Life Is a Miracle: An Essay Against Modern Superstition (original 2000; edição 2001)

this song, essentially: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGpoEPcmOK4

i appreciate the sentiment and i agree with regards towards corporate influence on the direction of scientific study (a point i wish was a bit more rigorously examined) and the whole could/should aspect. admittedly, he's not a scientist, though...and sometimes seems as if he's passionately swinging at air. he's upset that SCIENCE generalizes/abstracts things away and should instead consider the individual, yet he generalizes all scientific thought on the basis of one book and attacks that conception of SCIENCE (his annoyance at a strawman conceived in said book is not without irony?). he mentions discussions with a scientist friend of his and how they share similar views on the course of SCIENCE in current academia, and in fact this friend has also published a book in a similar vein to this one which I feel might prove more fruitful in its criticisms on the basis of its writer's greater expertise.

then again, the problem of SCIENCE itself is a bit of a red herring in this book as he's mostly pining for old days of hearth and homestead. he's more disturbed by things in general moving forward, quickly without caution, then SCIENCE in general and chastises certain forms of art for following that trend of experimentation derived from SCIENCE. and he advises a more active role of spirituality (in his case, mostly CHRISTIAN belief) in people's lives. the universe is a stage production and he doesn't wanna look behind the curtains, instead enjoy the show.

i liked the references to literature, especially King Lear, used throughout. Evocative, for sure.

well, it sounds like i am trying to dismantle his stance, but i do essentially agree with his important view on academic careerism and science of the sake of profit and the environment getting screwed over, but it seems he was mostly rallying against the harmful effects of CAPITALISM over SCIENCE. ( )

Excerpts from my original GR review (Apr 2012):
- My straight takeaway from reading Berry's series of connected essays is this: The whole of our existence, including one's experiences, memories, religious or spiritual faith, local cultures and practices, personal connection to the natural world, et al, cannot collectively be subjugated to scientific absolutes. This subjugation is known as reductionism, and this is the principle espoused by respected biologist/theorist E.O. Wilson in his 1998 book "Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge".
- This was my first entry into the works of Wendell Berry. I certainly now understand his acclaim as a 'man of letters'. I don't pretend to grasp every nuance of his intellectual rebuttal of Wilson's work, but I do see his broad point about the incorporation (using my term) of our society, where multinational behemoths, governments and science are in a cozy alliance that runs roughshod over the everyman in pursuit of profit and power.
- Berry is an environmentalist in the purest form, and it didn't at all surprise me to come across a glowing review of this book by Bill McKibben.. Much on which to muse, slowly. Well worth the read. ( )

One of America's most respected and celebrated writers provides a thought-provoking analysis of, and a concise rebuttal of, E. O. Wilson's Consilience. "[A] scathing assessmentBerry 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 scienceBerry is one of the most perceptive critics of American society writing today. "-Lauren F. Winner, Washington Post Book World"I am tempted to say he understands [Consilience] better than Wilson himselfA new emancipation proclamation in which he speaks again and again about how to defy the tyranny of scientific materialism. "-Colin C. Campbell, Christian Science Monitor"Berry takes a wrecking ball to E. O. Wilson's Consilience, reducing its smug assumptions regarding the fusion of science, art, and religion to so much rubble. "-Kirkus ReviewsIn Life Is a Miracle, the devotion of science to the quantitative and reductionist world is measured against the mysterious, qualitative suggestions of religion and art. Berry sees life as the collision of these separate forces, but without all three in the mix we are left at sea in the world.

Wilson, Edward Osborne, 1929- Consilience/Philosophy and science/Philosophy

In this book Berry takes on the scientific establishment in its reductionist view of life. For Berry, life as a miracle means that there are some thing that cannot be put under a microscope and studied--nor should they be. Anyone reading The Selfish Gene owes it to themselves to be at least familiar with the arguments Berry makes here. Par fo the course, Berry tweaks the establishment in its funny bone, but also some other, more vulnerable places. ( )