June 14, 2006, 21:34
shufitz"Consilience"
ConsilienceI'm intrigued by a recent book whose thesis (says a review) is that "an understanding of many disciplines – including physics, psychology, biology and behavioral economics – can shed light on the moement of stock prices … [and] make the reader a better investor – and, even more broadly, a better thinker and decision-maker."
The book-author calls this broad-view approach "
consilient" investing. He explains,
I adapted the [word] from biologist Edward O. Wilson's celebrated book, Consilience, because no other word describes the idea as well. Consilience literally means the "jumping together" of knowledge. Wilson argues that we can unify knowledge across diverse disciplines – physics, biology, economics, and the arts, for instance – at a fundamental level. Indeed, you have to think across disciplines to deepen your understanding of how things work.
– Michael J. Mauboussin, More Than You Know: Finding Financial Wisdom in Unconventional Places, p. 2
Quinion has an excellent discussion of the word, and I suspect we may have interesting stories of how the concept has come up in our experiences.
June 15, 2006, 07:01
dalehilemanThen consilience is something like synergy
June 15, 2006, 19:38
<Asa Lovejoy>Somewhere in this mess I've got a copy of this:
http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-034911112x-0June 15, 2006, 21:27
KallehWhat a wonderful word! It fits so nicely with nursing, too, because we have borrowed from sociology, psychology, anthropology, medicine, pharmacology, biology, etc. I haven't seen the word used, but I think it would be perfect to use with nursing education or when discussing the history of science.