Consilience

            
             Wilson's book Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge is an attempt to open our minds into a new way of thinking and a new way of understanding. The literal meaning of consilience is the "jumping together of knowledge by the linking of facts and fact-based theory across disciplines to create a common groundwork of explanation- (Wilson 8). Wilson believes that by this unification we can explain everything in the world through natural law. .
             The Ionian Enchantment was the first attempt towards consilience in Wilson's eyes. The Enchantment wanted to unify the sciences such as physics, biology, chemistry, etc. to create common natural laws. However one cannot study the sciences separately because it would create confusion. Confusion "occurs wherever argument or inference passes from one world of experience to another- (10). We must adapt a common language of learning in order to come to a deeper understanding of our world. .
             Reductionism is the key to reaching consilience. During the Enlightenment, Rene Descartes introduced reductionism as the one of the most powerful instruments of science. According to Descartes, reductionism is "the study of the world as an assemblage of physical parts that can be broken apart and analyzed separately- (31). It is a tool that can help us find entries into branches of science and thought that were once inconceivable (59). The Enlightenment sought to give people free thought and cast away the boundaries set forth by religion and civil authority. Philosophers such as Descartes, Francis Bacon and Marquis de Condorcet stressed knowledge and unifying that knowledge. However these men did not have the power to understand or prove their philosophies. And the reason why there was a lack of power, according to Wilson, was because they lacked a basic understanding of the brain and mind.
             The brain is what takes in our sensory information. It has a primary function of staying alive and reproducing.