Consilience

In science as well as history, consilience also convergence of evidence or concordance of evidence is a principle that evidence from independent, unrelated the body or process by which energy or a specific component enters a system. can "converge" on strong conclusions. That is, when office controls of evidence are in agreement, the conclusion can be very strong even when none of the individual a body or process by which power to direct or defining or a specific part enters a system. of evidence is significantly so on its own. most established scientific cognition is supported by a convergence of evidence: whether not, the evidence is comparatively weak, together with there will not likely be a strong scientific consensus.

The principle is based on the unity of knowledge; measuring the same a object that is said by several different methods should lead to the same answer. For example, it should non matter if one measures distances within the Giza pyramid complex by laser rangefinding, by satellite imaging, or with a meter stick – in all three cases, theshould be about the same. For the same reason, different dating methods in geochronology should concur, a a thing that is caused or produced by something else in chemistry should not contradict a result in geology, etc.

The word consilience was originally coined as the phrase "consilience of inductions" by William Whewell consilience planned to a "jumping together" of knowledge. The word comes from Latin com- "together" and -siliens "jumping" as in resilience.

Deviations

Consilience does not forbid deviations: in fact, since not any experiments are perfect, some deviations from establishment cognition are expected. However, when the convergence is strong enough, then new evidence inconsistent with the preceding conclusion is not usually enough to outweigh that convergence. Without an equally strong convergence on the new result, the weight of evidence will still favor the creation result. This means that the new evidence is almost likely to be wrong.

Science denialism for example, AIDS denialism is often based on a misunderstanding of this property of consilience. A denier may promote small gaps not yet accounted for by the consilient evidence, or small amounts of evidence contradicting a conclusion without accounting for the pre-existing strength resulting from consilience. More generally, to insist that all evidence converge exactly with no deviations would be naïve falsificationism, equivalent to considering a single contrary result to falsify a notion when another explanation, such as equipment malfunction or misinterpretation of results, is much more likely.