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A review by theyoungveronica
Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge by Edward O. Wilson
5.0
Gene-culture coevolution, the Ionian enchantment, "dreaming is a kind of insanity, a rush of visions"...
"The labyrinth of the world is thus a Borgesian maze of almost infinite possibility. We can never map it all, never discover and explain everything. But we can hope to travel through the known parts swiftly, from the specific back to the general, and—in resonance with the human spirit—we can go on tracing pathways forever. We can connect threads into broadening webs of explanation, because we have been given the torch and the ball of thread. There is another defining character of consilience: It is far easier to go background through the branching corridors than to go forward."
"Take the ‘edge of chaos’, one of the most frequently cited paradigms of complexity theory. It starts with the observation in a system containing perfect internal order, such as a crystal, there can be no further change. At the opposite extreme, in a chaotic system such as boiling liquid, there is very little order to change. The system that will evolve the most rapidly must fall between, and more precisely on the edge of chaos, possessing order but with the parts connected loosely enough o be easily altered either singly or in small groups."
"The central idea of the consilience world view is that all tangible phenomena, from the birth of stars to the workings of social institutions, are based on material processes that are ultimately reducible, however long and tortuous the sequences, to the laws of physics."
"Neuron systems are directed networks, receiving and broadcasting signals. They cross-talk with other complexes to form systems of systems, in places forming a circle, like a snake catching its own tail, to create reverberating circuits. Each neuron is touched by the terminal axon branches of many other neurons, established by a kind of democratic vote whether it is to be active or silent. Using a Morselike code of staccato firing, the cell sends its own message outward to others."
"Mind is a stream of conscious and subconscious experiences. It is at root the coded representation of sensory impressions and the memory and imagination of sensory impressions...Consciousness consists of the parallel processing of vast numbers of such coding networks.
"The etiology of culture wends its way torturously from the genes through the brain and senses to learning and social behavior. What we inherit are neurobiological traits that cause us to see the world in a particular way and to learn certain behaviors in preference to other behaviors. The genetically inherited traits are not memes, not units of culture, but rather the propensity to invent and transmit certain kinds of these elements of memory in preference to others.
"Genes prescribe epigenetic rules, which are the regularities of sensory perception and mental development that animate and channel the acquisition of culture. Culture helps to determine which of the prescribing genes survive and multiply from one generation to the next. Successful new genes alter the epigenetic rules of populations. The altered epigenetic rules change the direction and effectiveness of the channels of cultural acquisition."
"The labyrinth of the world is thus a Borgesian maze of almost infinite possibility. We can never map it all, never discover and explain everything. But we can hope to travel through the known parts swiftly, from the specific back to the general, and—in resonance with the human spirit—we can go on tracing pathways forever. We can connect threads into broadening webs of explanation, because we have been given the torch and the ball of thread. There is another defining character of consilience: It is far easier to go background through the branching corridors than to go forward."
"Take the ‘edge of chaos’, one of the most frequently cited paradigms of complexity theory. It starts with the observation in a system containing perfect internal order, such as a crystal, there can be no further change. At the opposite extreme, in a chaotic system such as boiling liquid, there is very little order to change. The system that will evolve the most rapidly must fall between, and more precisely on the edge of chaos, possessing order but with the parts connected loosely enough o be easily altered either singly or in small groups."
"The central idea of the consilience world view is that all tangible phenomena, from the birth of stars to the workings of social institutions, are based on material processes that are ultimately reducible, however long and tortuous the sequences, to the laws of physics."
"Neuron systems are directed networks, receiving and broadcasting signals. They cross-talk with other complexes to form systems of systems, in places forming a circle, like a snake catching its own tail, to create reverberating circuits. Each neuron is touched by the terminal axon branches of many other neurons, established by a kind of democratic vote whether it is to be active or silent. Using a Morselike code of staccato firing, the cell sends its own message outward to others."
"Mind is a stream of conscious and subconscious experiences. It is at root the coded representation of sensory impressions and the memory and imagination of sensory impressions...Consciousness consists of the parallel processing of vast numbers of such coding networks.
"The etiology of culture wends its way torturously from the genes through the brain and senses to learning and social behavior. What we inherit are neurobiological traits that cause us to see the world in a particular way and to learn certain behaviors in preference to other behaviors. The genetically inherited traits are not memes, not units of culture, but rather the propensity to invent and transmit certain kinds of these elements of memory in preference to others.
"Genes prescribe epigenetic rules, which are the regularities of sensory perception and mental development that animate and channel the acquisition of culture. Culture helps to determine which of the prescribing genes survive and multiply from one generation to the next. Successful new genes alter the epigenetic rules of populations. The altered epigenetic rules change the direction and effectiveness of the channels of cultural acquisition."