Life Is a Miracle: An Essay against Modern Superstition »

A thought-provoking and concise rebuttal to E.O. Wilson's Consilience In his best-seller Consilience, E.O. Wilson presented a blueprint for the reconciliation of science with religion and the arts. In a carefully measured response, Wendell Berry demonstrates that Wilson's reconciliation is nothing more than the subjugation of religion and art by science, which alone, according to Wilson, would set the boundaries of discourse among the three disciplines. Berry argues that religion and art are not subject to the reductionist and materialistic assumptions of modern science, and cannot be contained within its boundaries or explained by its explanations. He says the aims of science have become hard to distinguish from those of industry and commerce, and he advocates a new Emancipation Proclamation to free life itself from enslavement by the corporations and their scientific underlings.

The aim, according to Berry, is not consilience among the disciplines, but rather conversation. He concludes his argument by suggesting a number of changes in thought which would enable such a conversation to take place.

Lauren F. Winner

[A] scathing assessment Berry shows that Wilson's much-celebrated, controversial pleas in Consilience to unify all branches of knowledge is nothing more than a fatuous subordination of religion, art, and everything else that is good to science Berry is one of the most perceptive critics of American society writing today.