Consilience, E.O Wilson

• Consilience: a “jumping together” of knowledge by linking facts and fact-based theory across disciplines to create a common groundwork of explanation

  Chapter 3: The Enlightenment

• Francis Bacon (1561), a founder of the Enlightenment, believed that we must understand nature, both around us and within ourselves, in order to set humanity on the course of self-improvement
• Bacon emphasized to beware of the idols of the mind:
  • Idol of the tribe is assuming that more order exists in chaotic nature (i.e., being allured to simple answers that seemingly describe complex issues)
  • The imprisoning cave is getting caught in the idiosyncrasies of individual belief and passion
  • The marketplace is where the power of mere words are used to induce belief in nonexistent things
  • The theatre is an unquestioning acceptance of philosophical beliefs and misleading demonstrations
  • Bacon urged to observe the world around you as it truly is and reflect on the best means of transmitting reality as you have experienced it—approaching and transmitting truth is Nature’s calling
• Chinese scholarship focused on holistic properties and on the harmonious, hierarchical relationships of entities, from stars down to mountains to flowers and to sand. The entities of Nature, in this view, are inseparable and perpetually changing, not discrete and constant as perceived by Enlightenment thinkers (who adopted a more reductionist approach)
• Our species and its way of thinking are a product of evolution, not the purpose of evolution
• The “Anthropic principle”: the laws of nature, in our universe at the least, had to be set a certain way so as to allow the creation of beings able to ask about the laws of nature
• “What really interests me is whether God had any choice in the creation of the world” - Einstein
• To the extent that philosophical positions both confuse and close doors to further inquiry, they are likely to be wrong.
  • Questions that can’t be answered are generally better than answers that can’t be questioned
• Wilson suggests that there are two kinds of original thinkers: those who upon viewing disorder try to create order, and those who upon encountering order try to protest it by creating disorder. The tension between the two is what drives learning forward. (Ying and Yang)

  Chapter 4: The Natural Sciences

• Reductionism is the search strategy employed to find points of entry into otherwise impenetrably complex systems
• “The love of complexity without reductionism makes art; the love of complexity with reductionism makes science.”
• Optimum intelligence for normal sciences: bright enough to see what needs to be done, but not so bright as to suffer boredom doing it
• Natural selection built the brain to survive in the world and only incidentally to understand it at a depth greater than or equal to what is needed to survive
  • The goal of a scientist should be to diagnose and correct the misalignment between human subjective experience and free-standing reality

    Chapter 5: Ariadne’s Thread

• The activation-synthesis hypothesis suggests that dreaming may be a side effect of the reorganization and editing of the brain’s memory banks
  • During sleep, with most sensory input lacking, the conscious brain is still activated internally by impulses originating from the brain stem. Lacking instantaneous sensory information, yet attempting to perform its usual function (?), the brain does its best to create images that move through coherent narratives—creating fantasy

    Chapter 6: The Mind

• The thalamus, comprising of two egg-shaped masses of nerve cells near the centre of the brain, functions as a relay center through which all sensory information (other than smell) is transmitted to the cerebral cortex (i.e., the conscious mind). Even dreams are triggered by impulses passing through the thalamus
• Neurotransmitter: a chemical that either excites an electric discharge in a receiving nerve cell or prevents one from occurring (acts within the synapse, the points of connection and microscopic space between nerve cells, at the ends of their axons)
• Aggregates of neuron circuits gather in flat assemblages (layers) and rounded assemblages (nuclei), mostly placed at or near the surface of the brain. This is why the gray matter of the brain is gray, with the white colour coming from the myelin sheaths that insulate axons. These aggregates include sensory relay stations, memory modules, and emotional control centres.
• Three primitive divisions of the brain are found throughout vertebrates, from fishes to mammals: hindbrain, midbrain, and forebrain
  • Hindbrain regulates breathing, heartbeat, and coordination of body movements
  • Midbrain controls sleep and arousal, also parts regulating auditory reflexes and perception
  • A major part of the forebrain is composed of the limbic system, comprised of the amygdala (emotion), hippocampus (memory, especially short-term), hypothalamus (memory, temperature control, sex drive, hunger, and thirst) and thalamus (awareness of all senses other than smell, be it temperature or pain)
  • Forebrain also includes the cerebral cortex, covering the rest of the brain. The primary seat of consciousness, storing and collating information from the senses. It directs voluntary motor activity, speech, and motivation
• The self is the main character in the winning dramas taken from the litany scenarios generated by the subconscious mind. The hidden preparation of these scenarios gives the illusion of free will. We make decisions for reasons we often sense only vaguely, and seldom understand fully
• Can AI generate a human mind equivalent? Seems unlikely, as the mind’s emotions are driven by the senses (touch, sight, smell, taste, sound) and a computational neural network is unlikely to have access to these senses, especially at the resolution of a biological system that has fine-tuned its sensory organs over hundreds of millions of years. The AI may be able to mimic what a human mind is capable of, but without human senses and thus human emotion, it doesn’t seem like it would be conscious in the human sense; though, it could gain consciousness in the computational sense

  Chapter 7: From genes to culture

• Culture is created by the communal mind, and each mind is the product of the genetically structured human brain; genes and culture are thus inseverably linked
• As a part of gene-culture coevolution, culture is collectively reconstructed each generation in the minds of its individuals. Writing and art allows culture to grow indefinitely large and even skip generation, as opposed to solely oral tradition. However, the fundamental biasing influences of epigenetic rules, being genetic and ineradicable, stay constant
• Some individuals inherit epigenetic rules that enable survival and reproduction between in their environment and culture than individuals who lack those rules. As such, the human species has evolved genetically by natural selection in behaviour, just as it has anatomically and neurologically
• Some cultural norms also survive and reproduce better than competing norms, causing culture to evolve on a track parallel to (and much faster than) genetic evolution. Culture allows rapid adjustments to changes in the environment through cultural adaptations without correspondingly precise genetic prescriptions. This is one reason why humans differ fundamentally from all other animal species
• On epigenetic rules, i.e., innate genetic predispositions: o By four months old, infants prefer harmonious tones, and sometimes react to out-of-tune notes with a disgusted facial expression (the same as elicited by a drop of lemon juice on the tongue) o The startle response from a loud noise closes the eyes, opens the mouth, drops the head, sags the arms and shoulders, and buckles the knees, preparing the body as though to absorb a coming blow o Newborns prefer sugar solutions over plain water in the following order: sucrose, fructose, lactose, glucose o Within ten minutes after birth, infants fixate more on normally drawn facial designs than on abnormal designs o Two days after birth, infants prefer to gaze at their mother rather than unknown, other women o Smiling, used primarily to signal friendliness and approval and indicate a general sense of pleasure, appears cross culturally; environment has little influence in the maturation of smiling
• Reification, i.e., the aggregation of ideas and complex phenomena into simpler concepts, is a quick and easy mental algorithm that creates order in a world otherwise overwhelming in flux and detail
• The dyadic instinct, a manifestation of reification, is the proneness to divide classifications into two parts: in-group vs out-group, child vs adult, kin vs non-kin, married vs single, sacred vs profane, good vs evil. The boundaries of each division are fortified with taboo and ritual (initiation ceremonies, weddings, blessings, rites of passage)

  Chapter 8: The fitness of human nature

• The significant acceleration of cultural evolution in historical times may seem to imply that humanity has transcended its genetic instructions or found a way to suppress them. That is an illusion. The ancient genes and the epigenetic rules of behaviour they ordain remain comfortably in place
• Through homo habilis, homo erectus, homo ergaster, and homo sapiens, cultural evolution was slow enough to remain tightly coupled to genetic evolution, until around 40000 to 10000 years ago, where Neolithic agricultural advances upped the tempo of cultural evolution
• There is no evidence that our paleolithic genes simply disappeared during the “creative revolution” ensued by agricultural development. They remained in place and continued to prescribe the foundational rules of human nature

  Chapter 9: The social sciences

• The social sciences—anthropology, sociology, economics, and political science—strive to provide the power to predict what will happen if society selects one course of action over another
• The social sciences lack consilience because they aren’t built upon, and don’t share, a solid foundation like the natural sciences do (e.g., medical sciences can build off molecular and cell biology)
• As such, the social sciences are built into independent cadres with limited common ground, stressing the precision in words within their specialty yet seldom speaking the same technical language in another speciality. They mistake the overall atmosphere of chaos for creative ferment
• The paradox of the social sciences is that it seems easier because we can talk with other humans but not with photons and atoms, yet this familiarity bestows a comfort that in turn breeds carelessness and error. People believe they know how they themselves think, and how others think, and how institutions evolve; they are wrong.
• James S. Coleman, a distinguished sociologist from the University of Chicago, stated that the study of societies require “that the explanatory focus be on the system as a unit, not in the individuals or other components that make it up.” (i.e., holism)
  • Imagine if the same were done in biology, “the essential requirement is that the explanatory focus be on the organism as a unit, not in the cell or molecules that make it up.” Biology would have remained stagnant around 1850 with that perspective. Biology is instead a science that traces causation across many levels of organization, from ecosystem to atom
• Epigenetic rules are innate rules of thumb that direct the individual towards quick and accurate responses most likely to ensure survival and reproduction. Sometimes, especially in complex societies, they no long contribute to health and well-being; the behaviour they direct can militate against the best interests of the individual and its society
• The practical role of evolutionary theory is to point to the most likely location of epigenetic rules within a culture

  Chapter 10: the arts and their interpretation

• Works of art communicate feeling directly from mind to mind, with no intent to explain why the impact occurs. In this sense, the arts are the antithesis of science
• A potential formula for the driving pulse of the arts: imitate (generally something in nature), make it geometrical, intensify
• The dominating influence that spawned the arts was the need to impose order on the confusion caused by intelligence
• In a study on physical attractiveness of female faces, the features though most attractive were relatively high cheek bones, a thin jaw, large eyes relative to the size of the face, and a slightly shorter than longer distance between mouth and chin and between nose and chin
• Though, these qualities are rare in the general population. Why, then, hasn’t natural selection directed facial features to this optimum? It’s possible that attraction to these features is an attraction to a super-normal stimulus—-much like how male butterflies can be tricked into trying to mate with a mechanical butterfly who’s wings are larger and flap faster, while ignoring the real female butterflies that surround it. Perhaps we follow a similar epigenetic rule as do other animals, i.e., “take the largest, or brightest, or most conspicuously moving individual you can find.”
  • The author suggests that women with large eyes and delicate features may have less robust health (?), especially during childbearing; but they present physical cues of youth, virginity, and the prospect of a long reproductive period. This is why the beauty industry thrives: they manufacture super-normal stimuli by imitating the natural physiological signs of youth and fecundity

    Chapter 11: Ethics and religion

• The dangerous Christian devotion of ”I was not born to be of this world” can encourage the notion that with a second life waiting, suffering can be endured—especially in other people. The natural environment can be used up. Enemies of faith can be savaged and suicidal martyrdom praised
• Ethical and religious beliefs are created from the bottom up, from people to their culture. They do not come from the top down, from God or other no material source to the people by way of culture
• Tribes cooperate with one another through carefully defined treaties and other conventions, quick to imagine themselves as victims of conspiracies by competing groups, and prone to dehumanizing and murdering their rivals during periods of severe conflict. They cement group loyalty by means of sacred symbols and ceremonies. Their mythologies are filled with epic victories over menacing enemies
• There is a hereditary selective advantage to membership in a powerful group united by devout belief and purpose, as such our brains were shaped by evolution to be groupish and primed for religious adoption
• The human mind evolved to believe in the gods; it did not evolve to believe in biology. Religiosity conveyed genetic advantages throughout prehistory, and biology is a modern product and thus not reflected in our genetic algorithms. The two are not factually compatible, therefore those who hunt for both intellectual and religious truth will struggle to acquire both in full measure
• Wilson believes that the competition between science and religion will lead towards the secularization of the human epic and religion itself. Science will test relentlessly every assumption about the human condition, and in time uncover the foundation of moral and religious sentiments

  Chapter 12: To what end?

• 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
• The Ratchet of Progress: the more knowledge people acquire, the more they can increase their numbers and alter the environment, whereupon the more they need new knowledge just to stay alive. In a human-dominated world, the natural environment steadily shrinks, offering less and less per capita energy and resources
• A principal principle of organic evolution is that of habitat selection, that all species prefer and gravitate to the environment in which their genes were assembled. This is likely why so many people gravitate towards nature and the outdoors
• The colonisation of space will be impossible without massive supply lines. The Biosphere experiment in the early 1990s, costing $200M, attempted to create a synthetic environment isolated from the real world (except for electricity and communication). Only 8 individuals participated in the experiment. The concentration of oxygen depleted five months into the experiment, and oxygen from the outside had to be pumped in to continue the experiment. Carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide increases to dangerous levels. 19/25 vertebrates and all animal pollinators vanished, and cockroaches and ants multiplied explosively. The conclusion of the experiment was that “No one yet knows how to engineer systems that can sustain human life like the natural ecosystems that produce it for free.”
• The wall toward humanity is evidently rushing toward a shortage of not only minerals and energy, but of food and water. Humankind is like a household living giddily off vanishing capital. The idea that “Life is good and getting better, we’re still expanding and spending faster…don’t worry, we’re a smart bunch, something will turn up; it always has.”
  • It’s helpful to imagine the lily pad arithmetic riddle in this situation. A lily pad doubles itself each day after being placed in the pond. On the thirtieth day, the lily pads cover the pond entirely, unable to grow more. On which day was the pond half full and half empty? The twenty-ninth day.
• Humanity will attempt to invoke every techno local fix for an over-populated planet that genius can devise. They will be driven by venture capital and government subsidy in the free market economy, and reduce the risk of short term economic calamity. Though, these man-made procedures will enlarge the carrying capacity of the planet, and as human beings are typical organisms, their reproductive response will be to expand to fill the added capacity, and the spiral will continue
• The more biodiverse an ecosystem, the higher it’s productivity and the greater it’s resilience to environmental stress. Since we depend on functioning ecosystems to cleanse our water, enrich our soil, and generate the air we breathe, biodiversity is something we shouldn’t discard carelessly