Critical Consilience

A commentary on Bill Benzon's article on the next 100 years in the human sciences:

José Angel García Landa • a day ago

I would argue that it is already the case not perhaps that "nothing in the human sciences makes any sense except in the light of evolution" but that "MANY THINGS in the human sciencs make no sense except in the light of evolution". And, moreover, that "MANY THINGS in evolution makes no sense except in the light of the human sciences". In the sense that evolution is a theory, model, narrative, and so on, and these are the province of the human sciences.

Bill Benzon José Angel García Landa • 10 hours ago

On the first, perhaps we have a different understanding of the maturity of evolutionary thinking in the human sciences. You seem to have a more generous estimate of the current state of affairs than I do. I'm not sure what to make of your second remark. It looks a little like a formulaic claim to intellectual hegemony based on the fact that, as all knowledge is discourse, the discourse of discourse is therefore a discourse of discourses.

José Angel García Landa Bill Benzon • 5 minutes ago

Well, there may be a bit of infinite regression lurking around, I agree, but there are also insights to be gained from this perspective. I wouldn't argue for the 'intellectual hegemony' of the humanities, but rather for the benefits of an ongoing critique of science inasmuch as it is a "discourse", yes.

—and another one on the same, in a discussion of E. O. Wilson's notion of the epigenesis of natural human universals  and the "psychological exile" of mankind, which I see as a significant model for consilience on the humanites. Benzon sees in Wilson and Carroll's a displaced theological model interfering with their science. I argue from the other side of the issue:


The alternative would seem to be that the "psychological exile" is a materialist insight which sneaked into theological doctrine, or perhaps rather, a way of formulating a materialist insight about the difference between man and animals in theological terms (originally in mythical terms). The biological function of art would seem to be a subset of the biological function of culture at large—and it does not seem as if we haven't made any progress in understanding that function "ever since Darwin". Along with that understanding there may come new insight into the ways previous discourses or epistemes dealt with what is, from our perspective, a fundamentally biological or ecological problem—and these attempts to deal with a real, material problem that is now perceived as such would count in a way as proto-materialist insights.


Or perhaps put otherwise, there's reasons for things, and therefore there's a lesson in materialism (as well as a moral, and a tale) in everything.

Omnis mundi creatura
quasi liber et pictura
nobis est, et speculum.
Nostrae vitae, nostrae mortis,
nostri status, nostrae sortis
fidele signaculum.
Nostrum statum pingit rosa,
nostri status decens glosa,
nostrae vitae lectio.

Consiliencia: La unidad del saber