Concerning the Unity of Knowledge and the Aim of Scientific Inquiry: A Critique of E.O. Wilson's Consilience Worldview
In this paper I set out to problematize what the distinguished evolutionary biologist, Edward O. Wilson, has presented to a popular audience as his consilience worldview. Wilson's consilience worldview is a metaphysical framework that presumes the existence of an underlying unity in the knowled...
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| Format: | Others |
| Language: | English English |
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Florida State University
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| Online Access: | http://purl.flvc.org/fsu/fd/FSU_migr_etd-9038 |
| Summary: | In this paper I set out to problematize what the distinguished evolutionary biologist, Edward O. Wilson, has presented to a popular audience as his consilience worldview. Wilson's consilience worldview is a metaphysical framework that presumes the existence of an underlying unity in the knowledge gleaned from otherwise diverse modes of intellectual inquiry, and details a particular normative approach for its discovery by scientists. After introducing Wilson's consilience worldview (WCW), I review philosophical and historical literature on the role that values play in scientific inquiry and explain how to understand WCW as a problematic bundle of prescriptive claims concerning the appropriate doing of scientific inquiry. Specifically, I examine deleterious implications for the study of human social behavior that result from attempted application of WCW in order to challenge Wilson's claim that WCW is the most profitable or promising research program to adopt in the study of human social behavior (what I describe as the 'The Fertility Objection'). Then, I present an argument for why readers of Consilience should regard its central thesis, WCW, skeptically, as potentially deleterious to the process and aims of science (what I describe as the 'The Scientific Integrity Objection'). === A Thesis submitted to the Department of Philosophy in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of
Arts. === Spring Semester, 2014. === March 26, 2014. === Includes bibliographical references. === Michael Ruse, Professor Directing Thesis; Piers Rawling, Committee Member; Fritz Davis, Committee Member; James Justus, Committee Member. |
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