Rating: 
Summary: It's nor *science* that's the problem...
Review: ... it's the feeling that "science = technology = progress = good" put forth by Wilson that's the problem, according to Berry. He does say what's wrong with this kind of hubris--it leads us to go forward in areas that perhaps we shouldn't go. He's completely right when he says that the study of chemistry and its industrial application has done irreversible damage to the environment, and much "applied science" now goes to try to fix problems caused by earlier applied science. I understand Strickland's points in his review, but I think he's being disingenuous when he says that Berry calls for an end to scientific exploration; he doesn't. What he calls for in this book is an end to scientific exploitation, and he does so eloquently.
Rating:
Summary: And Wonderful!
Review: Berry argues for the primacy of life and the need to understand and accept life's ultimate mysteries. More specifically, he engages in a elocuent polemic with E.O. Wilson's attempt at a "theory of everything" as presented in Wilson's "Consilience". This is the "modern superstition" referred to in Berry's subtitle: that the world is ultimately knowable.
Before entering into debate with "Consilience", Berry sets the context for his essay in a majestual chapter on "Propriety", which he understands as an awareness of our interconnectedness and of the centrality of having consciousness of contexts and environments (biological, social, and cultural). He sums it up this way: "The idea of propriety makes an issue of the fittingness of our conduct to our places or circumstances, evn to our hopes. It acknowledges the always pressing realities of context and of influence; we cannot act speak or act or live out of context." He goes on to point out that when we speak of, for example, "environmental crises" we acknowledge this standard, and thus, we raise, willingly or not, the issue of propriety.
Berry is a fine writer whose prose projects the author's personality wonderfully. I encourage anyone reading this to also read some of Berry's poetry -- outstanding.
I sincerely believe that all HS and college students should read this book as a prologue to their education. It should be read alongside Wilson's "Consilience".
Rating:
Summary: And Wonderful!
Review: Berry argues for the primacy of life and the need to understand and accept life's ultimate mysteries. More specifically, he engages in a elocuent polemic with E.O. Wilson's attempt at a "theory of everything" as presented in Wilson's "Consilience". This is the "modern superstition" referred to in Berry's subtitle: that the world is ultimately knowable.
Before entering into debate with "Consilience", Berry sets the context for his essay in a majestual chapter on "Propriety", which he understands as an awareness of our interconnectedness and of the centrality of having consciousness of contexts and environments (biological, social, and cultural). He sums it up this way: "The idea of propriety makes an issue of the fittingness of our conduct to our places or circumstances, evn to our hopes. It acknowledges the always pressing realities of context and of influence; we cannot act speak or act or live out of context." He goes on to point out that when we speak of, for example, "environmental crises" we acknowledge this standard, and thus, we raise, willingly or not, the issue of propriety.
Berry is a fine writer whose prose projects the author's personality wonderfully. I encourage anyone reading this to also read some of Berry's poetry -- outstanding.
I sincerely believe that all HS and college students should read this book as a prologue to their education. It should be read alongside Wilson's "Consilience".
Rating: 
Summary: discouraged by 'poetic' approach, "eloquence"
Review: I bought this book as someone interested in both science and the humanities. I am a research psychologist, but I have often doubted at points in my career that science is adequate for the job of understanding humans. So, I was potentially sympathetic to this book. That said, however, the tone of the first chapter was so negative, based on unsubstantiated ranting, that I did not find I was interested in continuing on. The author would make direct causal links from an ephemeral thing such as the notion of reductive science to the suicide rate among farmers. In the process, assuming I knew anything about the suicide rate of farmers - I have no idea what the pattern looks like, what it coincides with, and he just doesn't tell you. Shall I just assume that pattern supports his opinion, then? I realize that I am asking the author to take a scientific approach to his somewhat "anti-science" opinion. Perhaps I give myself away as "hopeless" to those that support his opinion there. But the problem is, I wasn't opposed to this opinion - I was receptive to it - but I wanted something solid which I could anchor the negative effects of science on, and an understanding of the proper role, the benefits and place of both science and non-science. I did not feel it was forthcoming from this author. The piece I read, I felt, did not help me towards the goal of understanding what science is good for, what its limits are, and what properly belongs beyond those limits. I think it's an important thing to address, and from the reviews I thought this book would contribute there, but I found it lacking, and a bit off-putting.
Rating:
Summary: Reactionary Review Persuaded me to buy and read
Review: I don't see myself as a reactionary, but after reading "Dr." Strick-Land's extreme review, I had to read the book and see what would cause an "educated" person to sound like a fundamentalist. Let me begin by thanking him. I got the book and I read it (twice) and consider it a powerful and insightful antidote to the "new religious orthodoxy" of Wilson et al. I bought 25 copies and I'm giving them away too as many "High Priests of science" I can find who can and will read material that denies their faith. I recommend this book to anyone with a "mind" who believes that the human being is more than physical matter with chemical reactions and affirms that life is more than owning things and doing stuff!
Rating:
Summary: Half Poetry, Half Anti-Science Screed
Review: I read Consilience a few years ago and was enthralled with the vision of "unified knowledge" that E.O. Wilson outlined. His thesis: that science would unify disparate intellectual disciplines and bring about giant leaps in knowledge and understanding, struck me as prophetic and inspiring. Because I was so taken by Wilson's book, I was thrilled to learn a few months ago that someone had written a rebuttal. I assumed that the rebuttal would spring from the perspective of a spiritualist; someone who shared the view that we are (and should be) marching forward in our understanding of the world around us but wished to reinvigorate the soul along with the mind. Perhaps my expectations were too high because "Life is a Miracle" disappointed me. Berry basically dismisses Wilson's book as the work of an academic elitist who is preaching science to people who know no better. Frustratingly, Berry never really addresses any of the arguments in Consilience. This seems to be because Berry dismisses all rational, evidenced-based inquiry as insufficiently respectful of the grand design God has laid out. It's hard to imagine Wilson responding to Berry's critique because they come from such different perspectives. Wilson wants to explore; he wants to see what is at the end of the universe and within the core of the Earth. The thirst for knowledge energizes Wilson's view of the world and he sees everything as a chance for us to learn and explore. Berry, however, sums up his view of exploration and wonder by recounting a story about an 18th Century biologist who, because of infirmity, cannot travel far beyond the confines of his small farm. This restrained explorer is content to study every blade of grass, every insect, every creature that inhabits the few acres he is confined to. This is Berry's vision of exploration: a few acres of land that is deeply felt for, he says, contains more wonder and magic than all the rest of the world in total. To frame Berry's argument most favorably, he is not anti-exploration; he just believes that the real magic of the universe is more readily available to us in our own backyards than in tinkering with our genetic code or sending rockets to the stars. I realize it is condescending to think of Berry's vision as "quaint" and "cute," but I can't help it. His insistence that we must stop thinking of the world as a predictable, mechanical process to be dissected and analyzed is inspiring as poetry for the end of the day but it constrains the very intellect it pretends to engage. What's worse, Berry dismisses much of the advances in medicine and technology the rest of us take for granted. To make his argument Berry must maintain that people should be willing to die younger, accept that some diseases will not be cured and that there is no good reason to explore other planets or our own DNA. In Berry's view, the violence that scientific pursuit does to our souls and our environment is not worth the gains in medicine or physics. Berry proclaims several times in "Life is a Miracle" his preference for the technology of the last century. He does not use a computer to write his books, (he writes in longhand and his wife types it for him) he says, because he does not want to contribute to the strip mining used to make the material contained in computers. (Yeh, I didn't get it either.) In fact Berry says he sees no reason for computers. He asks, rhetorically, what good they have done us. The list of things that a person of modern education could name as having been made possible by the computer would be long indeed (computer technology took its greatest leap in the 60s because of the US desire to beat the former USSR to the Moon. Scientists needed better computers to do the calculations necessary to get a craft to the Moon and back. But of course Berry sees no value in landing on the Moon). "Life is a Miracle" is pleasant to read and Berry makes some graceful and well thought-out points about paying due attention to the wonders right before us instead of constantly seeking out new wonders. It is too simple to say that we should take some of what Berry says and use it to moderate our (perhaps) excessive reliance on technology. Berry wants to stop us from exploring because he believes that exploration is a destructive process-it is not. Exploration, properly done is careful and respectful. This is true whether the discipline is genetics, physics, chemistry or agriculture. The understanding we gain from exploration has brought us to the point where we can properly access the levels of destruction that our actions have caused to the environment. All the simple poetry in the world won't bring an endangered species back to sustainable levels if we can't use our understanding of chemistry and biology to make the proper changes.
Rating:
Summary: Against modern superstition (against the scientism fallacy).
Review: Motivated by a reading of E.O. Wilson's polemic, 'Consilience' (1998), studied essayist Wendell Berry brings a sledgehammer to scientism's glass menagerie that dazzles and evangelizes our "gee whiz" era. A review that suggests Berry understands Wilson's argument better that Wilson does is essentially right. The target is not strictly Wilson or his book, but clearly Wilson's central premise and arguments furnish all of the springboard that Berry's essay against "modern superstition" might hope for. This is NOT a diatribe against modern science or its methods, as some detractors might suggest. This is abundantly clear in the treatment of Berry's discussions with his friend and associate, geneticist Wes Jackson (A Conversation Out of School). The target here is a vitriolic scientism "captured by the dream" of intellectual imperialism. We might say fascism. Scientism is not merely a logical fallacy (which of course it is) or a harmless deception; given science's cultural influence and corporate malleability, scientism is dangerous in that its adherent sees its practitioners as gods, final diviners of ALL truth. "Enchantment", Wilson dreamily calls it. His view of a deistic and deterministic world-machine is evocative of nineteenth century philosophies of science. There is ample reason for sober and critical examination of a cultural priesthood of "predictably inept masters." Articulate and clear-minded Wendell Berry is a perceptive examiner.
This against not science, but human arrogance: "The only science we have or can have is human science; it has human limits and is involved ever with human ignorance and human error. It is a fact that the solutions invented or discovered by science have tended to lead to new problems or to become problems themselves. Scientists discovered how to use nuclear energy to solve some problems, but any use of it is enormously dangerous to us all, and scientists have not discovered what to do with the waste. (They have not discovered what to do with old tires.) The availability of antibiotics leads to the overuse of antibiotics. And so on. Our daily lives are a daily mockery of our scientific pretensions. . . Science does not seem to be lighting the way; we seem rather to be leapfrogging into the dark along series of scientific solutions, which become problems, which call for further solutions, which science is always eager to supply, and which sometimes it cannot supply. Sometimes it fails us infamously and fearfully." p 32, 33.
Against Berry's obviously correct argument, a defense of Wilson suggests that he is characterized wrongly in that he doesn't assert that science is "good". This is superfluous hair-splitting that does no damage to Berry's argument. Wilson's understands science as "Enchantment" (with a capital 'E'), as "wonderful" and as humanity's final and ultimate "religion". Wilson asserts that science is "the first medium devised able to unite people everywhere." (p269, Consilience, 1999) Sounds exceedingly "good" to me.
Of course science is wonderful, enchanting too. But it can never logically and by its own methods prove that it is the singular watershed of all "knowledge", let alone all truth. To understand what human science is and is not, I recommend a broad reading of physicists including Roger Penrose, Paul Davies and John Polkinghorne, and in particular Thomas Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions." Also read this excellent offering from Wendell Berry -- "O you mighty gods!"
Rating: 
Summary: thought provoking - the beginning of a dialogue
Review: My reading of Life Is a Miracle was, admittedly, biased by my reading of David Bohm a short time before. Just as Wendell Berry can point out unspoken assumptions, sloppy logic and dangerous potential application of concepts in Consilience by Edward O. Wilson, so one could critique Berry's book while being "truthful". However, there are several concepts in Berry's work that are worth further thought: Berry sees science as interested in "knowing" while arts and humanities are interested in "doing, responding". This has interesting consequences in the definition of "knowing" and of "liberal arts education". Berry sees science as generalizing, simplifying while experience is always specific and complex. With the raise of chaos, complexity and entanglement in scientific theory, science is itself beginning to recognize the dissonance between experience and scientific explanation. As Berry recognizes, literature and poetry normally explore the general human condition through a very specific instance. Berry sees science as dividing the world into the known and the not yet known. To this Berry wishes to add the category of mystery i.e. unknowable by the limited human capacity. If any of the points described above interest you, this book is well worth your time whether you agree or disagree with Berry's position.
Rating:
Summary: thought provoking - the beginning of a dialogue
Review: My reading of Life Is a Miracle was, admittedly, biased by my reading of David Bohm a short time before. Just as Wendell Berry can point out unspoken assumptions, sloppy logic and dangerous potential application of concepts in Consilience by Edward O. Wilson, so one could critique Berry's book while being "truthful". However, there are several concepts in Berry's work that are worth further thought: Berry sees science as interested in "knowing" while arts and humanities are interested in "doing, responding". This has interesting consequences in the definition of "knowing" and of "liberal arts education". Berry sees science as generalizing, simplifying while experience is always specific and complex. With the raise of chaos, complexity and entanglement in scientific theory, science is itself beginning to recognize the dissonance between experience and scientific explanation. As Berry recognizes, literature and poetry normally explore the general human condition through a very specific instance. Berry sees science as dividing the world into the known and the not yet known. To this Berry wishes to add the category of mystery i.e. unknowable by the limited human capacity. If any of the points described above interest you, this book is well worth your time whether you agree or disagree with Berry's position.
Rating:
Summary: Written with clarity and passion.
Review: Novelist, poet and conservationist Wendell Berry takes recent scientific innovations such as genetic cloning as his starting point for arguing against the reductive modern view of life fostered by scientism. Berry then proposes a more cautious, more humble worldview in which life is seen as a mystery and a miracle, as something we will never be able to fully control or even understand. He argues that cultural beacons in art, philosophy, and metaphysics should be consulted if we hope to rescue our educational, religious, and artistic communities from their crumbling foundations which have been built on smug rationalism and aggressive materialism.
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