Sent: Sunday, November 21, 2004 11:09 PM
Subject: RE: book club meeting: Thu 11/18

Present: Jim and Peter. We discussed "Consilience: The
Unity of Knowledge" by Edward O. Wilson. Wilson continues
his conservation theme stated in "The Future of Life",
but in this book he tries to provide a theoretical
basis for implementing sound policy to address the
looming ecological crisis. Thus he dives into "consilience",
which means "jumping together", and tries to show that
all of present-day intellectual/cultural disciplines,
from economics to philosophy to the arts, have a material
basis in the natural sciences, and that all human activity
can eventually be reduced to, and explained by, universal
laws of physics and chemistry. A pet phrase in this book
is "gene-culture coevolution"; he argues that human culture
has evolved from the same natural selection forces that
has shaped all heritable traits such as sickle-cell anemia.

We had a hard time understanding how this theory can be
useful in shaping policy. Even if we accept the proposition
that the various human behaviors that make up culture and
the arts have a strong genetic basis subject to natural
selection, how can one use that to formulate an economic
policy such as how much tariff to set on international trade?
We were impressed by Wilson's broad scope of inquiry in
this book, but ultimately disappointed at any new directions
we can take to pursue conservation goals. After much
philosophical synthesizing, his conclusions were not much
more a rehash of the nature-nurture debate and recycling
of ideas from his previous books.

Our next meeting will be Mon 2/7, 7pm, the book will be
"Winter World: The Ingenuity of Animal Survival", by
Bernd Heinrich. Please note the change from Thusday
to Monday for this meeting. Looking ahead, the book
after that will be "The Sea Around Us", by Rachel Carson.

Peter
P.S. I came across this while reading Mark Twain's
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: 
"wherever you leave a dead snake its mate always comes
there and curls around it." Is this true or is this just
another tall tale from M.T.?

http://www.nicertutor.com/doc/book/