The Origins of Creativity
Edward O. Wilson
Liveright Publishing Corporation (October 2017)

Will this be the third Enlightenment?

In recent years, Anthony Gottlieb wrote two of the books that were for me among those most intellectually stimulating: The Dream of Reason: A History of Western Philosophy from the Greeks to the Renaissance (2000; Second Edition, 2016) and The Dream of Enlightenment: The Rise of Modern Philosophy (2016). In the latter, he explains, “The first [enlightenment] was the Athens of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, from the middle of the fifth century to the late fourth century BC. The second was in northern Europe, in the wake of Europe’s wars of religion and the rise of Galilean science. It stretches from the 1630s to the eve of the French Revolution in the late-eighteenth century. In those relatively few years, Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, Locke, Leibniz, Hume, Rousseau, and Voltaire — most, that is, of the best- known philosophers — made their mark.”

In The Origins of Creativity (2017), Edward Wilson expresses an affirmation I wholly support: “Scientists and scholars in the humanities, working together, will, I believe, serve as the leaders of a new philosophy, one that blends the best and most relevant from these two great branches of learning. Their efforts will be the third Enlightenment. Unlike the first two, this one might well endure. If so, it will bring our species closer to realizing the prayer for reason inscribed by Diogenes and still visible in the original form on the Oinoanda stoa in ancient Greek region of Lycia.”

These are among other passages that caught my eye, also cited to suggest the thrust and flavor of Wilson’s perspectives:

o “The combination [of symbolic language with the emotions of ancient primates], composing what we roughly call the humanities, is why we are both supremely advanced, and supremely dangerous.” (Page 1)

o “The two great branches of learning, science and the humanities, are complementary in our pursuit of creativity. They share the same roots of innovative endeavor. The realm of science is everything possible in the universe; the realm of the humanities is everything conceivable to the human mind.” (4-5)

o “By any measures of liberation and empowerment, language is not just a creation of humanity, it is humanity.” (26)

o “The full meaning of the humanities…will come from a combination of many less vaunted disciplines, of which the most important are what I call the Big Five: paleontology, anthropology, psychology, evolutionary biology, and neurobiology. These fields of research are the friendly ground of science, where the humanities will find full and ready alliances. They will encounter some of the same in astrophysics and planetology also, but chiefly as mega-theaters for the play of human emotion, because they have no way to explain its meaning.” (56 and 57)

o “To summarize, the humanities suffer from the following weaknesses: they are rootless in their explanations of causation and they exist within a bubble of sensory experience.” (67)

o “Science and the humanities share the same origin and brain processes of creativity. They can be drawn closer together and widely joined in substance through a more thorough application of [aforementioned] five disciplines  — paleontology, anthropology, psychology, evolutionary biology, and neurobiology — bound together by the evolutionary process in heredity and culture.” (81)

o “It is impossible to overestimate the importance of group selection to both science and the humanities,  and further, to the foundation of moral and political reasoning. This is a subject we need to get clear and straight.” (100)

o “Each of the four levels [of the human condition] is altered to some extent by emotional centers of the brain. Subject to decision at the checkpoint centers of the subconscious brain, they summon memories that help form future scenarios in the conscious mind. The result of all these processes is what we call ‘thinking.'”  (112)

o “The human equivalent of case determination, with variation generated by a genetic form of dynamic programming, exists in what psychologists call prepared learning. The phenomenon lies at the base of human instinct and what we all perceive as human nature, and which, in turn and expressed creatively, is the governing core of the humanities.” (121)

o “The more closely we examine the properties of metaphors and archetypes, the more it becomes obvious that science and the humanities can be blended. In the borderland of new disciplines created, it should also be possible to reinvigorate philosophy and begin a new, more endurable Enlightenment.” (159)

o “Will there by heroic ages of the intellect in the future? I feel certain there will be, and especially in the new borderland disciplines that combine scientific discovery with the innovations and insights of the humanities. It will come in multiple dimensions.” (193)

By now, scientists and scholars in the humanities could have — and should have — achieved so much more of what adds value to the human race, had they agreed upon more and better ways to communicate, cooperate, and (especially) collaborate within their respective fields of expertise. Presumably those whom Edward Wilson characterizes — in the concluding chapter — as “leaders of a new philosophy” will include world-class knowledge leaders on collaborative initiatives and high-impact innovations aided and enlightened by emerging digital technologies such as AI and IoT.