Thomas Berry (1914–2009)

About the author: "Thomas Berry was a Catholic priest, cultural historian, and scholar of the world's religions. . ." Ursula Goodenough, professor of biology Emerita at Washington University, said of this work, "Berry is the leading spokesperson for the Earth, and his profound ecological insight illuminates the path we need to take in the realms of ethics, politics, economics, and education if both we and the planet are to survive." This work contains an extensive bibliography and is well-indexed.… (mais)

I have tried so hard to like Thomas Berry.

I give up. I can't do it. Dense, unreadable prose based on the sketchiest types of half-evidence, stitched together with such slender chains of reasoning that a good sneeze could rip it apart. Nice ideas. Lovely philosophy. A wonderful world would result if, indeed, there were any basis for his proposals or if they were implementable by animals with the sorts of brains human beings have. But they're not, and I can't waste one more second of my life believing that there is anything useful to be learned from a book that makes the argument that there were pre-partriarchal women-ruled societies in which the environment was treated well. Mr. Berry, you meant well, and I respect you as an ally; but to all his successors, I beg of you, please sully yourself with some form of actual evidence, and stop confusing "fact" with "someone else's opinion that you found in print."… (mais)