Darwin's Bridge: Uniting the Humanities and Sciences - Hardcover

by Joseph Carroll (Editor), Dan P. McAdams (Editor), Edward O. Wilson (Editor)

In its modern usage, the term "consilience" was first established by Edward O. Wilson in his 1998 book, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge. Wilson's original thesis contained two parts: that nature forms a unitary order of causal forces, hierarchically organized, and that scientific knowledge, because it delineates nature, also forms a unitary order, promising consensus among diverse fields.

Bringing together cutting-edge scientists and scholars across this range, Darwin's Bridge gives an expert account of consilience and makes it possible to see how far we have come toward unifying knowledge about the human species, what major issues are still in contention, and which areas of research are likely to produce further progress. Readers will be delighted as they, along with the work's contributing authors, explore the deeper meaning of consilience and consider the harmony of human evolution, human nature, social dynamics, art, and narrative.

Author Biography

Joseph Carroll is Curators' Professor of English at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. His books include Evolution and Literary Theory, Literary Darwinism, Reading Human Nature, and (co-authored) Graphing Jane Austen. He produced an edition of Darwin's Origin of Species. He is the leading figure in the movement known as "literary Darwinism," that is, the effort to integrate evolutionary social science and literary scholarship.

Dan P. McAdams is the Henry Wade Rogers Professor of Psychology and Chair of the Psychology Department at Northwestern University. His research focuses on personality development across the human life course. Most recently, he is the author of The Redemptive Self: Stories Americans Live By and George W. Bush and the Redemptive Dream: A Psychological Portrait.

Edward O. Wilson is Curator in Entomology and University Research Professor Emeritus at Harvard University. He has received more than 100 awards for his research and writing, including the U.S. National Medal of Science, the Crafoord Prize and two Pulitzer Prizes in non-fiction. He is considered one of the world's foremost biologists and naturalists today.