From the book jacket:

In his new essay, Life is a Miracle, Wendell Berry urges us to begin a "conversation out of school." Believing we are on a course of arrogant and dangerous behavior in science and other intellectual disciplines, this proclamation against modern superstition recommends a shift in priorities and goals. Berry observes, "it is clearly bad for the sciences and the arts to be working without a sense of obligation to cultural tradition. 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." They must be the subjects of one complex conversation.

In language as forceful as it is concise, Berry devotes many pages to Edward O. Wilson's blueprint for the reconciliation of science and religion and the arts as presented in Consilience. Berry is able to demonstrate 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 insists 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.

"To begin to think of the possibility of collaboration among the disciplines," Berry argues, "we must realize that the 'two cultures' exist as such because both of them belong to the one culture of division and competition, which is to say the culture of colonialism and industrialism." The aims of science have become hard to distinguish from those of industry and commerce, and he advocates a new Emancipation Proclamation to free life itself from enslavement by corporations. In demonstrating the flaws of Wilson's theory, Berry's response becomes a touchstone for the seemingly intractable problem of how to maintain healthy human and natural communities.

To preserve the delicate balance between humans and the earth, science and the humanities, we must ask ourselves: How does one individual act well, sensitively, compassionately, without doing irreparable damage? Can individuals act appropriately in service to a commonwealth, a healthy human community? Wendell Berry suggests that "human hope may always have resided in our ability, in time of need, to return to our cultural landmarks and reorient ourselves."

Jacket design: David Bullen. Jacket illustration: John James Audubon, Anna's Hummingbird (detail). 153 pages.

Contents:

I. Ignorance

II. Propriety

III. On Edward O. Wilson's Consilience

1. Materialism

2. Materialism and Mystery

3. Imperialism

4. Reductivism

5. Creatures as Machines

6. Originality and the "Two Cultures"

7. Progress Without Subtraction

IV. Reduction and Religion

V. Reduction and Art

VI. A Conversation Out of School

VII. Toward a Change of Standards

VIII. Some Notes in Conclusion