Consilience

Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge, by acclaimed biologist E.O. Wilson is a good read for anyone pondering existence, science, and the human brain - weighty stuff indeed. Anyway, from what I've read so far, Wilson is trying to unite the branches of science into a simple, cohesive set of laws. Science at its most basic starts with physics, progresses to chemistry, then biology, then the social sciences. Each progression gets exponentially more and more complicated as the rigid laws of physics melt away to the incomprehensible complexity of what makes us truly human. There are two ways in which scientists attempt to solve a problem. One takes, say a monkey, and divides it into smaller and smaller parts - anatomy, cell biology, molecules/DNA, etc. etc. From this method, a clear picture can be attained of the organism from the top down. The alternative method is to take the individual components of the organism, from the cell level up, and predict the final outcome, in this case, a monkey. Obviously, from a set of genes or a group of organelles, the final product is almost impossible to determine on an organism scale. Yet, this is precisely what consilience would entail - the bottom up prediction of nature. In the book, Wilson likens the former method to walking through a labyrinth, laying string out as you go, until an endpoint is reached. From this endpoint, the explorer can retrace his or her steps and come out where they started. Science has the ability to do this now. The interesting part of consilience is trying to start in middle of the labyrinth and coming out at the end. The only problem with nature, however, is that there are no endpoints or beginnings, only an intertwined web of reality. Which brings me to the chapter I'm on now - the human brain and its perception of reality. I'm not well-versed by any means in biology or anatomy, but I have a general idea of how the brain works. Defining consciousness within that gray mass is another issue to which ponderers of the world have been tackling since, probably, the time we "realized" consciousness. Our instinct and free-will are connected through millions of years of evolution. For every animal, the foremost job the brain must perform is the job of survival. One slip and we're dead. The fact that the human species has evolved to do more than just simply survive is a wonderful side effect of evolution. Each part of the brain works in concert with all the other parts to create the form we know as reality. Interlacing this experienced reality with thoughts, emotions, and memories from past experiences is not something we think of everyday, but it is something to be marveled at nonetheless. All of this information we are bombarded with, even in the days before 24-hr news and reality tv, is enormous and our brain processes and files away this usually needless information continuously. When we dream, we don't remember 95-99% of our dreams the next morning. What we interpret our dreams to be is really only taking into 1-5% of what we dreamed that night. The supercomputing power of our brain, which doesn't have to be plugged in, programmed, or reinstalled, is astounding. Anyway, I'm taken by this book, and if you're reading this blog, you should stop and read Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge right now!