---
slug: consilience
name: Consilience
one_liner: "A claim's credibility rises when methodologically independent lines of evidence converge on it, because sources whose errors are uncorrelated are unlikely to agree by shared mistake."
type: prime
schema_version: 2
status: density_v2_draft
categories: [epistemic, structural]
origin_domain: philosophy_of_science
alternate_origin_domains: [forensics, robotics, statistics]
aliases: [convergence_of_independent_evidence, independent_error_agreement, jumping_together, evidential_triangulation]
related: []
solution_archetypes: []
review_flags:
- "OPERATOR-DERIVED (op-05 generalization) — the proposed GENUS of `triangulation` (lift: strip the methods-research frame, keeping the bare principle that agreement among sources with uncorrelated errors raises credibility). Discovered in the op-05 framed-stratum sweep 2026-07-03. Tier A-strong candidate: no existing slug found; established name (Whewell / E.O. Wilson). STATUS: HOLD pending owner keep/cut."
- "Created 2026-07-03; STUB ONLY (frontmatter + Core Idea + Notes). SI/SF/similarity are PROPOSER ESTIMATES pending triangulation. Body sections (Structural Signature onward) NOT written."
- "Phase-C action: re-similarity-check vs `triangulation` and the named nearest primes; confirm it is a genuine genus (covers the input AND the named siblings) and not a domain instance or a restatement of the input; draw a subsumption edge input→candidate + sibling edges at incorporation; sync one_liner to a v1 draft per CLAUDE.md before merge."
substrate_independence:
  composite_substrate_independence: 4
  domain_breadth: 4
  structural_abstraction: 4
  transfer_evidence: 4
  reasoning: 'The bare structure — when several sources whose errors are probabilistically independent all point to the same conclusion, the conjunction is far less likely to be a shared artifact, so the conclusion inherits a credibility boost that no single source could provide — is a clean probabilistic/epistemic relation. It is realized identically in redundant sensor fusion (robotics), independent replication across labs (science), multiple-witness corroboration (forensics), and statistical evidence-combination. The load-bearing quantity, error-independence, is medium-neutral: it is a property of how sources relate, not of any particular subject matter. Structural abstraction and domain breadth are high and transfer is well-attested across at least four unlike substrates; a generalization lift should score above its framed methods-research input `triangulation`.'
similarity_to_nearest_existing_prime:
  slug: triangulation
  similarity: 0.72
structural_framed:
  label: structural
  aggregate: 0.30
  criteria: {vocab_travels: 0.2, evaluative_weight: 0.3, institutional_origin: 0.4, human_practice_bound: 0.3, import_vs_recognize: 0.3}
  rationale: 'Once the methods-research frame is stripped, the core is a probabilistic principle about independent error, which travels freely across engineering, science, and law and carries little evaluative content. It has a named institutional origin (Whewell''s "consilience of inductions," revived by E.O. Wilson) which nudges institutional_origin up, but it is recognized as a bare structure — the independence-of-errors skeleton — far more than it is imported as a doctrine. It reads clearly structural.'
phase_b_passes_completed: []
---
# Consilience

## Core Idea

Consilience is the epistemic structure in which *a claim's credibility is raised by the convergence of methodologically independent lines of evidence upon it.* The genus is reached from the input `triangulation` by stripping the one constraint that ties that prime to a frame — the methods-research setting where "triangulation" names a deliberate practice a researcher performs across data streams and viewpoints. What remains once that frame is lifted is a bare probabilistic principle: when sources whose errors are unlikely to be correlated all point at the same answer, the agreement is hard to explain as a shared mistake, so the answer inherits credibility that no single source could supply.

The load-bearing anatomy has three parts. First, *multiple sources* — two or more channels of evidence bearing on the same claim. Second, *error-independence* — the crucial and fragile requirement that the sources' failure modes are probabilistically uncorrelated, so that whatever could fool one is unlikely to fool the others in the same direction. Third, the *convergence-as-lift inference*: agreement among independent sources is diagnostic precisely because the joint probability of a shared error is low, so concordance multiplies confidence while, symmetrically, *divergence* among sources believed independent flags that one of them is biased or that the independence assumption has failed. The characteristic payoff is robust confidence assembled from individually-fallible parts — no single line need be decisive. The characteristic cost/failure is the hidden common cause: if the sources are not actually independent (they share a method, an assumption, an upstream data feed, or a cultural prior), their agreement is worthless or worse, manufacturing false confidence — the whole structure lives or dies on the independence claim, which is easy to assert and hard to verify.

Read structurally rather than as a research protocol, the same move recurs across unlike substrates. In *robotics* it is redundant sensor fusion — a lidar, a camera, and an IMU with independent failure modes agreeing on an obstacle is trusted where any one alone might be a glitch. In *forensic investigation* it is multiple-witness corroboration — independent witnesses converging on the same account is compelling exactly because collusion (shared error) would be required to fake it. In *science* it is independent replication across labs using different apparatus — the same result reached by different roads is the strongest form of confirmation. These are not the same procedure; they share the skeleton — independent-error sources whose convergence multiplies credibility, whose divergence exposes bias.

## Notes

**Provenance.** Produced by operator 05 (generalization / lift) as the proposed genus of `triangulation`, lifting away the methods-research frame to leave the bare independent-error-convergence principle. Surfaced in the op-05 framed-stratum sweep on 2026-07-03; no existing slug was found. The name is established (William Whewell's "consilience of inductions," revived by E.O. Wilson). It claimed the siblings *redundant sensor fusion* (robotics), *multiple-witness corroboration* (forensics), and *independent replication across labs* (science). Manifest tier: A-strong.

**For owner evaluation (keep/cut).** The case FOR is strong: this is a named, load-bearing epistemic principle with a real intellectual lineage, it is de-framed and structural once lifted, and the three named siblings are genuinely unlike realizations across engineering, law, and science — the signature of a real generalization rather than a restatement of the input. The corpus has the methods-research species (`triangulation`) but not the genus. The RISKS to weigh: (1) **collapse into `triangulation`** — the two are close (similarity ~0.72); Kurt must confirm the candidate genuinely subsumes the input (covers sensor fusion and replication, which are not "triangulation" in the methods sense) rather than paraphrasing it. If it reads as merely "triangulation, told abstractly," cut and keep the edge as a rename note. (2) **Naming** — "consilience" in Whewell's original sense is specifically about a hypothesis explaining classes of facts it was not designed for, which is a slightly different (explanatory-unification) emphasis than the independent-error-agreement reading here; Kurt should decide whether the prime is the *independent-error* principle (as framed) or the broader *convergence/unification* one, and name accordingly. (3) **Alias overlap** — check against any existing evidence-combination, replication, or redundancy prime. It is A-strong, not a coinage, so keep-rate expectation is high. Sharp keep/cut question: is *consilience* the correct genus label for the independent-error principle, and does it clear `triangulation` as a genuine parent rather than a synonym?

**At incorporation.** Re-run similarity against `triangulation` first (confirm subsumption, not paraphrase) and against any redundancy, replication, or evidence-aggregation prime. Draw a subsumption edge `triangulation` → `consilience` and sibling edges to the sensor-fusion, corroboration, and replication instances as drafted. If a broader "robustness from redundancy" or "evidence combination" genus exists, flag the missing edge upward. Write a v1 draft and sync the one_liner across v1 and v2 per CLAUDE.md before merge.
