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Consilience
Definitions
- 1 The concurrence of multiple inductions drawn from different data sets. countable, uncountable
"Indeed in all cases in which from propositions of considerable generality, propositions of a still higher degree are obtained, there is a convergence of inductions; and if in one of the lines which thus converge, the steps be rapidly and suddenly made in order to meet the other line, we may consider that we have an example of Consilience."
- 2 The agreement, co-operation, or overlap of academic disciplines. countable, uncountable
"The common pursuit of Truth is of itself a brotherhood. [...] Surely, were each of us to give utterance to all he feels, we should hear the Chemist, the Astronomer, the Physiologist, the Electrician, the Botanist, the Geologist, all with one accord, and each in the language of his own science, declaring not only the wonderful works of God disclosed in it, but the delight which their disclosure affords him, and the privilege he feels it to be to have aided in it. This is indeed a magnificent induction—a consilience there is no refusing."
Etymology
From Latin con- (prefix indicating a being or bringing together of several objects) + saliō (“to bound, jump, leap”) (modelled after resiliēns (“rebounding”)) + -ence, influenced by concurrent. Coined by English polymath William Whewell in 1840 in his book The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences.
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