Consilience, or the Unity of knowledge (literally a "lumping together" of knowledge), was first mentioned in "The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences", by
William Whewell in
1840. In this synthesis Whewell explained that, "The Consilience of Inductions takes place when an Induction, obtained from one class of facts, coincides with an
Induction, obtained from another different class. Thus Consilience is a test of the truth of the Theory in which it occurs." The
Scientific method has become almost universally accepted as the exclusive method for testing the status of any scientific hypothesis or theory. "Inductions" which arise out of applications of the scientific method are, by definition, the only accepted indicators of consilience.
Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge is also the title of a 1998 book by Edward Osborne Wilson.