E.O. Wilson

Aeschylus's tragedy Seven against Thebes, winner of the Dionysia in 467 , separates the impulse of patriotism into its constituent ideologies, emotions, and behaviors. In Seven, the spark of patriotism is kindled by the opening fl ourish of bugle calls. When, through the pathetic fallacy, homeland becomes motherland, the spark becomes a fl ame. Then, calling the gods and the fervor of religion under its banner, the fl ame becomes a fi re. Finally, by drawing a line between "us" and "them," the fi re becomes a blaze. Individuality is seared away, revealing the archetypes behind the human mask, the ancient compulsions that speak through the heraldic devices emblazoned on the warriors' arms. Aeschylus, by dramatizing a city besieged, presents a perfect prism that refracts the intense blaze of patriotism into a scintillating rainbow of ideologies, emotions, and behaviors that, while touching every facet of the human experience, is bound together by the biological imperatives underlying human nature. Although remembered today as the father of tragedy and the eldest of the big three of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, Aeschylus was a soldier and a patriot. He fought in the four major engagements of the Persian Wars, where a motley consortium of bickering city-states checked the Persian Empire. In 490 , he distinguished himself in the hoplite ranks at Marathon, where his brother, Cynegirus, perished. He fought in 480 at Artemisium and Salamis, and at Plataea in 479 when freedom came to Greece (Herodotus 6.114). In the second century , the travel writer Pausanias visited Athens. He was surprised to learn that Aeschylus's patriotism took such pride of place that the poet neglected to recollect his other achievements on his epitaph:

Este artículo es una aproximación a la Sociobiología de E.O.Wilson y su interpretación de la ética. El autor empieza haciendo notar el cuestionamiento a esta disciplina, luego, sigue una secuencia cronológica que se inicia con los artículos de W.D. Hamilton sobre el comportamiento altruista, el planteamiento inicial de Wilson y ya en el plano ético con el señalamiento de dos dilemas. El artículo termina con la crítica a lo que Wilson denomina trascendentalismo.

Cuando nos referimos a la 'ideología' lo hacemos pensando en una forma de intelección que, en primer lugar, se vincula con intereses, los cuales pueden ser personales o grupales, y que busca justificar una postura moral, religiosa, política, económica o de otra índole. La ideología vista de este modo no está interesada en la verdad en sí misma, sino en lo que alguien o algunos consideran como lo verdadero o correcto. Como consecuencia de esta segunda característica, la ideología busca autoconvencer o autoengañar a su portador, e influir sobre los demás. Una tercera característica de la ideología es que impregna la mente de los individuos de una manera que estos no suelen ser conscientes de la misma y, más bien, consideran que ese es el punto de vista natural o correcto.

E. O. Wilson and E. Slingerland have tabled arguments from the side of the natural sciences about how to mediate between the latter and the humanities and thereby curtail the drift in the humanities toward epistemological insignificance. However, neither scholar’s theory for mediation takes into account the irreducible uniqueness of the mode of cognition fitted to the humanities. This suggests there is a dimension of their thinking that inclines toward the possibility of integration that is simultaneously being suppressed. That dimension vindicated by both impasses their arguments generate and by statements they make is a particular ethos or disposition prefigured in the insights of Gadamer into the role of visual and auditory orientations for determining how beings are understood in the humanities and sciences. Yet the dialectical interplay between these two dispositions and corresponding modes of learning to which his phenomenology of the senses of hearing and seeing point is also called up short by feminist philosophers of political location. This in turn justifies incorporating those feminist philosophies into both courses and departments of learning that seek a unity of understanding.

One of the most celebrated biologists of the past century, Edward O. Wilson has received virtually every scientific award and recognition for his provocative and innovative enquiry into the nature of the relationship between moral behavior and biology which the scientific community can offer. For over twenty-five years, his development of a field of study at Harvard University called sociobiology and the analytical concept he created called conscilience have revolutionized our thinking about ethics and human behavior. Exploring the interrelatedness of the chemistry of the mind and the genetic bases of culture, he has challenged the philosophical, theological, and sociological world to embrace a creatively converging view of science and ethics, of biology and human behavior. This essay is a critical review of Wilson's major works written during the past three decades which have caused both international exuberance among scientists and an exclamation of outrage among many in the philosophical and theological world. This is the first comprehensive review and critical assessment of his major works.

"Space prohibits so much, and permits so little." -- Peter S. Stevens


"Through geomantic practices, Neo-Confucian ideology has actively promoted its 'correlative' (as compared to a 'causative') cosmology, wherein everything an nature is assumed to orient itself within an encompassing but impersonal force field without having to be Instructed to do so and without the application of mechanical compulsion. This orientation also applies to humans, of course, who, from the perspective of Neo-Confucian organic naturalism, also have inherent tendencies to move toward certain places. Neo-Confucians believe that the resulting dynamic
equilibrium attained attributes of perfection and beauty when and where humans entered into productive relationships with Nature. Neo-Confucian correlative cosmology holds that initial conditions (the where and when of human entry) determine subsequent productive or destructive outcomes. Geomantic surveys and the maps that result from these efforts represent Neo-Confucian solutions to the problem of choosing the 'correct timing and placement of human beginnings in a
prepotent and productive natural system without disturbing its dynamic equilibrium."

Murray Gell-Mann died on the 24th of May, 2019.

In 1964 Gell-Mann postulated the existence of quarks. (The name was coined by Gell-Mann himself and it's a reference to the novel Finnegans Wake, by James Joyce.) Quarks, antiquarks and gluons were seen to be the underlying elementary elements of neutrons and protons (as well as other hadrons). Gell-Mann was then awarded a Nobel Prize in Physics in 1969 for his contributions and discoveries in the classification of elementary particles at the nuclear level.

More relevantly to this piece. In 1984 Gell-Mann was one of several co-founders of the Santa Fe Institute - a research institute in New Mexico. Its job is to study complex systems and advance the cause of interdisciplinary studies of complexity theory.

Gell-Mann wrote a popular science book about physics and complexity science, The Quark and the Jaguar: Adventures in the Simple and the Complex, in 1994. Many of the quotes in this piece come from that book.

**************************************************************************

The following words of Lee Smolin (an American theoretical physicist) sum up both Murray Gell-Mann's work and the man himself. (At least as they are relevant to this piece.) Firstly he explains Gell-Mann's work:

“Physics needs a new direction, and the direction should have something to do with the study of complex systems rather than with the kind of physics [Murray Gell-Mann] did most of his life.”

Then Smolin continues with a few words on Gell-Mann himself:

“The fact that after spending a life focused on studying the most elementary things in nature Murray can turn around and say that now what's important is the study of complex systems is a great inspiration, and also a great tribute to him.”

Of course all the above is hardly a philosophical or scientific account of the need to move from the “elementary” to the “complex”. However, it does hint at the importance of gaining a broader picture of nature (or the universe). And that's what both Smolin himself and Gell-Mann realised. (In Smolin's own case, he moved from theoretical physics to adding cosmology and philosophy to his repertoire.)

Despite that, surely it can't be said that “what's important is the study of complex systems”. That's simply to reverse the “reductionist hierarchy”. Complex systems are simply part of the picture: not the most important part of the picture. Indeed it seems a little naïve to reverse that previous ostensible hierarchy with a new one.

Murray Gell-Mann himself did appear to offer us a middle-way between (strong) reductionism and the complete autonomy of the individual (“special”) sciences.

Gell-Mann believed that it's all about what he called the "staircases” between the sciences. As Gell-Mann put it (in the specific case of the relation between the levels of psychology and biology):

“Where work does proceed on both biology and psychology and on building staircases from both ends, the emphasis at the biological end is on the brain (as well as die test of the nervous system, the endocrine system, etc), while at the psychological end the emphasis is on the mind—that is, the phenomenological manifestations of what the brain and related organs are doing. Each staircase is a brain-mind bridge.”

Most of the above can be summed up in this way:

i) Simply because a scientist (or philosopher) says that x can be reduced to y (not necessarily without remainder),
ii) that certainly doesn't also mean that this scientist (or philosopher) also believes that x is (to use Patricia Churchland's words) “disreputable, unscientific or otherwise unsavoury”.

The publication of Edward Wilson’s Consilience over a decade ago (1998) led to renewed discussion about the relationship between the sciences, humanities, and fine arts. Particularly, how should science and art be defined, and their relationship understood? I propose that extending Willard Quine’s work on science, and theories of art proposed by Oscar Wilde, Jorge Luis Borges, Arthur Danto, Hans Belting, and Denis Dutton, can provide for a richer concept of consilience between science and art than that proposed by Wilson, suggesting important components for definitions of a scientific and artistic method, and how theories of science and art could be linked in the future.
http://muse.jhu.edu/login?auth=0&type=summary&url=/journals/philosophy_and_literature/v038/38.1A.lock.pdf