Wilson starts by presenting his basic argument of consilience. He intends to connect all things together, reconciling different fields of study with one another. Adhering to the ancient idea that the universe is governed by order, he believes that there are a few natural laws which can inherently explain everything about the world in which we live. He goes on to support this theory by appealing to science, art, religion, ethics, and history.
To begin with, the Enlightenment period was characterized by a renewed commitment to order. The artists and scientists of this era believed that rationality could explain everything if pursued faithfully and persistently, but they did not possess the scientific knowledge to take their ideas too far. Wilson argues that today scientists and the world's great thinkers must concern themselves with fulfilling this Enlightenment vision by connecting all fields of thought. He does not think that a law discovered in the field of physics for example should be considered credible if that same law is inconsistent in the field of biology. He is looking for unifying laws which apply throughout every field and every mode of thought.
Lastly, Wilson devotes some words to ethics. He considers ethics the most basic system in nature which must be understood and applied to all other fields. To Wilson the scientific community is guilty of neglecting ethics in pursuit of information. In keeping with his earlier claims, Wilson insists that in order for something to be true it must be universally true, so a scientific claim must be in keeping with a particular ethic or else something is wrong. Either the claim or the ethic must be wrong if they do not agree. This idea extends even to the practices of scientists, artists, and thinkers within their work. They must apply the present understanding of ethics to all of their pursuits in order for their work to be meaningful and accurate.
