Tutorial Answer 8

(b) is correct because, by Whewell's definition, consilience refers to the gathering of different forms of evidence (observation or experiment, from two or more separate fields) that all converge, or can be grouped under, a single explanatory model. (a) is not correct because it is too vague to say anything specific about consilience. (c) is not untrue per se, but it does not distinguish consilience from many other forms of reasoning such as deduction. And of course (d) cannot be correct if one or more of the other answers is not correct.