Awards
Winner of two Pulitzer Prizes for On Human Nature and The Ants
Synopses & Reviews
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.
Review
"In this beautifully written book, E. O. Wilson, one of the twentieth century's
greatest thinkers, attempts nothing less than a synthesis of all ways of knowing.
Read it, enjoy, and ponder!" Jared Diamond, Author of Guns, Germs and
Steel
Review
"[A] work to be held in awe, to be read with joy and attentiveness, to
be celebrated and challenged and rewarded and returned to again and again. It
is, in short, an act of intellectual heroism." Michael Pakenham, Baltimore
Sun
Review
"As elegant in its prose as it is rich in its ideas...a book of immense importance."
Atlanta Journal & Constitution
Review
"Thoughtful readers with an interest in the future should consider Wilson's plea. This consilience of the natural sciences and the social sciences could equip future humankind with the analytical and predictive capacity to deal with the many changes wrought by humanity's recent global hegemony and, thereby, help 'preserve the Creation.'"