The integration of scientific and humanistic disciplines in academic research and teaching ("consilience") is grounded in the concept of the unity of knowledge. Opponents of consilience argue that there is a difference between factual or propositional knowledge (i.e., "objective" knowledge) produced by science and philosophy through theory, empirical data, or logic-based argumentation, and "understanding," defined as "knowledge in the form of realization" (or "knowing what's like to & mldr;"), produced by the humanities and the arts through the subjectivity of individual perception, or lived experience, or cultural or moral relativity. We argue that "understanding" is not a distinct type of knowledge, but simply perspective-taking. Moreover, both the sciences and the humanities can explore and explain both subjective and objective aspects of self-knowledge (i.e., of what it means to be human). Therefore, we assert that all knowledge is objective knowledge and there is no conceptually valid argument for the separation of science and humanities. Evolutionary psychology has been at the forefront of the consilience movement for 30 years. Moreover, there are many examples of "consilient" explorations of the human mind and human behavior, which blended evolutionary biology, philosophy, and literature, dating back to the publication of Darwin's The Origins of Species (1859). We believe that evolutionary psychology can continue to play a pivotal role in the implementation of the "consilience" agenda and issue a Call for Papers for a Special Issue of Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences on the topic of Consilience.
