Consilience

In Consilience (Abacus, 1998) E. O. Wilson, author of Sociobiology, writes that "The greatest enterprise of the mind has always been and always will be the attempted linkage of the sciences and humanities." "Consilience" itself he describes as the "'jumping together' of knowledge by the linking of facts and fact-based theory across disciplines to create a common groundwork of explanation." Wilson believes that science can be extended into the not-yet-sciences of the humanities - ethics, economics, psychology.

In this at least I agree. Idle Theory is itself an example of consilience. Idle Theory is a simple physical model of life which expands into a variant theory of evolution by natural selection, and which extends into human ethics, economics, politics, and religion. It is a systematic way of seeing, that provides a common groundwork of explanation.

But the consilience that Wilson attempts is of a quite different nature to Idle Theory. As Wilson sees life, it is genetically defined. In his view, genes construct not only proteins, but also cells, organs, and entire living creatures, including in the human case a set of moral sentiments. We are ultimately defined by our genes in everything we do. If we are to understand human psychology, and hence human ethics, politics, and economics, it will be by working up, molecule by molecule, from DNA to synapses, and from synapses to stock markets.

It certainly seems entirely plausible that a great deal of human psychology, particularly in respect of sex, violence, fear, jealousy, and similar non-rational "gut" feelings, will be shown to be "hard-wired" in the human brain, and probably shared by a great majority of non-human sentient life. But it seems too much to ask that there are genetic reasons why people in Spain speak Spanish, or people in England drive on the left hand side of the road, and countless other examples.

But behind Wilson's scheme there is the unstated belief that human psychology determines human life, that the human world is whatever humans choose it to be. And of course, if this is so, then if we are to understand human culture, then we must understand human psychology. And if we are to understand human psychology, then we must understand the physical processes which underpin value systems, decision processes, and so forth.

This unstated belief can also be described as a belief in a fundamental human freedom to choose to do more or less whatever they like, and that human culture in all its variety was and is the product of free choice. Thus if the Romans built roads and aqueducts and cities, and established an empire that for centuries encompassed the entire Mediterranean sea, it was because they chose to do this, rather than choosing to, say, breed racing pigeons and sunbathe. Or if people trade goods, it is because of a certain inclination to do so, rather than steal. Or if they make war, it is because they are warlike. For Wilson, these behavioural traits have a genetic origin.

But such a belief in the ubiquity of human freedom is not confined to Wilson. Rather it is the common currency of the age. It is the belief that the world is whatever humans choose to make it. That if we are sufficiently determined and organized, we can do anything. This is the credo that has funded almost every political movement that has foundered over the past few centuries.

This is not a belief that underpins Idle Theory. Idle Theory instead starts from the opposite assumption - that human life, and indeed all life, is not so free, but that the exercise of human freedom is forever being thwarted by circumstance, and that we are at best part-time free agents. The characteristic image of human life in Idle Theory is not of free agents choosing to do this or that, but of human life as blood, toil, tears, and sweat; human life as a struggle for existence not different from the struggle for existence of all life through every age; human life which hopes and yearns even now for a future perfect freedom which Wilson (and our economic and moral philosophers) seems to think has already been achieved.

Idle Theory is dominated not by a vision of choice and freedom, but of necessity and constraint. It is the hard life of a neolithic hunter-gatherer, who wakes every morning to begin to search for food, and who continues to do so all day, not only to meet his immediate needs, but to store up enough to see himself through the impending barren winter. Such an individual is not doing whatever he likes, but is doing what he must do if he is to survive. His choice, such as it is, is restricted to choosing whether to look for grasshoppers and snails in this meadow, or frogs and mushrooms in the next. He cannot forego food gathering in order to otherwise amuse himself as he pleases, except on pain of death by starvation. His circumstance is not different from that of a man with a gun held to his head, and told "Do this, or else!" In such circumstances, since he can exercize so little choice, his psychology - genetically determined or not - is quite unimportant, because he isn't doing what he wants/chooses anyway.

Thus the difference between Wilson's outlook and that of Idle Theory does not lie in his admirable idea of Consilience, but in a radically different assumption about the fundamental nature of human life. For Wilson, and many more, human choice is primary, and human life is seen as the exercise of choice, and if we are to understand human nature we must understand how we make choices. For Idle Theory, human choice is secondary, because humans have had little opportunity to exercise free choice while constrained by necessity, and consequently studying how people choose is a largely futile exercise.

Yet while Idle Theory typically regards all life as constrained by necessity, it also allows a wide latitude in this constraint. Life may be at one extreme almost entirely constrained by necessity - the hunter-gatherer spends all day searching for grubs and seeds -, or almost entirely unconstrained - sweet succulent fruit grow everywhere in profusion, and the day's need can be met within minutes, and the remainder of the day can be given over to the free exercise of impulsive choice. In this sense, Idle Theory incorporates the circumstance of complete freedom as an extreme (and unlikely) condition.

In many ways, science - physics - has always dealt with necessity rather than choice. The planets in the solar system, are not regarded as free agents, but instead as entirely determined, unfree, and necessitated. If planets could wander wherever they chose, there would be no laws of inertia or gravity. And yet within this proscribed universe, humanity is somehow regarded as some sort of unique refuge from such compulsion, to be in some sense exempt from the implacable laws which govern all else, and to be the exception that proves the rule. And indeed much of the threat of science is seen to be that it will take away human freedom, and reduce us to so many robots, and all our actions entirely determined. In denying human freedom, or more exactly, the completeness of human freedom, Idle Theory does indeed set out to take away an illusion of freedom.

Equally, and perhaps worse, Idle Theory would reintroduce an almost Old Testament biblical understanding of humanity as suspended between a Heaven of repose and a Hell of endless toil, and liable to complete extinction if it doesn't do the right thing - a notion which is deeply uncomfortable to those who believe thar ours is the best of all possible worlds. But perhaps this connection should come as no surprise, because physicists such as Newton and Einstein were religious men ("God does not play dice with the universe": Einstein).

This modern conviction of human freedom is anyway historically recent. It seems (as far as I can discern) to have its origins in the Renaissance during which the human body and human imagination, for so long the subject of religious shame, recovered an honour and stature lost with the fall of classical Greece and Rome. It is perhaps a pity that, while they were about it, they did not rediscover the corresponding Greek and Roman stoicism. Instead, human life became elevated into the most perfect form of life, almost divinity. Perhaps this was an inevitable revolt after a thousand years of hair shirts and penance and Mea Culpas. But it went too far.