The Search for a Meta-Narrative

Biologist Edward O. Wilson’s book Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge, written in 1998, provides the background to this episode, which considers the differences between the Arts and Humanities, Social Sciences, and the Hard Sciences, and whether they can all be seen as connected. We discuss how much of human behaviour can be explained by culture versus biology. In categorical terms, social constructionism emphasizes culture and scientific realism emphasizes biology. The “Search for a Meta-Narrative” occurs in the hard sciences, with the ideal goal of an ultimate physical theory that explains all phenomena in the universe; in the humanities it may be a full historical account of the origin, migration, and evolution of all cultures (including languages, worldviews, symbols, myths, religions, etc.), and in the social sciences it may be a complete model of human nature and how societies form, persist, and disintegrate. A Consilient view would be what falls under the humanities and social sciences are subcategories of the ultimate physical theory. We also discuss possible abuses of scientific knowledge which could occur under scenarios such as genetic engineering, as well as how social constructionist arguments provide their own meta-narrative, a religious story which interprets all of human history and culture as a series of oppressions, and which thus justifies taking over all institutions and fields of culture in order to “correct” humanity. Similar to the first two episodes, this episode is based on a conversation Dustin and Ryan had on June 19th, 2020.