
Consilience
The Unity of Knowledge
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Narrated by:
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Jonathan Hogan
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By:
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Edward O. Wilson
About this listen
One of our greatest living scientists - and the winner of two Pulitzer Prizes for On Human Nature and The Ants - gives us a work of visionary importance that may be the crowning achievement of his career. In Consilience (a word that originally meant "jumping together"), Edward O. Wilson renews the Enlightenment's search for a unified theory of knowledge in disciplines that range from physics to biology, the social sciences and the humanities.
Using the natural sciences as his model, Wilson forges dramatic links between fields. He explores the chemistry of the mind and the genetic bases of culture. He postulates the biological principles underlying works of art from cave-drawings to Lolita. Presenting the latest findings in prose of wonderful clarity and oratorical eloquence, and synthesizing it into a dazzling whole, Consilience is science in the path-clearing traditions of Newton, Einstein, and Richard Feynman.
©1999 Edward O. Wilson (P)2018 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
"A dazzling journey across the sciences and humanities in search of deep laws to unite them." (The Wall Street Journal)
"An original work of synthesis... a program of unrivalled ambition: to unify all the major branches of knowledge—sociology, economics, the arts and religion—under the banner of science." (The New York Times)
"As elegant in its prose as it is rich in its ideas... a book of immense importance." (Atlanta Journal & Constitution)
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Story
The fruit of the long history of John Brockman's profound engagement with the most important scientific minds who have been thinking about AI - from Alison Gopnik and David Deutsch to Frank Wilczek and Stephen Wolfram - Possible Minds is an ideal introduction to the landscape of crucial issues AI presents. The collision between opposing perspectives is salutary and exhilarating; some of these figures are deeply concerned with the threat of AI, including the existential one, while others have a very different view.
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The worst book purchase I’ve made in a long while
- By Y. Zhao on 06-07-19
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Dancing Cockatoos and the Dead Man Test
- How Behavior Evolves and Why It Matters
- By: Marlene Zuk
- Narrated by: Jaime Lamchick
- Length: 9 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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For centuries, people have been returning to the same tired nature-versus-nurture debate, trying to determine what we learn and what we inherit. In Dancing Cockatoos and the Dead Man Test, biologist Marlene Zuk goes beyond the binary and instead focuses on interaction, or the way that genes and environment work together. Driving her investigation is a simple but essential question: How does behavior evolve?
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Good information, but reader distracts from it.
- By Jeremy Proctor on 02-13-23
By: Marlene Zuk
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Where We Meet the World
- The Story of the Senses
- By: Ashley Ward
- Narrated by: David Morley Hale
- Length: 12 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Our senses are what make life worth living. They allow us to appreciate a sip of an ice-cold drink, the sound of laughter, the touch of a lover. But only recently have incredible advances in sensory biology given us the ability to understand how and why our senses evolved as they have. In this book, biologist Ashley Ward takes listeners on a breathtaking tour of how our senses function. Ward looks at not only the five major senses—vision, hearing, taste, smell, and touch—but also a host of other senses, such as balance and interoception, the sense of the body’s internal state.
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You Can’t Taste Soy Sauce with Your Testicles!
- By Jefferson on 03-22-24
By: Ashley Ward
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The Art of More
- How Mathematics Created Civilization
- By: Michael Brooks
- Narrated by: Nick Afka Thomas
- Length: 9 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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In this captivating, sweeping history, Michael Brooks makes clear that mathematics was one of the foundational innovations that catapulted humanity from a nomadic existence to civilization, and that it has been instrumental in every subsequent great leap of humankind: from charting the movements of celestial bodies to navigating the globe to tracking the dissemination of viruses.
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Wow!
- By Cinski446 on 07-12-22
By: Michael Brooks
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Papyrus
- The Invention of Books in the Ancient World
- By: Irene Vallejo, Charlotte Whittle - translator
- Narrated by: Sophie Roberts
- Length: 17 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Long before books were mass-produced, hand-copied scrolls made from Nile River reeds were the treasures of the ancient world. Emperors and pharaohs, determined to possess them, dispatched emissaries to the edges of the known world to bring them back. Exploring the deep and fascinating history of the written word, from the oral tradition to scrolls to codices, internationally bestselling author Irene Vallejo shows that books have always been a precious and precarious vehicle for civilization.
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Great read
- By Hunter Pechin on 12-15-22
By: Irene Vallejo, and others
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Science in the Soul
- Selected Writings of a Passionate Rationalist
- By: Richard Dawkins
- Narrated by: Richard Dawkins, Lalla Ward, Gillian Somerscales
- Length: 14 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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For decades Richard Dawkins has been the world's most brilliant scientific communicator, consistently illuminating the wonders of nature and attacking faulty logic. Science in the Soul brings together 42 essays, polemics, and paeans - culled from personal papers, newspapers, lectures, and online salons - all written with Dawkins' characteristic erudition, remorseless wit, and unjaded awe of the natural world.
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Great writing; distracting reading
- By Chris DeMuth Jr on 08-09-17
By: Richard Dawkins
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Nobody's Normal
- How Culture Created the Stigma of Mental Illness
- By: Roy Richard Grinker
- Narrated by: Lyle Blaker
- Length: 14 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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A compassionate and captivating examination of evolving attitudes toward mental illness throughout history and the fight to end the stigma. For centuries, scientists and society cast moral judgments on anyone deemed mentally ill, confining many to asylums. In Nobody’s Normal, anthropologist Roy Richard Grinker chronicles the progress and setbacks in the struggle against mental-illness stigma - from the 18th century, through America’s major wars, and into today’s high-tech economy.
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Very informative
- By Monisha on 09-26-22
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Reading the Glass
- A Captain's View of Weather, Water, and Life on Ships
- By: Elliot Rappaport
- Narrated by: Greg Tremblay
- Length: 9 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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What’s in a cloud? Did you know that water vapor is invisible and actually lighter than dry air? What separates a tropical storm from a winter blizzard? And what exactly is El Niño? Elliot Rappaport, a professional captain of traditional sailing ships, has spent three decades at sea, where understanding weather is crucial to the safety of vessels and their crews. In Reading the Glass, he offers a sailor’s-eye view of the moving parts of our atmosphere and unveils the larger patterns it holds: global winds, storms, air masses, jet streams, and the longer arc of our climate.
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Weather and Sailing!
- By T. Adams on 01-20-24
By: Elliot Rappaport
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The Big Picture
- On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself
- By: Sean Carroll
- Narrated by: Sean Carroll
- Length: 17 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Already internationally acclaimed for his elegant, lucid writing on the most challenging notions in modern physics, Sean Carroll is emerging as one of the greatest humanist thinkers of his generation as he brings his extraordinary intellect to bear not only on the Higgs boson and extra dimensions but now also on our deepest personal questions. Where are we? Who are we? Are our emotions, our beliefs, and our hopes and dreams ultimately meaningless out there in the void?
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ABSOLUTE MUST READ!
- By serine on 05-12-16
By: Sean Carroll
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Water
- A Biography
- By: Giulio Boccaletti
- Narrated by: Giulio Boccaletti
- Length: 14 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Spanning millennia and continents, here is a stunningly revealing history of how the distribution of water has shaped human civilization. Giulio Boccaletti - honorary research associate at the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, University of Oxford - shrewdly combines environmental and social history, beginning with the earliest civilizations of sedentary farmers on the banks of the Nile, the Tigris, and the Euphrates Rivers.
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Understand Built-Environment Governance~Know Water
- By Tom on 05-11-22
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The Manuscripts Club
- The People Behind a Thousand Years of Medieval Manuscripts
- By: Christopher de Hamel
- Narrated by: John Lee, Christopher de Hamel
- Length: 17 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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The illuminated manuscripts of the Middle Ages are among the greatest works of European art and literature. We are dazzled by them and recognize their crucial role in the transmission of knowledge. However, we generally think much less about the countless men and women who made, collected and preserved them through the centuries, and to whom they owe their existence. This entrancing book describes some of the extraordinary people who have spent their lives among illuminated manuscripts over the last thousand years.
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Manuscripts Through the Centuries
- By Tbaley on 12-02-23
Eye-opening wake up call for a moderate conservative!
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absolutley lovely
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everyone should read this
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Very Informative!
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A Call For Unity
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A Singular Achievement!
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This is a deep and insightful Book
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It’s such a big and comprehensive synthesis of all the areas of academic and civilizational areas of knowledge, I even doubt my ability to be really correct in summarizing the author’s positions. So I’m listening twice. But it is interesting, insightful, and well developed.
The philosophy of science, and why we should view culture and behavior with its method
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Wilson is a polymath and a modern Renaissance man. I can't imagine how much time he spent acquiring his comprehensive knowledge, which spans a wide gamut of very relevant history, literature, arts, ethics, psychology, and the domains of anthropology, all from a grounded and rigorous devotion to science, within a reduction-reintegration framework of synthesis. I cannot imagine that this book didn't make a few waves in the humanities and social sciences. If I have a critique, it's that Wilson was catering to too many audiences simultaneously, and felt compelled to explain perspectives behind known bodies of scientific theory. He was at his best, however, when building freely off of such frameworks, arguing compellingly and eloquently in a tour de force that will be quoted by generations of scientists to come. The very end of the book leaves a lasting impact.
A legendary ecologist, via a commanding narrator
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Surprisingly useful for 20 year old book
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