The Wall Street Journal had this to say about the book: “A dazzling journey across the sciences and humanities in search of deep laws to unite them.” This is a pretty good description of the book. Dr. Wilson’s main professional background was as a biology professor at Harvard, specializing in entomology. Wilson has been called “the father of sociobiology and “the father of biodivesity for his environmental advocacy. His book explores relationship between biology (as it has evolved through the process of natural selection) and theories of the mind, culture, human nature, the Social Sciences, art as well as ethics and religion.

I think his basic point is that we are animals that have evolved over millions of years to be compatible with a particular environment. This evolution has not only directly the obvious, outward characteristics of people such as the shape and placement of our arms and legs, but the way that our brain is constructed and “wired”. However, cellular evolution is a slow process occurring over hundreds of thousands of years. However, the social environment that we current inhabit is only a few thousand years old, meaning that while we have “instincts” built into our genes that have been tailored for fitness in one environment, there is a question concerning their “fitness” and utility in the current social environment. His idea is that in order to work the “best” our laws, morals, art, and all of those “social” things need to have consilience (be in agreement/alignment) with our biological roots. When they are, things work smoothly, when they are not – not so much.

I think this is all very interesting and “sounds correct” to me. However, it has stirred some thoughts in my mind about a need for consilience at a much larger scale than “merely” a match between our society and our biological being. My profession is as a “system safety engineer”. That means that I work as part of a team to develop processes, products and operations in such as way as to be effective, efficient, useful, and safe. everyone on the team is concerned about all of these things, but I focus my attention specifically on “safe.” One of the interesting aspects about “system safety” is that there are very few specific criteria about what that means, it is an open question that hinges around the concept of “safe enough”.

One of the first questions that comes to mind with considering what “safe enough” means, is safe enough for what, or safe enough for whom? For the designer? For the company creating a new widget? For the purchaser? For the user? For the maintenance person? For the general public? For the environment? It is clear that there is no one point of view for deciding if it is “safe enough” – that all depends upon the point of view. In some mysterious way, being safe enough means that it has been judged to have benefits that outweigh the costs. In this sense the “costs” are not just in terms of dollars, or perhaps schedule – it is in terms of everything that we, as humans, consider “costly” including many things that cannot be monetized. Determining whether or not a design is “acceptable” includes considerations of things such as “asthetics”, “view”, “noise”, “smell” “damaged environment” – the list is very long and in many cases include the defining component of the judgement of “safe enough”.

It might be thought that “safety” is only about things that can cut, crush, smash, burn or otherwise cause bodily injury to someone. I disagree with that point of view. I think “safety” includes things that negatively impact people’s “well being” and “mental health”. Perhaps these additional items come under the heading of “comfort” or free from pain/discomfort – including things like the loss of a treasured view. The concern with things like “global warming” and “sea level rise” are clearly in the realm of “safety” even though a design that adds to those kinds of global concerns might not immediately impact the safety of the user.

However you define “safety”, however narrow or broad you cast the net of safety concerns, there is always the same problem of determining what is “safe enough” from the point of view of multiple points of view. I think the idea of “consilience” applies nicely to solving this rather complex problem. I propose that if all of effected players are brought into the decision making process, and if they all know the potential impacts (positive and negative) from their point of view then it is “safe enough” when they all agree that it is so. If it is not “safe enough” for one or more of the points of view, then it is not safe enough. Period. Full stop. There needs to be consilience or it isn’t acceptable, and that will often come back to be shown to be true in all types of ways, not the least are future litigation, loss of market share, disgruntled employees, high accident rates or otherwise.

The point is that not only designs be “consilient” with how people are (human factors), they also have to align with all of the sciences, company needs, financial concerns while accomplishing what it is that was the purpose of the project. System Safety has been defined as the application of engineering and management principles, criteria, and techniques to achieve acceptable risk within the constraints of operational effectiveness and suitability, time, and cost throughout all phases of the system life-cycle. I am of the opinion that this points to a much larger definition that includes not just “engineering” (including environmental engineering) but “science” (including the life sciences), and “cost” in the broad sense that includes all negative impacts.

System safety is the “big” picture view, seeking consilience with the various scientific domains, but also the environment and the needs of humanity (individually as well as globally).