Consilience, a term introduced by the English theologian and polymath William Whewell in his 1840 masterwork The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, means the alignment (literally, the "jumping together") of knowledge from different disciplines. Exotic as its origins sound, the idea is neither an abstruse philosophical concept nor a mere plaything of intellectuals. It is the mother's milk of the natural sciences.

Since Whewell's time, physics, chemistry, and biology have been connected by a web of causal explanation organized by induction-based theories that telescope into one another. The entire known universe, from the smallest subatomic particles to the reach of the farthest known galaxies, together spanning more than 40 orders of magnitude (a magnification of one followed by more than 40 zeros), is encompassed by consilient explanation. Thus, quantum theory underlies atomic physics, which is the foundation of reagent chemistry and its specialized offshoot biochemistry, which interlock with molecular biology--essentially, the chemistry of organic macromolecules--and thence, through successively higher levels of organization, cellular, organismic, and evolutionary biology. This sequence of causal explanation proceeds step by step from more general phenomena to the increasingly complex and specific phenomena arising from them. Such is the unifying and highly productive understanding of the world that has evolved in the natural sciences. Its success testifies to a fortunate combination of three circumstances: the surprising orderliness of the universe, the possible intrinsic consilience of all knowledge concerning it, and the ingenuity of the human mind in comprehending both. 

To continue reading this article, please download the PDF.