Jumping Together: Consilience as the Engine of Asymmetric Learning
I’ve been back on an etymology hack, after my post on what the word ‘patient’ means, did so well…
A funny thing happened on the way to writing this post. I’d been chasing a dimly-remembered phrase - “jumping together” - that I was sure came from my university-days hero Stephen Jay Gould, tied somehow to evolution and punctuated equilibrium.
Turns out, my brain (still broken, post-cardiac arrest) had misfiled it, but the hunt led me straight to the word I couldn’t remember, something more elegant: consilience.
Consilience literally means “jumping together” (from the Latin com- “together” and -siliens “jumping,” as in resilience). It was coined by William Whewell in the 19th century to describe how independent lines of evidence from different fields leap together to support a single, robust theory.
Stephen Jay Gould loved the term - he revived it often, praising how Darwin’s theory of evolution achieved consilience by uniting geology, paleontology, biogeography, embryology, and systematics into one coherent explanation.
Back in April 2024, I wrote here about how “no-one knows anything… or, everything,” quoting Atul Gawande on the impossibility of any single person holding all the knowledge needed for complex decisions. In pharma, that’s our daily reality: clinical, regulatory, commercial, access, manufacturing - each function holds partial truths, but the full picture only emerges when those truths collide.
That collision? That’s consilience in action.
And in drug development, where uncertainty is the only certainty, deliberately engineering those collisions is how you create asymmetric learning - learning faster, deeper, and differently than your competitors.
Consilience in Pharma: From Philosophy to Competitive Edge
Traditional development is often symmetric: everyone gathers similar data in similar silos, advances at roughly the same pace, and hopes their prediction paradigm holds up. Late surprises - regulatory pushback, payer resistance, unexpected subgroups - are the norm.
Asymmetric learning flips this: you design processes to maximise insight per resource, embracing exploration and parallel paths because outcomes are always asymmetric (most fail, winners win big).
Consilience is the mechanism that powers it.
When diverse evidence and perspectives “jump together” early and repeatedly, you generate integrated insights no single function (or competitor) could reach alone.
Think of:
A cross-functional war-game where clinical data on subgroups meets early payer intelligence, spotting a label optimisation that unlocks billions in value before Phase III design is locked.
Real-world evidence patterns converging with trial findings to reshape post-approval strategy, turning potential threats into differentiated advantages.
Commercial scenarios stress-tested against regulatory realities, revealing hidden risks (or opportunities) years ahead of the pack.
These aren’t happy accidents. They’re engineered consilience - structured moments where disparate knowledge leaps together into superior understanding.
How to Engineer Consilience (and Asymmetric Advantage)
Create deliberate collision points
Build “consilience workshops” at key gates: not the usual slide-deck marathons, but facilitated sessions where contradictory evidence is welcomed, not smoothed over.Neutral facilitation
Prevent the loudest voice (or biggest function) from dominating. The magic happens in the tension between perspectives.Prioritise divergent evidence
True consilience strengthens when apparently conflicting facts jump together. Seek out the outliers—they often hold the asymmetric insights.Measure indirectly
Track speed of insight generation, reduction in late-stage surprises, and ability to pivot with richer hypotheses. The payoff shows in faster, better decisions.
In an industry still wedded to prediction and linear planning, consilience isn’t just elegant 19th-century philosophy. It’s a practical tool for turning uncertainty into unfair advantage.
No-one knows anything… until everything jumps together.
(If this resonated, do share it with someone who needs a reminder that interdisciplinary collision beats isolated brilliance every time. I’m aware that I answer fewer questions than I expected when I started writing!)