Disciplinary unification of the Natural Sciences, the Humanities, and the Social Sciences: Adapted minds and strategic approaches to consiliences

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to consolidate and extend the arguments we made at the EvoS symposium on Oct. 26, 2012. Most fundamentally, we argue that we are entering an exciting and potentially productive era in the history of the human knowledge enterprise. We are at the inception of a "unification revolution" in which all the areas of our understanding (the natural sciences, the social sciences and the humanities) have the potential to be joined in a single coherent endeavor through shared insights and practices. Earlier, more local cases of such disciplinary unification produced spectacular advances (the unification of quantum mechanics and classical chemistry to produce modern chemistry and the subsequent unification of these with biology to produce the molecular revolution, for example). Thus, we can expect even more dramatic advances from the unification of all disciplines, including insights that can serve global human welfare in very specific and powerful ways. We argue that evolutionary psychology has an important contribution to make to this unfolding knowledge revolution. From this vantage, we outline what we believe the crucial challenges are and the institutional and social responses we can make to facilitate this vital unification.