Ministry of Education made a public announcement of which the detail was about: since 2018 education of Korea will be changed totally. The current education system is to form two distinguish fields of study, the humanities and natural sciences. But from CSAT test for 2021, there will be no more of classifying the test itself. According to the authorities, as of 21st century on global society, people with liberal knowledge will take the higher bid in the market. So for scientists and social experts, liberal education is necessary. “It's in Apple's DNA that technology alone is not enough. That it is technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the result that makes our hearts sing.” This is the part of a speech what Steve Jobs made on the presentation for the release of brand new ‘iPhone.’ After the quote, it triggered a huge impact on both press and the academy. And so did the importance of liberal arts got spotlight. But there are some problems. Participants in grounding sciences are worried about that it might affect to decrease in both level and quantity of education. By studying both sociology and science, it is expected that the deepness of learning will become much shallower. Indeed, the controversy proceeds but there was already a scholar who mentioned about unification within different subjects.

 

Edward Osborne Wilson (born in June 10, 1929) is an American biologist, researcher, theorist, naturalist, and author. His biological specialty is myrmecology, the study of ants, on which he is considered to be the world's leading authority. Wilson is known for his scientific career, his role as ‘the father of sociobiology.’ Wilson is currently the emeritus in Entomology for the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University, a humanist laureate of the International Academy of Humanism, and a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for General Non- Fiction.

 

Consilience, described on the Oxford dictionary, is an agreement between the approaches to a topic of different academic subjects. In his 1998 book Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge, Wilson discusses methods that have been used to unite the sciences, and might be able to unite the sciences with the humanities. Wilson prefers and uses the term ‘consilience’ to describe the synthesis of knowledge from different specialized fields of human endeavor. Wilson’s disciple as well as his colleague, professor Jae-Cheon Choi recalls how Wilson himself tried hard to accomplish the task of building another perspective of academics. The concept was firstly used by 19th century natural philosopher William Whewell, in his book The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences. Probably the word comes from consilierean ancient Latin for ‘to leap’ which was further explained by William as ‘jumping together.’ Wilson, at the beginning, thought about the title as ‘coherence.’ But it later transpired that the reason of his choice among rarely distinctive candidates was as the word has been used just as if ‘black swan,’ it is able to uphold its original meaning. Consilience is a jumping together of knowledge by the interlinking of scientific objectivity and fact-based theoretical intuition of the humanities across disciplines to create a common groundwork of explanation.

 

He argues that concepts such as human mind can be studied by scientific methods of the natural sciences. Previously, these phenomena were only part of psychological, sociological, or anthropological field of studies. Wilson proposes that these are part of interdisciplinary research. And they were. For instance, the ‘New Synthesis,’ unification of Darwin's theory of evolution with genetics and Gerald Holton's ‘Ionian Enchantment,’ the conviction that the world has a unified order and can be explained by natural laws can be apparent explanations of showing the strength of evidence, in when independent methods with measurements led to consensus, from different areas of research can prove studying one real existing universe in multifield of inquiry, has often helped in understanding it.

 

The unity in two or more different fields has its roots in the ancient concept of orderliness that once governs our cosmos, a vision at odds with mystery in many cultures that surrounded. As a good example, Aristoteles was a philosopher, scientist, and even a politician who jumped over every detail of social sciences. Thus, the rational view was separated from theology during the Renaissance and found its apogee in the Age of Enlightenment which made much easier, yet the depth of knowledge presented to humans was limited, for the emergence of ‘Renaissance Man;’ referring to a person whose expertise expands on significant number of different subject areas. But not just in the Western civilization but also in Korean Peninsula such image of a man existed. Perhaps, scholar Ji-Won Park will be a great model of the phenomenon. As an erudite investigator applying Joseon on practical sciences, he was also a dominant savant in the academy on liberal arts. However, with the rise of the modern sciences, the sense of unity gradually was lost in the fragmentation and specialization of knowledge in the last two centuries.

 

Wilson’s central theme of assertion is that science can provide a firm foundation and a unified basis for ethics, religion, art, and of human society. The foundation wonderfully broaden the studies of academic that encourages scholars to bridge the many gaps that yawn between and within the cultures of science and the arts. Once we reach a scientific understanding of the scientific origins in religion and culture, we shall be able to reconcile our differences and solidify our agreements. Wilson maintains all the sciences, humanities, and arts have a common goal: to give understanding a purpose, to lend us all “a conviction, far deeper than a mere working proposition, that the world is orderly and can be explained by a small number of natural laws.” The time is right, he suggests, for us to understand more fully that quest for knowledge, for “Homo sapiens, the first truly free species, is about to decommission natural selection, the force that made us.... Soon we must look deep within ourselves and decide what we wish to become.”

 

The system of education in Korea, which will face its renovation, should lead future generation to the efficiency of academy. Convergence in knowledge also could lead us to enlightenment in new discovery via cooperative studies. Still, the debate on unity of the humanities and sciences is on track, there be something totally misunderstood. Consilience amongst academic concerns are just about opening the possibility of fluent communication between the fields. Not suppressing any of the educations but seek for affluent jump. An individual who can cover variety of information is much willing to recognize the weakness, the problem, and the innovation. It is not what must be treated in reluctant or contained, rather encouraged in reluctant or contained, rather encouraged.

 

 

By Seung-Kyu Lee (DG reporter)