Edward O. Wilson closes his widely praised book, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge, published by Knopf in 1998, answering this very question–to what end will the knowledge of our past and the historical past lead us? To what end will come upon us if we forsake our intellectual and scientific knowledge, the ability to be united by it?
Wilson was writing in a quiet time, when the world seemed to be progressing toward a commonality that was enlightening, that seemed to harvest good-will. His vision seemed nearly in reach.
Consider this paragraph:
Thanks to science and technology, access to factual knowledge of all kinds is rising exponentially while dropping in unit cost. It is destined to become global and democratic. Soon it will be available everywhere on television and computer screens. What then? The answer is clear: synthesis. We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom. The world henceforth will be run by synthesizers, people able to put together the right information at the right time, think critically about it, and make important choices wisely.
On the contrary, however, we have learned that information can be manipulated to make society believe something utterly false (i.e. many of the claims presented to both the citizens of the United States and Britain by their governments to gain support for a war in Iraq).
Consider this paragraph:
And this much about wisdom: In the long haul, civilized nations have come to judge one culture against another by a moral sense of the needs and aspirations of humanity as a whole. In thus globalizing the tribe, they attempt to formulate humankind’s noblest and most enduring goals.
On the contrary, however, what we have seen is a return to imperialism or a warfare that benefits the corporate infrastructure, even though the warfare is payed for by the blood and funds of the plebs. What globalization is occurring seems to be theological in nature, Judeo-Christian fundamentalism to be exact.
Wilson is continually wise in his thoughts, especially in this statement-- "Our hereditary human nature," writes WIlson, "which evolved during hundreds of millenia before and afterward, still profoundly affects the evolution of culture. These considerations do not devalue the determining role of chance in history. Small accidents can have big consequences. The character of individual leaders can mean the difference between war and peace; one technological invention can change an economy.(page 267)"
Have we not seen the truth of this statement in the presidency of Bush 2?
Yes. These are different times. We see so much of war and bloodshed; we hear too much of war-mongering in the name of security and freedom; we see our benefits shrinking, friends losing jobs, yet see the wealthy getting wealthier. We sense that we are drowning in a sea of lies and manipulated information. Nevertheless, the hope that Wilson paints in this final chapter is still prescient now. It is something we can cling to; a belief we can use as our democratic dictum.
In closing, consider these statements from Consilience–
The legacy of the Enlightenment is the belief that entirely on our own we can know, and in knowing, understand, and in understanding, choose wisely....A great deal of serious thinking is needed to navigate the decades immediately ahead....We are entering a new era of existentialism, not the old absurdist existentialism of Kierkegaard and Sartre, giving complete autonomy to the individual, but the concept that only unified learning, universally shared, makes accurate foresight and wise choice possible.
In the course of all of it we are learning the fundamental principle that ethics is everything. Human social existence, unlike animal sociality, is based on the genetic propensity to form long-term contracts that evolve by culture into moral precepts and law....
The search for consilience might seem at first to imprison creativity. The opposite is true. A united system of knowledge is the surest means of identifying the still unexplored domains of reality. It provides a clear map of what is known, and it frames the most productive questions for future inquiry. Historians of science often observe that asking the right question is more important than producing the right answer. The right answer to a trivial question is also trivial, but the right question, even when insoluble in exact form, is a guide to major discovery.
(page 298)
