Rating: 
Summary: Slow reading, good politics
Review: To my bleeding-heart-liberal-with-a-vengeance eyes, Berry is one of the few political thinkers worth listening to nowadays. Unlike most of the talking heads on either side of the supposed fence, Berry is actually interested in the reality of the good society, rather than the fakery of the great one. He's no utopianist, and his willingness to challenge conventional thinking and knee-jerk responses is refreshing and beautiful.This book is primarily about science, and how its deification and industrialization in the past two centuries have not necessarily been a Good Thing. There is nothing that unusual about his opinion, but what makes Berry worth listening to is his willingness to engage with scientists and science-followers as a firm outsider. He clearly believes that the most essential things in a democracy are the willingness to think critically and communicate honestly, even where one is unsure. Very, very few people in the mainstream, or even the "alternative", media share these values. Which is too bad, because I believe that most of the rest of us do. Political labelling is ultimately as destructive and vainglorious as religious or ethnic or sexual labelling. Like all words, they are useful up to a point, but stare at them too long and they begin to disintegrate into meaningless scratches. On the aesthetic level, the book is engaging, often moving, but slow. It is best digested in small parts. Even though it's a good play, I thought his analysis of King Lear was a bit precious.
Rating: 
Summary: A miracle with a message.
Review: We are living in times of despair, Wendell Berry observes, when "most work is now poorly done; great cultural and natural resources are neglected, wasted, or abused; the land and its creatures are destroyed; and the citizenry is poorly taught, poorly governed, and poorly served" (p. 57). We are withdrawing our trust from politicians, professions, corporations, the educational system, religious institutions, and medicine (p. 94). In this compelling, 153-page essay, Berry offers his critical response to Edward O. Wilson's 1998 "scientific credo" (p. 25), CONSILIENCE (which I have not read). Wilson's book spins the popular superstition "that science is entirely good, that it leads to unlimited progress, and it has (or will have) all the answers" (p. 24). The title of Berry's essay is taken from KING LEAR: "Thy life's a miracle. Speak yet again" (IV, vi, 55). Whether in his poetry, fiction, or essays, miracles happen when Berry puts his pen to paper, and this book is no exception. He argues that Wilson's attempt to integrate science with religion and art is nothing more than an attempt to subjugate those disciplines to the materialistic objectives of science. "It is bad for scientists to be working without a sense of cultural tradition," he writes. "It is bad for artists and scholars in the humanities to be working without a sense of obligation to the world beyond the artifacts of culture" (p. 93). Moreover, to experience life is not "to figure it out" or to understand it, "but to suffer it and rejoice in it as it is" (p. 9). "To reduce life to the scope of our understanding (whatever 'model' we use)," Berry writes, "is inevitably to enslave it, make property of it, and put it up for sale" (p. 7). In Berry's view, the priorities of science have become synonymous with the goals of industry and commerce, and he advocates emancipating ourselves from corporations, "whose appetites for 'growth' [seem] now ungovernable" (p. 15). He writes: "It is easy for me to imagine that the next great division of the world will be between people who wish to live as creatures and people who wish to live as machines" (p. 55). He encourages us to "shift the priority from production to local adaption, from innovation to familiarity, from power to elegance, from costliness to thrift" (p. 12). The thread of wisdom that runs through these times of despair is that "life is a miracle, absolutely worth having, absolutely worth saving" (p. 45). G. Merritt
Rating:
Summary: Do not enter a debate with Wendell Berry...
Review: Wendell Berry is a gentleman. No, he's a gentle man. And he very gently but thoroughly skewers E.O. Wilson's thesis, that science explains (or more correctly, one day will explain) everything. As a scientist and artist (weird combination but nonetheless, that's me), I find the book fascinating. Wilson says that religion/humanities and science must come together. No argument there. Wilson then states essentially that the way that will happen is for religion to "learn the language of science," that is, Science is not budging. It is my experience that science is a religious tradition as entrenched in its sacred cattle as any religion. Berry does not dispute the place of science in making lives better, as it sometimes does. He just questions the wisdom of betting our future on the hopes that science will "come up with something" to fix whatever mess we find ourselves in, be it disease (antibiotics), agriculture (petrochemicals), energy (ditto), or what have you. If you're going to read one of Berry's books, I'd recommend "The Unsettling of America." This book is a close second. Then get "Farming: A Handbook" to see how a brilliant essayist writes poetry.
Rating: 
Summary: E. O. Wilson is misunderstood
Review: Wendell Berry is a true master of prose, and perhaps among the finest fiction writers of this century. But he doesn't seem to understand science, or the pre-eminent scientist/philospher of the current age, E. O. Wilson. Wilson has never made any claim that science is "good", as many reviewers and Berry seem to insinuate. Wilson simply is philosophizing on the reductionist techniques that humans use to dissect and understand their physical world. Berry becomes incensed that scientists would try to reduce the world down to its component parts. Well sorry to disappoint, Mr. Berry, but they do. It's simply an observation. Wilson does use some judgemental language when comparing the scientific method to religious superstitions that were rampant prior to the Enlightenment. Berry uncleverly titles his book an "essay against modern superstition", presumably meaning science. I have become a fan of Dr. Wilson, and I believe that Mr. Berry has much in common with him-- both are inveterate conservationists who value the health of our planet. Wilson's final chapter is a polemic on the dire consequences we face if we do not evolve our thinking away from resource consumption and toward the salvation of our physical environment. I simply think that Berry has misunderstood Wilson's treatise on Consilience. Berry would rather gaze out his window at all the flora and fauna and regard it all as "miraculous", and not make any attempt at understanding the processes leading to the rapid disintigration of our planet.
Rating:
Summary: E. O. Wilson is misunderstood
Review: Wendell Berry is a true master of prose, and perhaps among the finest fiction writers of this century. But he doesn't seem to understand science, or the pre-eminent scientist/philospher of the current age, E. O. Wilson. Wilson has never made any claim that science is "good", as many reviewers and Berry seem to insinuate. Wilson simply is philosophizing on the reductionist techniques that humans use to dissect and understand their physical world. Berry becomes incensed that scientists would try to reduce the world down to its component parts. Well sorry to disappoint, Mr. Berry, but they do. It's simply an observation. Wilson does use some judgemental language when comparing the scientific method to religious superstitions that were rampant prior to the Enlightenment. Berry uncleverly titles his book an "essay against modern superstition", presumably meaning science. I have become a fan of Dr. Wilson, and I believe that Mr. Berry has much in common with him-- both are inveterate conservationists who value the health of our planet. Wilson's final chapter is a polemic on the dire consequences we face if we do not evolve our thinking away from resource consumption and toward the salvation of our physical environment. I simply think that Berry has misunderstood Wilson's treatise on Consilience. Berry would rather gaze out his window at all the flora and fauna and regard it all as "miraculous", and not make any attempt at understanding the processes leading to the rapid disintigration of our planet.
Rating:
Summary: A poetic argument against scientism
Review: Wendell Berry's book is the best argument I have read against the "religion" of scientism practiced by our culture in quite some time. The Enlightenment is dead, and unfortunately many in and out of science refuse to acknowledge it. Mathematical rationalism that was thought to be the best access to ALL human knowledge and wisdom during the Enlightenment. Modern science emerged as the standard bearer of the Enlightenment towards this lofty goal, replacing all other epistemologies. By the mid-twentieth century, epistemologies like philosophy, theology, and mythology were seen as either arcane or trivial - certainly unscientific (sic). E.O. Wilson (one of my favorite biologists) in CONSILIENCE writes at the apogee of this thinking and yes, faith. In CONSILIENCE Wilson wishes to either ignore or concretize the divine - I can't quite get which. Much of our culture does pretty much the same. Wendell Berry's argument is that we must look past scientific description and look deeper into the world around us to achieve wisdom and appreciate the "depth of the world." The superstition (actually a religion to my mind) that Berry argues against is the notion that through science we can come to understand it ALL, which is called scientism. Yet, Berry acknowledges and celebrates science's value to our culture from a practical and philosophical perspective but warns us against relying on it for moral judgment. Scientism lacks soul, spirit - it is a cold "religion" that does not acknowledge the deep mystery of the universe, because this mystery is just another problem to be solved by measurement and experiment. Berry's implicit argument is that no moral culture can arise from it. Science is but one way to come to understand our place in the universe, and we are warned in Berry's book that we should not unduly privilege it since science cannot come to an understanding of the divine aspects of existence.
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