Yet even if biological explanations can be taken too far, or applied prematurely, the social sciences often have erred in the opposite direction, by ignoring biology altogether. Wilson adeptly contrasts the meandering pace of the social sciences with the rapid progress occurring in the biomedical sciences; the latter, he notes, are more focused on seeking answers across multiple specialties and levels of explanation--in short, on consilience. Wilson rightly decries the dogmatic cultural relativism that has dominated anthropology during much of this century. He traces how a justified skepticism toward Social Darwinism evolved into a sweeping denial that human nature has anything to do with heredity. Sociology, as Wilson notes, is hindered by its own dogma that people are products of society. He likens the field, with its broad-brush approach, to what biology would be if biologists did not know or care that organisms are composed of cells.
By contrast, Wilson approves of economists' efforts to draw links between the "macro" and "micro" levels of economic activity, and between economic behavior and broader social phenomena. Nonetheless, Wilson's view of economics is mainly negative. Economic theories tend to be overly simplified and abstract, he argues, and they depend on a model of human behavior drawn largely from folk wisdom. These criticisms are questionable, however. Much economic theory, including the basic premise that humans are "ration-al utility maximizers," is counterintuitive and therefore quite the opposite of folk wisdom. (Where, in all the world's folklore, does one find the principle of comparative advantage?)
Moreover, whether sociobiology's mod- el of human behavior offers superior insights remains to be seen. Tellingly, one of Wilson's strongest points against conventional economics--that people often rely on "heuristics," or rules of thumb, rather than rational calculation--is derived from cognitive psychology, not sociobiology. Even so, he surely is correct to assert that integration between economics and biology is an avenue of research worth investigating.
The book's final chapter, titled "To What End?," is focused on environmental and social problems. Here, Wilson makes a number of assertions that seem to come from nowhere, or to jibe poorly with his main argument--not a good thing in a book about consilience. He argues that future generations should be "genetically conservative," or cautious in their use of genetic engineering; in an aside, he writes that such conservatism should not be confused with "the pietistic and selfish libertarianism into which much of the American conservative movement has lately descended." The book's final paragraph contains a sudden, ambiguous warning about "machine-aided ratiocination"; apparently, future generations should be cautious in using computers, too.
Wilson presents a grim picture of the global environment, emphasizing human population growth, the limits of arable land and potable water, and mass extinctions of plants and animals. Yet having argued that economics should be informed by biology, he now inadvertently demonstrates what biology and ecology look like when colored by a cursory and one-sided understanding of economics. Wilson complains about deforestation, for instance, while taking no notice of the government subsidies that often promote it. He worries that economic growth will increase humanity's environmental impact, and he calls, ominously, for governments to adopt unspecified "population policies"; he fails to note that in many nations rising prosperity has correlated with declining population growth. He avers that technological solutions to environmental problems are "prostheses" that make humanity more dependent and the environment more delicately balanced. And he wonders whether posterity will be angry at our era for presiding over the extinction of so many insect species. Bear in mind, though, that he is an entomologist.
Consilience, in the end, leaves us far from a convincing unification of knowledge. But it gives us a fascinating view of the world as seen by Edward O. Wilson, a bold, innovative, and idiosyncratic scientist.
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