Life is a Miracle: An Essay Against Modern Superstition PDF
Preview Life is a Miracle: An Essay Against Modern Superstition
LIFE IS A MIRACLE AN ESSAY AGAINST MODERN SUPERSTITION WENDELL BERRY T T X T D T NT Also by Wendell Berry FICTION The Discovery of Kentucky Fidelity Nathan Coulter A Place on Earth Remembering Two More Stories of the Port William Membership Watch With Me The Wild Birds A World Lost Jayber Crow POETRY The Broken Ground Clearing Collected Poems: 1957-1982 The Country of Marriage Entries Farming: A Hand Book Findings Openings A Part Sabbaths Sayings and Doings The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry (1998) A Timbered Choir Traveling at Home (with prose) The Wheel ESSAYS Another Turn of the Crank A Continuous Harmony The Gift of Good Land Harlan Hubbard: Life and Work The Hidden Wound Home Economics Recollected Essays: 1954-1980 Sex, Economy, Freedom and Community Standing by Words The Unforeseen Wilderness The Unsettling of America What Are People For? LIFE IS A MIRACLE AN ESSAY AGAINST MODERN SUPERSTITION WEN D ELL BERRY ' % % IS % H? Wmw % COUNTERPOINT WASHINGTON, D.C. Copyright © 2000 Wendell Berry First Counterpoint paperback edition 2001 All rights reserved under international and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the Publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. The first chapter of this book was previously published in the Temenos Academy Review (#2 Spring 1999) under a different title. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Berry, Wendell, 1934- Life is a miracle : an essay against modern superstition / Wendell Berry, p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 1-58243-141-8 (alk. paper) 1. Wilson, Edward Osborne, 1929- Consilience. 2. Philosophy and science. 3. Philosophy. I. Title. B72 .B47 2000 121—dc21 00-028249 Cover and text design by David Bullen Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper that meets the American National Standards Institute Z39-48 Standard. COUNTERPOINT P.O. Box 65793 Washington, D.C. 20035-5793 Counterpoint is a member of the Perseus Books Group 10 987654321 In memory: Lionel Basney (1946-1999) “We are not getting something for nothing. We are getting nothing for everything.” Contents I. Ignorance 3 II. Propriety 13 hi. On Edward O. Wilson’s Consilience 23 1. Materialism 25 2. Materialism and Mystery 27 3. Imperialism 30 4. Reductionism 38 5. Creatures as Machines 46 6. Originality and the “Two Cultures” 55 7. Progress Without Subtraction 8g iv. Reduction and Religion 93 v. Reduction and Art 105 vi. A Conversation Out of School 121 vii. Toward a Change of Standards 129 viii. Some Notes in Conclusion 143 Thy life’s a miracle. Speak yet again. King Lear, iv, vi, 55 LIFE IS A MIRACLE i. Ignorance The expressed dissatisfaction of some scientists with the dan¬ gerous oversimplifications of commercialized science has encour¬ aged me to hope that this dissatisfaction will run its full course. These scientists, I hope, will not stop with some attempt at a merely theoretical or technical “correction,” but will press on toward a new, or a renewed, propriety in the study and the use of the living world. No such change is foreseeable in the terms of the presently dom¬ inant mechanical explanations of things. Such a change is imagina¬ ble only if we are willing to risk an unfashionable recourse to our cultural tradition. Human hope may always have resided in our ability, in time of need, to return to our cultural landmarks and reorient ourselves. One of the principal landmarks of the course of my own life is 3
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