more of the same overly reductionist modernist approach, with science being the only valid perspective. What a waste!
I do, however, enjoy science, and Wilson is a pretty good science writer, so I rate this book as OK. But had he even tried to show how science can likewise benefit from the approaches used by historians or artists or novelists or sociologists or musicians - it could have been a terrific read.
To dream the impossible dream (Man of La Mancha).......2006-12-02
Edmund Wilson's dream is to find the unity of knowledge: the final unification of physics, the reconstruction of living cells, the assembly of ecosystems, the co-evolution of genes and culture, the physical basis of mind and the deep origin of ethics and religion, all that (only that?) together reducible to the laws of physics, to a very simple causality law, like the universal law of action and reaction, but more sophisticated.
Does that implicate determinism in the sense I. Berlin stated: `law(s) enabling us to predict (or reconstruct) every detail in the lives of every single human being in the future, present and past.' (Laplace's demon)? No.
As Stephen Hawking said: `Even if we do achieve a complete unified theory, we shall not be able to make detailed predictions in any but the simplest situations.'
If the situations are not the simplest one, the degrees of freedom are infinite.
There are also other aspects to be considered in the search for a solution of Wilson's Super-Herculean task.
As J. von Neumann & H.H. Goldstine said: `a mathematical formulation necessarily represents only a theory of some phase (aspects) of reality, and not reality itself.'
Laws are about something (reality) and reality is made of matter (processes). While the fundamental building stones of matter are the same in the whole universe, those stones are organized everywhere differently: electrons, atoms, molecules, plants, DNA, the human body, the brain, natural selection, demographics, philosophy, arts, political systems, moral values ...
W. van Orman Quine defends physicalism as follows in an interview with Bryan Magee: `Processes (like emotions) in physical objects (people) are always accompanied by microphysical changes. In fact, they are those changes. Neurology is ultimately the place for explanations.'
For different complexes of matter there are different laws; e.g., what is the link between quantum mechanics and natural selection? Or, between gravitation and war?
To find a very simple causality (and a correspondent law) for all the processes in the universe should be a total impossible dream. On the contrary, the future is totally open.
As a brilliant biologist examining very complex systems, E.O. Wilson seems to be searching for an oversimplification.
N.B. The Cretan paradox has been resolved by Alfred Tarski.
Amazon.com
As a poet, novelist, and farmer, Wendell Berry has worked and written in favor of tried and tested ways, rejecting the notion that the modern is always to be preferred over the old. Technology may have its uses, he has insisted in books like The Gift of Good Land, but what matters more is the crafting of sound human communities and of self-reliant living. Religious faith lies at the heart of Berry's unapologetically old-fashioned program. Faith, which supposes that life is full of unpredictable mysteries, stands against much of modern science, an opposition that Berry explores in Life Is a Miracle. Taking particular issue with entomologist E.O. Wilson's recent book, Consilience, which maintains the supremacy of scientific explanation over religious conjecture and supposes that science will one day be able to answer every question about the hows and whys of life, Berry revisits C.P. Snow's "two cultures" thesis to observe that science and religion address different kinds of necessary questions. "Science cannot replace art or religion," he writes, "for the same reason that you cannot loosen a nut with a saw or cut a board in two with a wrench." Against science's "false specification and pretentious exactitude," Berry notes quietly that the more he observes his own little corner of the planet, a small Kentucky farm, the less patient he is with reductionist, materialist explanations of the way things work--for here, and everywhere, "life ... is unique, given to the world minute by minute, only once, never to be repeated."
Berry's slender essay offers a thoughtful repudiation of an increasingly technological--and, some would say, soulless--culture. --Gregory McNamee
Book Description
A thought-provoking and concise rebuttal to E.O. Wilson's Consilience
In his best-seller Consilience, E.O. Wilson presented a blueprint for the reconciliation of science with religion and the arts. In a carefully measured response, Wendell Berry demonstrates that Wilson's reconciliation is nothing more than the subjugation of religion and art by science, which alone, according to Wilson, would set the boundaries of discourse among the three disciplines. Berry argues that religion and art are not subject to the reductionist and materialistic assumptions of modern science, and cannot be contained within its boundaries or explained by its explanations. He says the aims of science have become hard to distinguish from those of industry and commerce, and he advocates a new Emancipation Proclamation to free life itself from enslavement by the corporations and their scientific underlings.
The aim, according to Berry, is not consilience among the disciplines, but rather conversation. He concludes his argument by suggesting a number of changes in thought which would enable such a conversation to take place.
Customer Reviews:
I'm on the fence.......2007-09-13
This book certainly creates controversy as the disparate ratings from one to five stars illustrates. If nothing else, that says something very good about it as a book. Indeed the ratings seem to be more along the lines of agreeing or disagreeing with Berry's ideas, rather than the usual standard I apply: how much of my short allotment of time and restricted stack of cash should be spent on a book. I think of most of my reviews along those lines, instead of engaging in a dialect with the author. Now, that being said, I really need to say I am deviating from that practice because although I think this is a five star should read (agree with Berry's updated C.P. Snow Two Cultures or not, spiritualism vs techno-engineeering or not) as a discussion centre, I think there are some writerly considerations: Berry is a poet, a much greater poet than many realize. Like other definers of an age - unacknowledged legislators true but subsequently recognized - his audience does not always realize the way his mind works words around. In his poetry a sort of slow dawning comes on the reader who does not force things along. Brisk walks in his woods will not do, instead the multiple shades of green, the distinct notes of each birdsong, the subtle shifts of a breeze on the face constitute an experience, a miracle of life. That goes on in this prose arguement as well. Reading him for a concise debate just will not work. I guess what I am saying is that the underlying premise is the undeniable point that for all of sciencethere is no such substance as life. But it's still there and that's the miracle and that's the poetry and the rational, logical, orderly prose of an essay does not manifest the miracle that is poetry. But I am thankful there is a Wendell Berry writing such books to make me think. Spend a few bucks, do some pondering, but in the end go to his poems.
a rebuttal to rebuttals.......2007-09-10
I am writing in response to the reviews listed here on Life is a miracle. My objection to those who would dismiss Berry as a spiritualist, is that they didn't read his work carefully enough. Berry knows how to prove a point logically and with sufficient evidence. In Berry's case he achieves both the practical, intellectual language of a critical essay and the eye opening prose of cherished thought in literature. It is not a personal book on dreaming about how life should be but a rather original look at the reality and possible extent of collaboration and conversation between science and art. He never attacked science, he proposed limits on it, not for data, not for obtaining knowledge, but limits on how it can solve our human problems. He suggests we be responsible with our knowledge, not simply by eating up more knowledge to be merely original and meeting some professional standard, but by implementing our knowledge in a useful way, that helps in our communities. Why it would be hard to understand Berry's position seems impossibly self-centered given the fact we all now bear the cost of our industry.
Changing course.......2006-10-15
I just returned from The Prairie Festival at the Land Institute in Salina,
Kansas where I heard Wendell Berry speak. At least two speakers at the
Festival said they had changed the course of their lives after reading words
written by Wendell Berry.
In this book, I found such life changing words in sections 6 - 8. I got
bogged down however in the first sections discussing E.O. Wilson's work
"Consilience". I slowly made my way through sections 1-4 and found much
to think about but decided to skip section 5. I was then delighted to find
the style of writing Berry has used in many of his other books (and in his
talk).
"We should give up the frontier and its boomer "ethics" of greed, cunning,
and violence, and, so near too late, accept settlement as our goal. Wes
Jackson says that our schools now have only one major,upward mobility,
and that we need to offer a major in homecoming. I agree, and would only
add that a part of the sense of 'homecoming' must be homeMAKING, for we
now must begin sometimes with remnants, sometimes with ruins."
"The time is past, if ever there was such a time, when you can just
discover knowledge and turn it loose into the world and assume that
you have done good.
This, to me, is a sign of the incompleteness of science in itself-which
is a sign of the need for a strenuous conversation among all the branches
of learning. This is a conversation that the universities have failed
to produce, and in fact have obstructed."
When you believe in things that you don't understand.........2006-07-22
The use of the word "superstition" in the title is a mistake, and one that captures the problem with the whole argument. The book is meant as a rebuttal to E.O. Wilson's book Consilience, which argues for an expansion of the use of the scientific method into the realm of the Humanities.
A superstition is a belief that one holds without any supporting evidence or in spite of evidence to the contrary. Some examples would include believing that bad things are more likely to happen on Friday the 13th, that the Earth is 6000 years old, or that water can be located with a bent twig. The human mind is so susceptible to superstition that people had to devise a method of constantly checking their beliefs against observations. That's science -- the thing that rescues you from superstition.
I have to believe that anyone who thought seriously about the scientific method would be OK with it. After all it's just away of keeping oneself honest. In this book Wendell Berry seems particularly angry about something called "scientism," a silly word meant to criticize those who place undue faith in the scientific method. Berry's argument is that there are aspects of human existence that are outside the realm of science, and to think otherwise is to engage in superstition. But he's wrong. Science is a tool for figuring out how things work, and people use it because it has time and again proven successful in solving mysteries that seemed impenetrable, even deeply spiritual. In other words people use science to solve problems because centuries of evidence have shown it to be the best way to solve problems. One might as well use the word "carpentism" to describe the belief that patios can be made out of wood and nails.
Beyond carping about what can be studied, Berry really wants to limit the things that should be studied. I have to say I find this kind of creepy. He talks a lot about his sense of wonder at the beauty of his Kentucky farm, but what about people who derive a sense of wonder from the mathematical structure of music or the brain circuitry that gives rise to religious experience? I can think of no objective reason why farms are more beautiful than equations, or poetry more beautiful than synapses. And suppose our knowledge of synapses could improve people's lives. Suppose we could use a rigorous understanding of the biological basis of thoughts and emotions to treat schizophrenia (one of the world's leading causes of human misery). I know of no other way to investigate the way the brain works, and no reason why such suffering is not worth alleviating.
The book also complains a great deal about the abuses of science by politicians and corporations. As several other reviewers have pointed out, his legitimate beef here is with the government, not science. Governments were abusing their subjects long before there was any such thing as science, and they will continue to do so as long as their corruption is unchecked. The U.S. is (for the moment) a democracy that is responsive to the will of the people, and the laws regulating industry can be changed far more easily than the laws of physics.
One beautiful essay.......2006-05-24
Life is a Miracle is one beautiful essay on the folly and pretensions of scientism. If this is your kind of book, you'll get a good laugh reading the venomous review (number 17) by a Dr. Strickland. He calls himself "davexray", so we know how clever he is, but apparently this defender of the scientific method isn't any kind of scientist at all, but merely the practitioner of an interpretive skill, namely, radiology. I hope that you'll see in this review, too, confirmation of Berry's point that such inept thinkers dressed in lab coats are a real threat to our freedom.
You may note that this spokesman for science is a little light on his logic. In the third paragraph, Dr. Strickland, confounding contradiction with contrariety, suggests that for Berry to argue that the Industrial Revolution initiated rampant destruction of the environment and communities, Berry would have to argue that there was no exploitation, suffering, or early death--absolutely none, in fact--in earlier times.
Berry wishes to point out that many of the assertions made in the name of science are not scientific at all, but metaphysical propositions stemming from philosophical materialism and that, furthermore, scientism asserts its right to decide all truth not, as Dr. Strickland would have it, based upon evidence, but as a matter of faith. I would highly recommend reading also "Uncommon Dissent: Intellectuals Who Find Darwinism Unconvincing," to get a feel for just how vicious people like Dr. Strickland and other intellectual pygmies get when their pretentious nonsense is exposed to critical examination by great thinkers.
Average customer rating:
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Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge
Edward O. Wilson
Manufacturer: Alfred A. Knopf
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
 General
| Reference
| Subjects
| Books
History of Ideas
| Historical Study
| History
| Subjects
| Books
ASIN: 0316645699 |
Product Description
Can a unified system of knowledge (sciences, arts, ethics, and religion) be created? Tall order, but this great thinker shows how.
Book Description
How do scientists persuade colleagues from diverse fields to cross the disciplinary divide, risking their careers in new interdisciplinary research programs? Why do some attempts to inspire such research win widespread acclaim and support, while others do not?
In Shaping Science with Rhetoric, Leah Ceccarelli addresses such questions through close readings of three scientific monographs in their historical contexts—Theodosius Dobzhansky's Genetics and the Origin of Species (1937), which inspired the "modern synthesis" of evolutionary biology; Erwin Schrödinger's What Is Life? (1944), which catalyzed the field of molecular biology; and Edward O. Wilson's Consilience (1998), a so far not entirely successful attempt to unite the social and biological sciences. She examines the rhetorical strategies used in each book and evaluates which worked best, based on the reviews and scientific papers that followed in their wake.
Ceccarelli's work will be important for anyone interested in how interdisciplinary fields are formed, from historians and rhetoricians of science to scientists themselves.
Customer Reviews:
Thoughtful and concise.......2006-03-31
Ceccarelli examines three cases of scientific synthesis (or lack thereof) based on rhetorical efforts. In each of her three cases, an effort was made to merge fields of inquiry based on larger principles. The first two are success stories, and the third was a failure. Ceccarelli's analysis is tight; her examples are important and well-chosen. This book is relatively accessible for those who do not have a scientific background and are curious about the role that rhetoric plays in scientific inquiry. It is also detailed enough to provide substance for scientific professionals in the fields of biology and physics who would like to know more about the history of how these fields were constituted.
Product Description
A masterful production of work that focuses on many forms of knowledge and actually digests them and brings forth a digested form of truth according to the author.
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- Death by Black Hole: And Other Cosmic Quandaries
- Discrete-Time Signal Processing (2nd Edition)
- DMT: The Spirit Molecule: A Doctor's Revolutionary Research into the Biology of Near-Death and Mystical Experiences
- Dragon's Gate (Golden Mountain Chronicles, 1867)
- Dragon of the Red Dawn (A Stepping Stone Book(TM))
- Educational Research: Planning, Conducting, and Evaluating Quantitative and Qualitative Research (2nd Edition)
- Einstein: His Life and Universe
- Electrical Power and Controls
- Electronic Design Automation for Integrated Circuits Handbook 2 Vol Set (Electronic Design Automation for Integrated Circuits Hdbk)
- Eragon / Eldest (Inheritance, Books 1 & 2)
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