Rhetoric Society Quarterly Aug 2023

The Persistence of “Consilience”: Reexamining a Rhetoric of Collaboration Across the Science-Humanities Divide

Sara Austin ; Daniel V. Bommarito

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis essay examines discourse surrounding contemporary calls for consilience, a form of interdisciplinary collaboration articulated by E. O. Wilson aimed at uniting the sciences, social sciences, and humanities from a Darwinian perspective. This essay builds on earlier examinations of Wilsonian consilience by analyzing a sample of texts that reflect a “second wave” of consilience and shifting rhetorical tactics over the past two decades. The analysis reveals that current calls for consilience reflect heightened rhetorical awareness among authors and that additional rhetorical work is required to gain adherence among diverse cross-disciplinary audiences. Implications are discussed for future research into enactments of consilience-style interdisciplinary research.KEYWORDS: CollaborationconsilienceE. O. Wilsoninterdisciplinarity Disclosure StatementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 Wilson’s rationale for unifying the disciplines is, on the surface, noncontroversial. In Consilience, he argues that knowledge is too segregated, academic specialties too specialized, and engagements too infrequent among scholars and researchers across the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities (9). Additionally, Wilson believes that addressing real-world social and political problems demands “fluency across boundaries” (13–14), that any single branch of knowledge would not yield the synoptic vision required for effective intervention. For Wilson in 1998, consilience remains a “metaphysical” hope, ultimately pointing the way toward a more systematic and integrated account of human knowledge about the world and ourselves (9).2 For example, conferences and workshops include Integrating Science and the Humanities (Vancouver, BC, 2008), Consilience Conference (St. Louis, MO, 2012), and TEDxWellesleyCollege on Consilience (Wellesley, MA, 2014). Scholarly texts include, among others, The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure, and Human Evolution (Dutton); Creating Consilience: Integrating the Sciences and the Humanities (Slingerland & Collard); Darwin’s Bridge: Uniting the Humanities and Sciences (Carroll); The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human (Gottschall).3 While a broader conversation about consilience style research might take into consideration works in subfields such as evolutionary esthetics, evolutionary literary study, paleoesthetics, evolutionary film and media study, evolutionary musicology, evolutionary studies in popular culture and include journals such as Evolutionary Studies in Imaginative Culture, these works—along with the remaining chapters excluded from Darwin’s Bridge and Creating Consilience—would fall into the category of enactments of consilience and do not meet Ceccarelli’s criteria for “interdisciplinary inspirational” texts. Although such works might prove to be fruitful examples of enactments of consilience, they do not explicitly label their work as a continuation of Wilson’s Consilience, as is the case in both Creating Consilience and Darwin’s Bridge.

Journal
Rhetoric Society Quarterly
Published
2023-08-08
DOI
10.1080/02773945.2022.2146172
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Topics
rhetorical criticism discourse analysis collaborative writing
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References (29) · 2 in this index

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  5. Ceccarelli Leah (2005)
    Rhetoric and Incommensurability
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