Consilience is the key to unification. I prefer this word over "coherence" because it's rarity has preserved it's precision, whereas consilience has several possible meanings, only one of which is consilience. William Whewell, in his 1840 synthesis The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, was the first to speak of consilience, literally a"jumping together" of knowledge by the linking of facts and fact based theory across disciplines to create a common groundwork of explanation. He said, "The Consilience of Inductions takes place when an Induction, obtained from one class of facts, coincides with an Induction, obtained from another different class. This Consilience is a test of the truth of the Theory in which it occurs."

This is how consilience is defined in chapter two. In chapter three it is referred to as "the dream of intellectual unity" which the enlightenment promised but failed to deliver. Biologist Edward O. Wilson takes us on an extraordinarily ambitious journey to seek a means to achieving consilience between not only the sciences but the arts, ethics and also religion. By using his broad erudition he takes us on a journey through various aspects of the sciences, arts and humanities asking of the reader not only to follow his thinking but to believe in the quest to achieve consilience. Like his brilliant last chapter shows, the end is the preservation of humanity free of a dependence on prosthetic devices. Consilience is thrown up as the solution to the many problems mankind faces today. This is never really demonstrated in the text and the reader is left wondering what will become of planet earth if such ultimately lofty ambitions do not reach fruition. Disappointingly the reader is left to wonder how another world view will seek to solve the problems left in the wake of wars, population pressures and the struggle for survival. It seems to me that if another type of positivism fails to solve these so far intractable problems we will have lost precious time in dealing with the real issues which can still be recognized with the admittedly fragmented and sometimes reductionist views of science that prevail today.

An excellent book of benefit to better understanding between the sciences and a great introductory text for most of us without the time to keep abreast of the latest developments in science but as the title of the last chapter reads: "To What End?"