Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 Temperament and Personality: Trait Structure and Persistence
- 2 Psychobiological Methods
- 3 Extraversion/Sociability
- 4 Neuroticism
- 5 Psychoticism (Psychopathy), Impulsivity, Sensation and/or Novelty Seeking, Conscientiousness
- 6 Aggression-Hostility/Agreeableness
- 7 Consilience
- References
- Author Index
- Subject Index
7 - Consilience
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 Temperament and Personality: Trait Structure and Persistence
- 2 Psychobiological Methods
- 3 Extraversion/Sociability
- 4 Neuroticism
- 5 Psychoticism (Psychopathy), Impulsivity, Sensation and/or Novelty Seeking, Conscientiousness
- 6 Aggression-Hostility/Agreeableness
- 7 Consilience
- References
- Author Index
- Subject Index
Summary
In nature hybrid species are usually sterile, but in science the reverse is often true. Hybrid subjects are often astonishingly fertile, whereas if a scientific discipline remains too pure it usually wilts.
(Crick, 1988, p. 150)Wilson (1998) used the term consilience, defined as that quality of science that combines knowledge across disciplines, to create a common background of explanation. More complex levels of phenomena can be described in terms of simpler phenomena. Personality psychology extends from social phenomena and what we call “personality traits” at the most complex end down to genes and their variations at the simplest level as shown in Figure 7-1. Of course, there is nothing simple about the genome, and we have only the beginning of a science of molecular behavioral genetics. Wilson sees reductionism as the goal of science:
The cutting edge of science is reductionism, the breaking apart of nature into its natural constituents. … It is the search strategy employed to find points of entry into otherwise impenetrably complex systems. Complexity is what interests scientists in the end, not simplicity. Reductionism is the way to understand it. The love of complexity without reductionism makes art; the love of complexity with reductionism makes science. (pp. 58–59).
Personality constitutes a daunting challenge for this kind of reductionism. It can be analyzed in terms of distal to proximal influences along biological and social pathways as shown in Figure 7-1. Both pathways have their origins in evolutionary history.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Psychobiology of Personality , pp. 245 - 274Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2005