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 is good to science. . . . Berry is one of the most perceptive critics of American society writing today. There is a smugness about science and its power that irritates Berry to no end.
Irritation is how pearls are formed.
Life Is a Miracle deserves to be read and reread by everyone with a stake in the future of the human community-that is, by everyone. Wendell Berry is a freedom fighter, and his book is a new emancipation proclamation in which he speaks again and again about how to defy the tyranny of scientific materialism. 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.