sign in sign up
<<
Home , Consilience, Consilience (book), Operationalization, Richard Dawkins

Florida State University Libraries

Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School

2014 Concerning the Unity of and the Aim of Scientific : A Critique of E.O. Wilson's Carmen Maria Marcous

Follow this and additional works at the FSU Digital Library. For more information, please contact [email protected] FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY

COLLEGE OF AND

CONCERNING THE UNITY OF KNOWLEDGE AND THE AIM OF SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY:

A CRITIQUE OF E.O. WILSON’S CONSILIENCE WORLDVIEW

By

CARMEN MARIA MARCOUS

A Thesis submitted to the Department of in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts

Degree Awarded: Spring Semester, 2014 Carmen Maria Marcous defended this thesis on March 26, 2014. The members of the supervisory committee were:

Michael Ruse Professor Directing Thesis

Piers Rawling Committee Member

Fritz Davis Committee Member

James Justus Committee Member

The Graduate School has verified and approved the above-named committee members, and certifies that the thesis has been approved in accordance with university requirements.

ii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Abstract ...... iv 1. INTRODUCTION ...... 1 2. BACKGROUND ...... 6 2.1 Philosophical Review: Values in ...... 6 2.2 Historical Review: Consilience as Cultural Artifact ...... 11 3. : SOCIAL BEHAVIOR ...... 17 3.1 The Controversy ...... 17 3.2 Contemporary Human Behavioral ...... 24 4. ...... 28 4.1 Arguments ...... 28 4.2 Concluding Remarks ...... 34

REFERENCES ...... 38 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ...... 40

iii

ABSTRACT

In this paper I set out to problematize what the distinguished evolutionary biologist, Edward O.

Wilson, has presented to a popular audience as his consilience worldview. Wilson’s consilience worldview is a metaphysical framework that presumes the existence of an underlying unity in the knowledge gleaned from otherwise diverse modes of inquiry, and details a particular normative approach for its discovery by scientists. After introducing Wilson’s consilience worldview (WCW), I review philosophical and historical on the role that values play in scientific inquiry and explain how to understand WCW as a problematic bundle of prescriptive claims concerning the appropriate doing of scientific inquiry. Specifically, I examine deleterious implications for the study of human social behavior that result from attempted application of WCW in order to challenge Wilson’s claim that WCW is the most profitable or promising research program to adopt in the study of human social behavior (what I describe as the ‘The Fertility

Objection’). Then, I present an argument for why readers of Consilience should regard its central thesis, WCW, skeptically, as potentially deleterious to the process and aims of science broadly conceived (what I describe as the ‘The Objection’).

iv

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

“We are approaching a new age of synthesis, when the testing of consilience is the

greatest of all intellectual challenges. Philosophy, the contemplation of the

unknown, is a shrinking domain. We have the common goal of turning as much

philosophy as possible into science.”

-Edward O. Wilson, Consilience, 1998: 11

In this paper I set out to problematize what the distinguished evolutionary biologist,

Edward O. Wilson, has presented to a popular audience as his consilience worldview. Wilson’s consilience worldview (hereafter, WCW) is a particular metaphysical framework that asserts the existence of an underlying unity in the knowledge gleaned from otherwise diverse modes of intellectual inquiry. Among its operating assumptions, WCW relies heavily on the thesis of scientific monism, which states that whenever sub-fields in a particular domain of inquiry, such as the natural sciences, utilize inconsistent background assumptions, methodological approaches, or epistemological claims it represents a temporary phase; and that a complete, comprehensive, and unified account of any given phenomenon should be the ultimate objective and appropriate measure of epistemological (and, therefore, scientific) success. Scientific monism, understood in this way, can be contrasted with moderate views of scientific pluralism; these views hold that either a plurality of questions in the sciences can represent different and non-reducible, though still compatible, approaches, or that pluralism at the theoretical level is commensurable with an

1 integrated account at the phenomenal level (Longino, 2013: 137). Finally, a strong thesis of scientific pluralism, which serves as the most straightforward foil to WCW, asserts that there may be some phenomena or investigative contexts in the sciences where an in-eliminable or incomparable plurality of , models, or hypotheses are necessitated by certain investigative contexts (where “incomparable” here denotes that no positive comparative judgment about their value is true). Moreover, proponents of scientific pluralism hold that some such situations are more appropriately understood as instances of scientific success rather than epistemological failure

(Longino, 2013: 137).

Simply put, consilience is the that there is underlying unity in the knowledge gleaned from diverse modes or domains of scientific inquiry, and as such has an intellectual that precedes WCW. In , many scientists would arguably concede that at least some version of the thesis of consilience resides as an unstated, uncontroversial, and dominant background assumption in their thinking. This is partly why it is important to get clear on what is unique, and uniquely problematic, about Wilson’s peculiar version of the thesis. First, Wilson distinguishes his understanding of consilience from the (less controversial) generic value of coherence in scientific inquiry (Wilson, 1998:8). Coherence in science can refer to internal consistency (i.e., a given , , or claim contains no inherent contradictions) or external consistency (i.e., a given theory, hypothesis, or claim is consistent with accepted theories in other sub-fields of the sciences), or (more usually) both. Next, there is the version of consilience as it was originally formulated by in the mid-1800’s. Whewell described consilience as the and linking together of from different theories and across different disciplines

(“an induction, obtained from one class of facts, coincides with an induction, obtained from another different class”) that resulted in a common groundwork of explanation (Wilson, 1998: 8).

2

For Whewell, consilience understood in this manner served as of the of the theories from which the convergent inductions occurred (Wilson, 1998: 8).

While WCW shares with Whewell’s formulation the understanding of consilience as a means to measure the success of scientific theories, it also diverges from Whewell’s formulation in important respects. Wilson presents his version of consilience not only as a methodological guide in scientific inquiry, but also as a metaphysical worldview to be applied beyond the traditional scope of the scientific inquiry:

The only way either to establish or refute consilience is by methods developed in the natural

sciences- not, I hasten to add, an effort led by scientists, or frozen in mathematical

abstraction, but rather one allegiant to the habits of thought that have worked so well in

exploring the material .

The belief in the possibility of consilience beyond science and across the great branches of

is not yet science. It is a metaphysical world view, and a minority one at that,

shared by only a few scientists and philosophers. It cannot be proved with logic from first

principles or grounded in any definitive set of empirical tests, at least not by any yet

conceived. Its best support is no more than an extrapolation of the past success of the

natural sciences. Its surest test will be its effectiveness in the social sciences and

(Wilson, 1998: 9).

To be clear, in Consilience (1998), Wilson consistently advocates for WCW as an intentional research program to be applied both in the sciences and across “the great branches of learning,” by which he means to include , humanities, social sciences, , , etc. This prescriptive component of the proposal distinguishes WCW from Whewell’s original discussion of consilience. That is to say, there is (rather straightforwardly) an important difference between

3 the unintentional and subsequent observation of coinciding facts between different theories and investigative contexts within the sciences, and the intentional, systematic metaphysical and methodological calibration of different theories, background assumptions, and investigative contexts (both within the sciences and across the great branches of learning) in order to increase the likelihood of straightforwardly comparable or mutually reinforcing knowledge claims.

The aim of this paper is to motivate the salience of the previous point in a manner that recasts WCW as more than a failed epistemological thesis (a bundle of descriptive claims) about the of knowledge (as a number of philosophers and expert scientists have argued). I want to argue that WCW should also be understood as a morally suspect prescriptive program (a bundle of normative claims) that is deleterious to the integrity of scientific inquiry. Wilson has already acknowledged the existence of more traditional philosophical criticisms of WCW understood as a bundle of descriptive claims (e.g., conflation, simplism, ontological , and -

“To which I plead guilty, guilty, guilty.”) and dismissed them all as, “sins made official by the hissing suffix (Wilson, 1998: 11).” However, Wilson has not responded to criticism of WCW understood as I present it in this paper: as a bundle of prescriptive claims concerning the appropriate doing of scientific (and more general) inquiry and explanation. My hope is that Wilson would take his responsibility as a writer seriously enough to treat this latter criticism less dismissively than he has the others.

In order to motivate my criticism of WCW, I focus on the relationship between WCW and scientific research in the domain of human social behavior. This decision is based on the following considerations. First, Wilson himself is widely regarded as a respected scientific authority in this domain of inquiry. His publication of Sociobiology (1975) detailed his proposal for a new sub-

4 field, Sociobiology, as a biologically-based research program into the social behavior of

(including ). Wilson’s claims in Sociobiology raised a number of concerns among scientists and other relevant to the present project that will be discussed in greater length in chapter three. Second, the attempt to apply WCW to the domain of human social behavior proves a fruitful case study insofar as it instructively highlights the arbitrary, counterproductive, and deleterious constraints WCW could come to impose on otherwise legitimate areas of scientific inquiry and explanation.

The paper proceeds as follows. In chapter two, I review philosophical and historical literature on the role that values play in scientific inquiry and explain how to understand WCW as a bundle of prescriptive claims concerning the appropriate doing of scientific inquiry and explanation. In chapter three, I examine implications for the study of human social behavior in

Sociobiology and contemporary behavioral research programs that result from the attempt to systematically apply WCW. My concluding arguments are presented in chapter four, and are based in the preceding discussion. Specifically, I challenge Wilson’s claim that WCW is the most profitable or promising research program to adopt in the study of human social behavior, thereby undermining his more ambitious claims that WCW is a profitable or promising research program to adopt or impose upon any sub-field in the sciences, humanities, or arts (what I refer to as ‘The

Fertility Objection’). I also present an argument for why the popular audience of Consilience (and not just scientists and philosophers) should regard WCW skeptically, as potentially deleterious to the process and aims of science if applied in the manner Wilson prescribes (what I refer to as ‘The

Scientific Integrity Objection’).

5

CHAPTER TWO

BACKGROUND

“Can we devise a universal litmus test for scientific statements and with it

eventually attain the grail of objective truth? Current opinion holds that we cannot

and never will. Scientists and philosophers have largely abandoned the search for

absolute and are content to ply their trade elsewhere. I otherwise

and will risk heresy: The answer could well be yes.”

-E. O. Wilson, Consilience, 1998: 60

2.1 Philosophical Review: Values in Science

In Consilience (1998), Wilson praised the logical positivist view of science that dominated the literature in the first half of the 20th century. He regarded the logical positivists as rekindling “the dream of objective truth (Wilson, 1998: 61).” In his estimation, the traditional positivist view of science was admirable for its aims: to define the essential features of scientific statements by means of logic and the analysis of language and to discover pure standards

(e.g., mathematical models) against which scientific knowledge could be assessed (Wilson, 1998:

61 & 62). Yet, according to Wilson, despite their best efforts, “the grail eluded them (Wilson,

1998: 63).” Wilson attributed this failure to philosophical quibbles over semantics-“The founders and their followers could not agree on the basic distinctions between fact and , between

6 empirical generalization and mathematical truth, between theory and speculation…the difference between scientific and non-scientific statements (Wilson, 1998: 63).” He likewise attributed their failure to a lack of scientific understanding concerning how are formed in the brain

(Wilson, 1998: 64 & 65).

Ultimately, the positivist program in philosophy was impacted by intellectual progress happening outside the discipline. Emergent in the humanities over the second half of the century was a trend toward increasingly sophisticated treatment of the historical (and sociological) role played by values in the production of scientific knowledge- e.g., Thomas S. Kuhn’s The Structure of (1962), Carolyn Merchant’s The Death of Nature: Women, , and the Scientific Revolution (1980), Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer’s Leviathan and the Air-Pump

(1985), and particularly, the strong program in the of science. These contributions were widely seized upon by academics, and clearly in tension with background assumptions embedded in the traditional positivist account (i.e., that the sciences were in some important sense, or could be made, immune from the value-laden or value-loaded judgments that influence other domains of intellectual inquiry and explanation). These new investigative contexts concerning the role of values in the sciences required conceptual apparatus (and an exploratory focus) that logical lacked.

Then, in 1982, the president of the Philosophy of Science Association, Ernan McMullin, lectured on the need for philosophers to address these new investigative contexts (i.e., to explore the role of values in the production of scientific knowledge) and provided a preliminary conceptual sketch for how philosophers might understand values in these contexts (McMullin, 1982). First, there is the notion of emotive values, which can be contrasted with the notions of evaluation and valuing. Emotive values correspond to factors of attraction, , and feeling; as such, their

7 ontological status seems more dependent on the sensory experiences of subjects than on the characteristics of external objects (McMullin, 1982). Regarding the relationship between emotive values and scientific inquiry and explanation, McMullin had this to say:

It seems plausible to hold that emotive values are alien to the work of natural

science. There is no reason to think that human emotionality is a trustworthy guide

to the structures of the natural world. Indeed, there is every reason, historically

speaking, to view emotive values, as Bacon did, as potentially distortive “Idols,”

projecting in anthropomorphic fashion the pattern of human wants, desires, and

on a world where they have no place. When “ideology” is understood as

a systematization of such values, it automatically becomes a threat to the integrity

of science. The notion of value which is implicit in much recent social history of

science, as well as in many analyses of the science-ideology relationship, is clearly

that of emotive value (McMullin, 1982).

Unlike emotive values, according to McMullin, the notions of evaluation and valuing do have a legitimate role in scientific inquiry and are proper targets for philosophical inquiry. In the case of evaluation, a scientist can judge the extent to which a particular theory realizes particularly scientific values- e.g., predictive accuracy, fertility or , external coherence or unifying power with other accepted theories, internal consistency, simplicity. In the case of valuing, a scientist may judge to what extent these scientific values (McMullin refers to them as

“epistemic values”) are relevant in the assessment of any particular (McMullin,

1982).

8

As an example, McMullin considers a historical disagreement between two scientists, Niels

Bohr and , in regards to their evaluation of the quantum theory of matter:

The notorious disagreement between Bohr and Einstein in regard to the

acceptability of the quantum theory of matter did not bear on matters of predictive

accuracy. Einstein regarded the new theory as lacking in both coherence and

consistency with the rest of . He also thought it failing in simplicity, the

value that he tended to put first. Bohr admitted the lack of consistency with classical

physics, but played down its importance. The predictive successes of the new

theory obviously counted much more heavily with him than they did with Einstein.

The differences between their assessments were not solely due to differences in the

values they employed in theory-appraisal. Disagreement in substantive

metaphysical belief about the nature of the world also played a part. But there can

be no doubt from the abundant testimony of the two physicists that they had very

different views as to what constituted a “good” theory (McMullin, 1982: 17).

Presumably not slaves to emotive values, these two scientists still demonstrated divergent value judgments with respect to the weight they assigned particular epistemic values in their assessment of the theory of quantum matter. They also differed on the weight they assigned to their idiosyncratic metaphysical views. In light of these , McMullin offered guidelines for philosophical investigation into the complicated roles played by such value-laden judgments in the production of scientific knowledge:

The watershed between classic theory of science and our as-yet unnamed post-

logicist age has been variously defined since then. But for our purposes here, it can

9

best be laid out in four propositions…P1: The goal of science is theoretical

knowledge. P2: The theories of science are underdetermined by the empirical

evidence. P3: The assessment of theories involves value-judgment in an essential

way. P4: Observation in science is theory dependent (McMullin, 1982: 14).

What this means is that to the extent scientific observation is dependent upon theory, it is also necessarily value-impregnated (McMullin, 1982: 14).

Recall the earlier ambiguity cited in the case of WCW. Throughout Consilience (1998),

Wilson presents the idea under a number of different headings- e.g., as a metaphysical world view, theory, epistemic value (i.e., an evaluative measure), hypothesis, and “unification agenda (Wilson,

1998: 11).” This ambiguity complicates analysis of the role that values com to play in the production of scientific knowledge through use of WCW. To help make sense of his view, I borrow

Helen Longino’s distinction between constitutive values and contextual values in science.

Constitutive values result from the achieved consensus of scientists concerning the appropriate means to achieve the legitimate goals of science (they are roughly analogous to the epistemic values described by McMullin). Put another way, constitutive values are a democratically achieved source for the rules that determine what counts as acceptable scientific practice or method

(Longino, 1990: 4). Contextual values, on the other hand, refer to personal, social, or cultural values from outside of science (e.g., a particular scientist’s religious affiliation, funding sources for science grants) which can influence the practice of science. Contextual values reflect the social, historical, and cultural context in which the practice of scientists are embedded (Longino, 1990:

4). Borrowing such terms, WCW can best understood as a bundle of contextual values Wilson wishes to pitch to the broader (indeed, to an entire intellectual community) as an bundle of constitutive values for the appropriate doing of scientific inquiry.

10

Longino explores the relationship between constitutive values and contextual values in science, examining the impact of contextual values upon scientific theories and methods, as well as the impact of the constitutive values of science on a society’s cultural and moral values

(Longino, 1990: 5). Moreover, while the notion of a value-free science remains implausible on this sort of an investigative model, there remains the philosophical aim to distinguish between value- laden and value-loaded science. There are, after all, better and worse ways to practice science. For example, Longino speaks seriously about the need to preserve the integrity and “objectivity” of science, despite her acknowledgment of the substantial role played by values in even the best instances of scientific inquiry. Such concerns will figure prominently in the assessment of WCW provided in chapter four. For now, it is sufficient to have briefly surveyed the understanding of values that have figured prominently in contemporary philosophical investigation into the practice of science.

2.2 Historical Review: Consilience as Cultural Artifact

It is important to understand the social, historical, and cultural roots of WCW in order to appreciate the contextual values that inform its application. Wilson provides an account of the historical roots of WCW, tracing its lineage to the Enlightenment period of the 17th and 18th centuries, where “the dream of intellectual unity first came to flower (Wilson, 1998: 14).”

According to Wilson, the idea of consilience emerged from the Scientific Revolution of the early

17th century and had its most substantial impact on the European academic climate of the 18th century (Wilson, 1998: 21). Wilson attributed to his intellectual predecessors (noting Francis

11

Bacon, , , John Locke, , Rene Descartes, Immanuel

Kant, Gottfried Leibniz, and , among others) these admirable qualities: a passion to demystify the world and free the from impersonal forces, a drive toward the thrill of discovery, belief in the power of science to “reveal” an orderly universe and thereby provide a base for free rational discourse, a belief in the unity of knowledge, individual human , natural law, and indefinite human progress (Wilson, 1998: 21). In his own words:

Science was the engine of the Enlightenment. The more scientifically disposed of

the Enlightenment authors agreed that the cosmos is an orderly material existence

governed by exact laws. It can be broken down into entities that can be measured

and arranged in , such as societies, which are made up of persons, whose

brains consist of nerves, which in turn are composed of atoms. In principle at least,

the atoms can be reassembled into nerves, the nerves into brains, and the persons

into societies, with the whole understood as a system of mechanisms and forces

(Wilson, 1998: 22).

The above passage provides insight on a number of values that, as Wilson acknowledges, informed the thinking of Enlightenment authors, as well as his own. Beyond the valuing of reductionism, hierarchical organization, and mechanistic analogies as part of the proper doing of science, Wilson very openly values the prospect of science directing our understanding of human social progress outside the sciences (Wilson, 1998: 8). Wilson is therefore a contemporary advocate of one particular version the modernist conception of science.

Of course, merely identifying the contextual values that informed the modernist ethos of the Enlightenment, as well as WCW, does not in itself denigrate the epistemological status of the

12 views. Recall, the operating assumption is that all theories about the proper doing of science will be value-impregnated to a greater or lesser extent. The point is to challenge the traditional assumption that real scientists practice “value-free” science. There is no questioning that Wilson is a real scientist by any measure of the term; but he is also a man, whose vision and ambition are constrained by the particular social, historical, and cultural biases of his times.

That last, crucial fact comes to light when one considers Wilson’s dismissive attitude toward contemporary intellectual criticism of the traditional, modernist conception of science. For example, historians have systematically documented the role of misogynist values and biased background assumptions in the writing and understanding of science shared by a number of

Wilson’s Enlightenment heroes (Merchant, 1980). For example, the conceptual understanding of

“social progress” under the modernist conception is measured disproportionately in terms of the particular advantages it bestowed to individuals of a certain race, class, and . If you happen to be a white, middle to upper class male, the material gains associated with the Scientific and

Industrial revolutions appeared undeniable (e.g., technological advance, wealth accumulation, increased control over social and ecological world). However, if society’s conceptual understanding of social progress had been informed by more than the skewed lens of this particular demographic constituency, concerns over the decreased status and mobility of half the population, the exponential proliferation of unsustainable, exploitative environmental practices, and the production of human-annihilating would have challenged the traditionally liberal use of the term “social progress” in historical descriptions of this time period. Wilson, however, is fairly dismissive when it comes to such concerns about social power, privilege, and personal biases. In his own words:

13

It has become fashionable to speak of the Enlightenment as an idiosyncratic

construction by European males in a bygone era, one way of thinking among many

different constructions generated across time by a legion of other in other

, each of which deserves careful and respectful attention. To which the only

decent response is yes, of course- to a point. Creative thought is forever precious,

and all knowledge has value. But what counts most in the long haul is seminality,

not sentiment. If we ask whose were the seeds of the dominant ethic and

shared hopes of contemporary humanity, whose resulted in the most material

advancement in history, whose were the first of their kind and enjoy the most

emulation, then in that sense the Enlightenment, despite the erosion of its original

vision and despite the shakiness of some of its premises, has been the principal

inspiration not just of Western high but, increasingly, of the entire world

(Wilson, 1998: 22).

But the above passage suggests more than the fact that the concern over misogynistic language is lost on Wilson (i.e., what counts is “seminality, not sentiment” and the spreading of one’s “seeds”).

It provides a glimpse into what amounts to a consistent, problematic pattern in his way of thinking about science. Wilson tends to devalue (trivialize or neglect) to an epistemological fault the impact of mental biases, idiosyncratic personal values, and relations of social power in the production of scientific knowledge. Chapter three will provide additional support for this claim.

There is a final point on language and religious ideology that deserves mention in the analysis of WCW understood as a bundle of contextual values. It wouldn’t be a challenging or controversial task to argue for Wilson’s extensive use of religious metaphor and language in his articulation of Consilience, and in his descriptions of science more generally- e.g., “science is

14 religion liberated and writ large (Wilson, 1998: 6).” In short, Wilson views the scientific search for a “unification ” (i.e., consilience) as not only the ideal means of escape from oppressive religious dogma and alternative ideologies, but as an equally thrilling substitute for them in understanding humanity’s purpose and existential plight (see Wilson, 1994: 33-46 & 1998:

3-7). For Wilson, science and religion are not separate domains, with different questions and answers; instead, religion should be explained in terms of science, “by the single grand naturalistic image of man (Wilson, 1994: 45).” Moreover, that Wilson regards science as a sort of “religion substitute” has been a claim echoed even by those close to him (Ruse, 1999: 188).

A number of the contextual values that constitute WCW can be gleaned from the background provided in this chapter and Wilson’s basic idea can be better appreciated in light of them. First, there are the Enlightenment-instilled values of and reductionism- WCW explicitly sanctions, for example, a specific hierarchical ranking of the disciplines in terms of their explanatory primitiveness: Ranked highest (in terms of causal and explanatory priority) are the traditional sciences (e.g. physics, , and then ) with neurobiology, - and even more specifically, his own subfield of sociobiology (Wilson, 1994:336)-serving as the proper foundation for the social sciences (e.g., sociology, , ).

Moreover, the prescriptive research agenda throughout Consilience (1998) is unambiguous: the background assumptions, methodological standards, and epistemological claims of the higher- ranked disciplines should directly inform the research priorities and operating assumptions of the lower-ranked disciplines.

Recall, Wilson distanced his notion of consilience from Whewell’s definition; and he even distanced it from that of his celebrated Enlightenment hero, (who he described more as a philosopher of science than a scientist): “The unity of knowledge he conceived was remote

15 from the present-day concept of consilience, far from the deliberate, systematic linkage of cause and effect across the disciplines (Wilson, 1998: 27).” For example, Bacon focused more on the

“common means of inductive inquiry that might optimally serve all the branches of learning” and argued for the employment of the humanities in the development and expression of the sciences

(Wilson, 1998: 27). This stands in stark contrast to Wilson’s view, where Wilson sees the sciences eventually subsuming the social sciences, arts, and humanities (e.g., his claim about the eventual elimination for the need for philosophy, his claim about the eventual explanation the material causes of religion).

The next chapter will explore the potential implications of WCW, and Wilson’s way of thinking about scientific inquiry and explanation, for research into human social behavior. From

Wilson’s own perspective, the benefits are potentially infinite, while the costs seem to be none:

Given that human action comprises events of physical causation, why should the

social sciences and humanities be impervious to consilience with the natural

sciences? And how can they fail to benefit from that alliance (Wilson, 1998: 11)?

In Wilson’s estimation, WCW promises nothing short of the immediate proliferation of the most fertile research programs for all the branches of learning (a claim that will be directly challenged in chapters thee and four). And it should be clear from the discussion thus far that Wilson means

WCW as something considerably stronger than the widespread adoption of a general disposition to consider and integrate scientific research in the advancement of other fields of inquiry. In order to appropriately realize WCW, the particular metaphysical, background assumptions and values of modernist science must be privileged in the process.

16

CHAPTER THREE

CASE STUDY: HUMAN SOCIAL BEHAVIOR

“It was the commonality of and not cultural differences on which I

focused in Sociobiology. At this level what I said could by no stretch be considered

original; many others had advanced a similar thesis for decades. Darwin, who

seems to have anticipated almost every other important idea in evolutionary

biology, cautiously advanced theories of genetic change in aggression and

intelligence. But no scientist before me had employed the reasoning of population

biology so consistently to account for the of human behavior by natural

selection.”

-E. O. Wilson, Naturalist, 1994: 333

3.1 The Sociobiology Controversy

The point of this section is to argue on behalf of an earlier claim made against Wilson. It is the claim that Wilson, as a result of employing the intentional program of WCW, devalues to an epistemological fault the role of his own mental biases, idiosyncratic personal values, and relations of social power in his scientific research on human social behavior. Specifically, I analyze inadequacies in his response to criticisms that arose against his 1975 publication of Sociobiology.

17

In turn, my argument should render suspect the application of WCW to the more general domain of human social behavioral research (the focus of 3.2).

Sociobiology (1975) represented Wilson’s preliminary research effort to document systematically the social behavior of various species throughout the kingdom (including humans), and to offer concise scientific explanation of their causes (from the standpoint of evolutionary biology). It was Wilson’s final chapter, which dealt specifically with human social behavior, that sparked the controversy, and that Wilson described as, “consisting mostly of facts from the social sciences interpreted by hypothesis on the biological foundations of human behavior

(Wilson, 1994: 332).” This is, of course, the precise sort of methodological move that is prescribed by WCW (i.e., social sciences being explained in terms of higher-ranked natural sciences).

Among Wilson’s controversial claims, he described as “fixed in nature” behavioral differences between the , traits of physical attraction between the sexes (e.g., “the pubic hair of both sexes and the protuberant breasts and buttocks of women”, “females nearly continuous sexual receptivity”), intelligence and aggression as the organizing force of human social hierarchies (“with males generally dominant over females”), the nuclear family, xenophobia, and genocidal warfare (Wilson, 1975: 547-575). He also focused attention on the possibility of significant genetic differentiation along class lines- e.g., “Genetic differences in mental traits, however slight, tend to be preserved by the raising of class barriers, racial and cultural discrimination, and physical ghettos (Wilson, 1975: 555).” Problematically, Wilson described the bundle of human behavioral traits he chose to focus on as those constitutive of “human nature,” assigning a value-loaded term of to his investigative domain of scientific expertise. This too reflects the influence of WCW on his research. Controversially, Wilson views the scientific discovery of human nature, which he has written on at great length (Wilson, 1978), as a plausible

18 and important task for science (i.e., science as the key to human social progress) and goes so far as to suggest “some implications for planning of future societies” in light of his research (Wilson,

1975: 548). Wilson reaffirmed his controversial claims twenty years later:

My argument ran essentially as follows. Human beings inherit a propensity to

acquire behavior and social structures, a propensity that is shared by enough people

to be called human nature. The defining traits include division of labor between

sexes, bonding between parents and children, heightened toward closest

kin, incest avoidance, other forms of ethical behavior, suspicion of strangers,

tribalism, dominance orders within groups, male dominance over all, and territorial

aggression over limiting resources. Although people have free will and the choice

to turn in many directions, the channels of their psychological development are

nevertheless- however much we might wish otherwise- cut more deeply by the

in certain directions than in others. So while cultures vary greatly, they

inevitably converge toward these traits (Wilson, 1994: 332-333)

Wilson attributed the intellectual criticism of his research to “political correctedness” and the

“Marxist” ideological climate of the 1970’s (“that human nature is built wholly from experience, was not just another hypothesis up for testing”), and described himself in stark contrast to his opponents, as having “no interest in ideology (Wilson, 1994: 330-337).” As Wilson understood critics’ concern, the scientific hypothesis that human nature had a genetic foundation was too inconvenient for them to accept, since it challenged many of their operating assumptions, including the idea that “the cultures of oppressed people are to be specially valued, because the of cultural conflict were written by the victors (Wilson, 1994: 334).” Wilson described his opponents’ position as follows:

19

Many critics saw this challenge from the natural sciences as not just intellectually

flawed but morally wrong. If human nature is rooted in heredity, they suggested,

then some forms of social behavior are probably intractable or at least can be

declared intractable by the ruling elites. Tribalism and gender differences might

then be judged unavoidable, and class differences and war in some manner

“natural.” And that would be just the beginning. Because people unquestionably

vary in hereditary physical traits, they might also differ irreversibly in personal

ability and emotional attributes. Some people could have inborn mathematical

genius, others a bent toward criminal activity (Wilson, 1994: 334-335).

As far as Wilson was concerned, plenty of ordinary people already believed his proposed hereditary propositions to be true and plenty of biologists, including Darwin, had advanced similar theses on the genetic foundation of certain behavioral traits (Wilson, 1994: 333 and 335). In his estimation, it was only the socialist Marxists and cultural relativists who were determined to resist scientific advancement in the domain of human nature, and their objections reduced to concerns over the implications of the thesis of genetic on the nature versus nurture debate

(Wilson, 1994: 332).

However, a number of reputable scientists, including biologists, regarded the arguments in

Sociobiology as a scientist’s endorsement of decidedly un-scientific propositions- e.g., that a value- laden idea like human nature is an appropriate (or unproblematic) target for scientific concept and explanation (i.e., as the functional output of a biologically determined process), that science should subsume “ethics” into its domain, or that it should be used to draw important moral and political implications for the planning of future societies. Thus, the contextual values constituted by WCW that motivated such propositions were being resisted by members of

20 the scientific community. In fact, much of the harshest criticisms of Sociobiology came from evolutionary biologists, and there is evidence that suggests their discontent did not hinge on concern over the idea of scientific investigation into the role of genes on human behavior.

Take, for example, ’s publication of The Selfish (1976). Published only a year after Wilson’s Sociobiology, and widely well received by scientists and non-scientists alike, it also investigated the role of genes in the expression of human behavioral traits. However,

Dawkins’s arguments did not usher in the same kind of controversy as Wilson’s had, despite coming along a year after, right on the heels of it. While there may be a number of factors that help to explain this fact, one difference between the two authors seems immediately relevant. Unlike

Wilson, Dawkins explicitly stated at the beginning of his book that he was not advocating any sort of based on the theory of evolution as he interpreted it (Dawkins, 1976: 2). In fact,

Dawkins insists that a human society based simply on discoveries from genetic research would be a bad idea- e.g., “Be warned that if you wish, as I do, to build a society in which individuals cooperate generously and unselfishly towards a common good, you can expect little help from biological nature (Dawkins, 1976: 3).” Dawkins went on to explain that it is a very common fallacy for people to suppose that genetically inherited traits are fixed in nature and unmodifiable, but that it was not his main focus to advocate a position on the nature versus nurture controversy

(Dawkins, 1976: 3).

Of course, it is debatable how committed to his initial disclaimers Dawkins remained throughout the rest of his book (or if or to what extent his comments had been motivated by the criticism Wilson had received a year earlier), but one important point of difference between himself and Wilson still stood. Wilson’s advocacy of WCW throughout Sociobiology required not only his explicit advocacy of the use of genetic research to inform the design of future societies

21 and ethical rules, it prescribed the role of such research (as well as related research in neurobiology) as the necessary precursor to an “enduring set of first principles for sociology

(Wilson, 1975: 575).” Wilson would not, as it were, dissociate the contextual values prescribed by

WCW from his scientific research.

Wilson also defended his claims in Sociobiology by citing the fact that biological explanations for human social behavior already had well established precedent in the sciences

(Wilson, 1994: 331). However, fellow evolutionary biologist (and outspoken critic of

Sociobiology), , had effectively challenged the historical precedent set by scientists in this domain of inquiry (Gould, 1981). Gould’s argument rested on systematic documentation of the pervasive role of racist cultural attitudes in scientists’ interpretation of data.

Case after case, Gould exposed the class prejudice and expressed by American, English, and European biologists, anthropologists, and psychologists in their scientific research (Ed.

Allmon, Kelley, and Ross, 2009: 204-205). In each case, Gould demonstrated how data samples had been intentionally or inadvertently biased, or data misinterpreted (Ed. Allmon, Kelley, and

Ross, 2009: 204-205).

Gould cautioned scientists to be aware of the influence of personal values and mental biases on their research; he took seriously the role of contextual values in the practice of science and consistently challenged scientists’ assumptions of doing value-free science (Ed. Allmon, Kelley, and Ross, 2009: 4-6). Gould’s remarks evidenced the extent to which his own view on the assumptions, scope, and limitations of science stood in stark contrast with WCW:

Our ways of learning about the world are strongly influenced by the social

preconceptions and biased modes of thinking that each scientist must apply to any

22

problem. The stereotype of a fully rational and objective ‘,’ with

individual scientists as logical (and interchangeable) robots, is self-serving

mythology…

Since all discovery emerges from an interaction of the mind with nature, thoughtful

scientists must scrutinize the many biases that record our socialization, our moment

in political and geographical history…

Scientists often strive for a special status by claiming a unique form of “objectivity”

inherent in a supposedly universal procedure called the scientific method. We can

attain this objectivity by clearing the mind of all preconception and then simply

seeing, in a pure and unfettered way, what nature presents. This image may be

beguiling, but the claim is chimerical, and ultimately haughty and divisive. For the

myth of pure perception raises scientists to a pinnacle above all other struggling

intellectuals, who must remained mired in constraints of culture and psyche (Ed.

Allmon, Kelley, and Ross, 2009: 5-6).

One does not find in Wilson serious attention paid to the possible role of his own personal values and mental biases in his interpretation of data. But the charges against Sociobiology had related directly to this issue. Critics (many among them scientists, but also feminists and race theorists) claimed that Wilson’s controversial claims displayed all the predictable mental biases (e.g., racism, sexism) and personal values expected from a member of his demographic group- i.e., “white, middle-class, heterosexual males from the South (Ruse,

1999: 190).”

23

Wilson’s unwillingness to acknowledge any role for his own social privilege, idiosyncratic ideological inclinations, personal values, or mental biases in Sociobiology is significant, especially to the extent his attitude is motivated and sanctioned by WCW. If the “discovery” of human nature and the inner workings of the brain is really all that stands in the way of infinite human social progress and “objective” knowledge, then to consider seriously the possibility that contextual values might also impinge significantly upon the epistemic integrity of individual scientists would not be a desirable methodological concession for Wilson.

3.2 Contemporary Human Behavioral Research

Flash forward to the state of contemporary human behavioral research. The point of this section is to show that, even bracketing the (very serious) concern that WCW fails to make adequate provisions for the role of values and biases in the scientific study of human social behavior, WCW also does not seem to comport with the current state of human behavioral research. Moreover, if it was to be systematically applied as an intentional research program by scientists working in this area (as Wilson prescribes) it would arbitrarily constrain the scientific research currently being undertaken in this domain of inquiry.

Longino (2013) examined, from a philosophical standpoint, five contemporary scientific approaches to the study of human behavior, specifically in the areas of sexuality and aggression

(quantitative behavior , molecular behavior genetics, neurophysiology and anatomy, social/environmental methods, and a set of integrative disciplines). The results of her analysis did

24 not come down on one or the other side of the nature versus nurture controversy, but instead documented important differences in the background assumptions, scope, and methodological limitations of these various research programs. In each case, Longino demonstrated how the background assumptions of the researchers, as well as the methodological constraints of their subfield, differentially impacted their definitions (concept-operationalization) of key terms (e.g., behavior, aggression, sexuality), as well as the sorts of research questions and causal explanations they provided for their data. Longino concluded that it would be misinformed to attempt to assert that there was any single “correct” approach to the study of human social behavior, because each of the approaches she examined clearly displayed their own strengths and weaknesses. More revealing still, her analysis convincingly demonstrated that the various approaches were not straightforwardly consistent with one another (e.g., inconsistent background assumptions, conflicting definitions, contradictory causal foci).

Ultimately, in order to make sense of the complicated state of human behavioral research in the sciences, Longino advocates for a pluralist view that acknowledges the role of values in science as essential. That is, the necessary role of the individual researcher (subjective experience) and their theory/methodology (background assumptions) to the successful practice of science necessitates a role for values (both constitutive and contextual) in scientific inquiry. Longino calls her view of scientific knowledge contextual . As she explains it, her view is empiricist insofar as it treats experience as the basis for knowledge claims in the sciences, and it is contextual insofar as it requires analysis of context-sensitive factors (e.g., background assumptions of researchers, the social and cultural times a practice of science is being undertaken) in order to adequately analyze the considerable diversity in scientific knowledge claims (Longino, 1990: 219).

25

It is instructive to note the fact that Longino’s contextual empiricist view does not collapse into some sort of relativist account of the sciences wherein all modes of inquiry are equal in value, or entirely dependent on values. In other words, the contextual empiricist view still preserves a minimal form of by taking seriously the role of critical, democratic evaluation of competing theories and approaches advanced within scientific community (i.e., as the means to preserving “objectivity” in scientific inquiry). In other words, it is critical that the constitutive values of science promote (at a minimum) toleration for the proliferation of diverse background assumptions, theories, and methodologies (as in the case of the human behavioral sciences).

However, WCW prescribes the opposite; the proliferation of diverse background assumptions, theories, and methodologies should be mitigated by large scale, effective application of WCW, and this effect should be understood as a positive consequence of WCW.

One question that arises is whether WCW make sense of Longino’s analysis of the state of human behavioral research? Recall, essential to WCW is the background assumption of monism.

So if there is inconsistency or incomparability in the background assumptions, methodologies, or knowledge claims between the different subfields of human behavioral research (as appears to be the case), either one or more of them are, in fact, incorrect, or (with more moderate versions of monism) the evidence of inconsistency or incomparability between them should be strictly understood as a temporary phase (i.e., the ambiguity will resolve itself as these sciences advance).

Of course, WCW prescribes more than just general that the incorrect fields will eventually be purged from the equation. It prescribes a hierarchy for evaluation of these various subfields, where the background assumptions (epistemic and methodological) of the subfields whose scope includes the study of genetics and neurobiology ought to be accorded explanatory primacy, and the social/environmental methods and integrative approaches should calibrate their

26 own background assumptions and standard definitions to match their counterparts. However,

Longino’s analysis makes evident how the subordination of the latter disciplines to the formers’ theoretical and methodological apparatus would result in a total overhaul of the latters’ research endeavors. In other words, it would arbitrarily derail, devalue, and delegitimize the distinctive background theories, methodologies, and questions that informed them.

Contra Wilson’s promise of fertile research programs for all, it seems that the WCW, at best, reprioritizes and redirects certain research endeavors in the case of the contemporary behavioral sciences, and at worst, arbitrarily delegitimizes ongoing research endeavors scientists have already invested in. Additionally, Wilson’s desire to see WCW implemented as an intentional research program appears to challenge the chief form of objectivity preservation Longino attributed to scientific inquiry (i.e., the checks and balances on the impact of values in science that are achieved through diverse, competing background assumptions, theories, and methodologies).

27

CHAPTER FOUR

PHILOSOPHICAL ANALYSIS

“Wilson thinks consilience is in disrepute because philosophers don’t take science

seriously. On the contrary, it’s in disrepute because they do. It’s attending to how

the scientific edifice is actually organized that makes the eventual reduction of the

rest of science to physics seem so unlikely. Here, for once, ‘don’t think, look’ sounds

like good advice; one could wish that Wilson had taken it. For what one sees when

one looks doesn’t at all suggest a structure that is collapsing into its basement. If

the unity of the sciences is true, then there ought to be fewer sciences every day, as

basic physics absorbs them one by one. But what’s going on seems to be quite the

reverse: an accelerating proliferation of new disciplines; the damned things

multiply faster than college deans can keep up with them.”

-, London Review of Books, 1998

4.1 Arguments

In this section, I summarize others’ philosophical objections to WCW (as background to my own). Then, I provide two additional, independent objections to WCW based on the discussion in preceding chapters. The first of these objections comes in the form of a challenge to the WCW

28 promise of fertility. The second objection deals with the negative impact of WCW on the epistemological integrity of the scientific inquiry.

In chapter one, I alluded to the general confusion over how precisely to interpret WCW. In some places, Wilson treats it is a falsifiable hypothesis, in some places as a recommended bundle of constitutive values for doing science, and in some places as a faith-based, quasi-religious metaphysical worldview. At one level, one is most inclined to read Consilience, minimally and straightforwardly, as an epistemological thesis about science as a domain of inquiry. Philosopher and cognitive scientist Jerry Fodor interpreted Wilson in this manner in his 1998 critique of

Consilience, and went on to expose a number of philosophically relevant blind spots in Wilson’s formulation and discussion of the thesis. As Fodor pointed out:

Consilience is an epistemological thesis: roughly, it says that all knowledge reduces

to basic science. This would appear to be very different from the metaphysical

thesis that all the facts supervene on the facts of basic science. In particular, it is by

no means obvious that the epistemological kind of physicalism follows from the

metaphysical kind. And if it doesn’t, then an enthusiast for the second might

consistently- even plausibly- reject the first. Wilson’s failure to even notice this

possibility makes a shambles of his book (Fodor, 1998).

Fodor goes on to explain that, contra Wilson’s claims, a strong case against consilience can be made simply by fairly weighing the evidence. There are very few examples where the conceptual apparatus of a higher science has been successfully paraphrased in terms of some more basic science (Fodor, 1998). This had been one of the “failed” research projects of the logical positivists

Wilson so admired. However, Wilson, unlike Fodor or any contemporary philosophers of science,

29 attributed their failure to a lack of knowledge in the brain sciences. Fodor is skeptical of this claim,

“Offhand, I can’t imagine what kinds of facts about the brain would have saved the Positivist philosophy of science, and Wilson doesn’t say (Fodor, 1998).” Moreover, Fodor remains skeptical of the metaphorical exposition that characterizes current conceptual apparatus used in the cognitive literature Wilson cites (e.g., “nodes”, “linkages”, “long-term banks”, “resonating circuits”), viewing such imagery as “no advance on Hume or Mill (Fodor, 1998).”

Fodor also regards the reduction of to neurology as one of the most striking examples of the failure of the sciences to unify vertically (Fodor, 1998). Noteworthy, Fodor distinguished between vertical and horizontal consilience (and criticizes Wilson for not doing them same). While cases of the vertical consilience (e.g., the molecular theory of heat) serve as for WCW, they are very few and far between. Contrastingly, cases of horizontal consilience (joining of scientific disciplines at the same explanatory level) are prolific (e.g., developmental psycholinguistics, paleobiology, , physical anthropology) and demonstrates how the web of causal relations in the sciences most often gets extended sideways, not hierarchically (Fodor, 1998).

Again, in response to the overwhelming evidence that suggests that the information encoded in the propriety language of higher levels of organization in the sciences (e.g., ecology, psychology, sociology) cannot be preserved via paraphrase into the proprietary language of the lower levels of organization in the sciences (e.g., physics, chemistry), Wilson can choose to argue that the proliferation of disciplines and the apparent incommensurability between modes of analysis all reflect a temporary phase in scientific advancement. In other words, all true knowledge claims from the different domains of science will eventually converge and any apparent

30 incommensurability merely reflects the existence of “incorrect” (and eventually eliminable) theories or the artificial “chaos” induced by the current climate of academia.

This brings us to another significant philosophical problem with WCW understood as an epistemological thesis. It is not at all clear what in Wilson’s mind would count as legitimate evidence against it. Throughout Consilience, Wilson argues against the legitimacy of disciplines with methodologies he regards as antithetical to WCW (e.g., postmodernist critiques of power) and bemoans the proliferation of chaotic and fragmentary disciplines in the liberal arts. On the few occasions where Wilson does entertain the possibility that WCW may prove false, he provides absolutely no description of what facts could foreseeably count as legitimate indicators of its falsehood.

However, preceding arguments in this section do not serve as a direct challenge to WCW interpreted as a generally positive (understood as pragmatic) bundle of hierarchically prescribed contextual values (e.g., Enlightenment/modernist view of science) or constitutive values (e.g. fertility, explanatory power, and coherence), prescribed for widespread adoption by the scientific community (e.g., as a set of prioritized background assumptions that can serve an evaluative arbiter in the selection or rejection of diverse scientific theories and methodologies). The following two objections, however, are specifically directed to WCW understood it in this manner (i.e., as a prescriptive “unification agenda,” intentional research program).

The Fertility Objection One of Wilson’s most prominent claims in favor of WCW is its promise to open up so many new and exciting frontiers of research across all domains of inquiry

(i.e., from sciences to the humanities and the arts). However, as indicated by the case study into contemporary human behavioral sciences from chapter three, the potential for new areas of

31 research comes at the cost of already established research interests, programs, and methodologies.

Moreover, the pinch is felt more by the disciplines that deal with higher levels of organizations than those at lower levels of organization, as the former are expected to calibrate their own background assumptions, theories, and methodologies as best as possible with the latter (in order to preserve their legitimacy as a coherent extension of the scientific domain). The case is even more extreme for disciplines in the liberal arts, where a methodological critique of the peculiar values of WCW (e.g., explanatory hierarchy, reductionism) would predictably, originally have surfaced. And critics have noted the fact that while some scientific discussions of the potential interplay between sciences and the humanities do promote egalitarian engagement between the different intellectual domains (citing as an example literary contributions by the evolutionary biologist, Stephen Jay Gould), Wilson’s account systematically and prescriptively marginalizes the background assumptions, theories, and methodologies of the latter in relation to those of the former (Carbonell, 2011: 345).

Wilson’s reasoning, presumably, is that no matter how many great research projects these various domains of inquiry may view themselves as having, they would have so much more that was so much better were they to align and integrate systematically with the hard sciences.

However, again, the diverse, fertile research programs being advanced by the various subfields of human behavioral sciences (arguably serving as evidence of the success of science) do not rest on

WCW, nor do the facts concerning the commensurability of their background assumptions, theories, methodological scope, or epistemological claims comport with WCW. As it stands,

Wilson’s quantitative and qualitative claims concerning the superior fertility of WCW do not rest on any ; they are entirely faith based. But why should any independent

32 researcher (operating in any field of the natural or social sciences, humanities, or the arts) have any more faith in Wilson’s vision (or epistemic authority) than their own?

The Scientific Integrity Objection This brings me to the next objection to WCW understood as a bundle of contextual values prescribed as ideal constitutive values for the doing of scientific inquiry. Chapter one and two provided context for understanding scientific practice as an activity where values play an essential role. While the traditional notion of a value-free science has fallen into disrepute among many philosophers of science and humanities’ scholars, there are still pressing concerns over whether certain research programs in the sciences are appropriately guided by the constitutive values of the broader scientific community, and whether or to what extent research programs are disproportionately guided by contextual values antithetical to the aims of science. And how does science remain “objective” in the face of its reconceptualization as a practice embedded in the subjectivity of a historically contingent, social and cultural context?

To the latter concern, the fact that a democratic consensus among scientists determines constitutive values of science (versus, for example, the totalitarian dictate of a singular epistemic authority in determining the hierarchy of values for a particular religious sect), and that the practice of science requires open channels for critical dialogue and among a plurality of scientific views (diverse background assumptions and theoretical inclinations), all help to preserve and promote the epistemological integrity of scientific inquiry (to promote the “objectivity” of epistemic claims issued from this domain). One might also add the fact that the findings of science principally remain open to scrutiny (and arguably, to potential in light of new information about the world).

33

WCW is antithetical to the preservation of the epistemological integrity of the sciences so understood. That is, not only does it fail to provide parameters for the falsification of the epistemological claims it preferentially sanctions, it principally undermines the democratic spirit of the by arbitrarily delegitimizing the proliferation of competing sets of background assumptions, theories, and methodologies in scientific inquiry (as indicative of a failure to realize scientific aims). It also undermines the democratic spirit of scientific inquiry, and intellectual inquiry more broadly conceived, by arbitrarily prescribing normative, epistemological, and methodological authority to research programs in the natural sciences. Moreover, to the extent

Wilson’s account of consilience fails to take seriously the role of personal values, idiosyncratic mental biases, and relations of social power in production of scientific knowledge, concerns raised over the subordination of, for example, the social sciences to the natural sciences, illicit more pressing moral and political concerns. In other words, the smaller (and less socially, politically, and demographically diverse) subset of practitioners sanctioned with the epistemic authority to determine the “objective” concept-operationalization of a term like human nature, or the terms of human behavior (e.g., sexuality and aggression), the more likely significantly biased background assumptions will be uncritically integrated into scientific theories and mistakenly promulgated as

“objective,” scientific facts.

4.2 Concluding Remarks

The point of this section is to summarize my main thesis and handle objections raised in response to it. The main task of this paper was to challenge Wilson’s thinking that the proper doing of scientific inquiry required something like the WCW to promote its success. One concern raised

34 about the project at hand was whether it was an ill-conceived effort insofar as it focused philosophical criticism on a non-philosopher (i.e., Wilson, a well-respected scientist and popular writer) instead of, presumably, focusing scrutiny on philosophers with the same or a similar sort of ideological bent regarding the status of science (e.g., logical positivists). The worry, I take it, is that there is something unfair or uncharitable (or somehow untrue to the spirit of Wilson) that results from subjecting his thesis in Consilience to such targeted philosophical scrutiny; “Wilson’s not a philosopher, Mary.”

Here, to my mind, is a difference of opinion that I think it mostly hinges on what counts as the appropriate aims of philosophical inquiry. The logical positivists are not writing best sellers

(or winning Pulitzer Prizes) for their literary contributions on the topics of human nature and the nature of scientific; but Wilson is. He is revered as an epistemic authority in the domain of science

(which enjoys a privileged epistemic status in its own right); he is the Pope of his own church.

However, while Wilson is a scientist with a grand vision and much to admire in terms of his work ethic and scientific research, his normative vision concerning the nature, purpose, and aims of science (i.e., the bundle of contextual values he proposes as ideal constitutive values to guide scientific inquiry) is too all-encompassing, indiscriminately claiming epistemic dominion over intellectual domains as distinctive from science as philosophy and ethics. From a science education standpoint, his vision is an overly simplistic, poorly conceived effort. And critical philosophical analysis helps to shed light on why that is so.

There is a milder, related version of this criticism to consider. When Wilson writes as he does to a popular audience, one could argue his aim is largely to inspire young minds to think more enthusiastically about the role of science in their and for their community. And what if that

35 is the whole point of his popular science education contributions like Consilience, and the more recent Letters to a Young Scientist (2013): to get lay people (and a younger generation) thinking more like him, systematically trying to synthesize knowledge about the natural world that surrounds them in scientific terms? If that’s Wilson’s goals, then perhaps he shouldn’t by philosophers faulted for not getting it all technically right.

I am sympathetic to Wilson’s aims understood in this sense. However, I would still argue that the means do not justify the ends in the case of Consilience. In Wilson’s attempt to pitch science as something exciting, accessible, and invaluable, he dismisses and devalues crucial aspects to a proper understanding of the scope and limitations of scientific inquiry, especially with respect to the sciences’ relationship to politics, morality, and other legitimate, distinctive domains of intellectual inquiry. Moreover, for all his brilliance, Wilson fails to demonstrate an adequate intellectual grasp of the role played by personal values, mental biases, and social privilege in the production of scientific knowledge. I argued that this failure resulted from Wilson’s peculiar consilience worldview.

As a model for even a modestly sophisticated understanding of contemporary science,

WCW proves inadequate (from a science education standpoint), and ultimately antithetical to the proper doing of scientific inquiry. Many of Wilson’s arguments against critics of Consilience rest largely on his bias toward scientism (i.e., appeal to science as the ultimate sanction of epistemic authority). WCW raises science to a quasi-religious status with no epistemic station set up for scrutiny from outside its domain of influence (because there is no legitimate domain of intellectual inquiry beyond the scope of science). I view Wilson’s science education initiative (i.e., to educate the public domain on the nature, scope, and limitations of modern day scientific inquiry) as a

36 personal effort that committed him to a higher (not lower) degree of responsibility for the presentation, accuracy, and implications of his claims. Therefore, I regard it as obviously philosophically worthwhile and appropriate to draw critical attention to his case for WCW in the manner done herein.

37

REFERENCES

Allmon, Warren D. “The Structure of Gould: Happenstance, Humanism, History, and the Unity of His View of ,” in Stephen Jay Gould: Reflections on His view of Life, ed. Warren D. Allmon, Kelly, Patrica H., and Ross, Robert M., 3-68. : , 2009.

Carbonell, Curtis D. “Wilson and Gould: The Engagement of the Sciences and the Humanities,” Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences 2:2 (2011): 345-359.

Dawkins, Richard. . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976.

Fodor, Jerry. “Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge by Edward O. Wilson,” Review of Consilience by Jerry Fodor, London Review of Books, October 29, 1998, http://www.lrb.co.uk/v20/n21/jerry-fodor/look.

Gould, Stephen Jay. The Mismeasure of Man. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1981.

Kuhn, Thomas S. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1962.

Lewontin, Richard C. and Levins, Richard. “Stephen Jay Gould- What Does it Mean to Be a Radical?” in Stephen Jay Gould: Reflections on His view of Life, ed. Warren D. Allmon et al. 199-206. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.

Longino, Helen E. “Cognitive and Non-cognitive Values in Science: Rethinking the Dichotomy,” in , Science, and the Philosophy of Science, ed. Nelson, L. H. and Nelson, Jack. 39-58. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1996.

Longino, Helen E. Science as Social Knowledge: Values and Objectivity in Scientific Inquiry. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990.

Longino, Helen E. Studying Human Behavior: How Scientists Investigate Aggression & Sexuality. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2013.

McMullin, Ernan.“Values in Science,” Paper presented as the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association, 1982.

Merchant, Carolyn. The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1980.

Ruse, Michael. Mystery of Mysteries: Is Evolution a Social Construction, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999.

Shapin, Steven and Schaffer, Simon. Leviathan and the Air-Pump. Princeton: Princeton

38

University Press, 1985.

Wilson, Edward O. Sociobiology: The New Synthesis. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975.

Wilson, Edward O. . Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978.

Wilson, Edward O. Naturalist. New York: Warner Books, Island Press, 1994.

Wilson, Edward O. Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge. New York: Alfred A Knopf Inc., 1998.

Wilson, Edward O. Letters to a Young Scientist. New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2013.

39

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Carmen Maria Marcous is a graduate student in the Department of Philosophy at Florida State University. Her research interests are in the history and philosophy of science, social and political philosophy, and feminist and critical race theory.

40