The word yet hinges existential debate

Originally published 17 April 2001

Yet.

Such a lit­tle word. Such a feisty lit­tle word.

I’ve been read­ing again those two fine books of recent times, Edward O. Wilson’s Con­silience, and Wen­dell Berry’s Life Is a Mir­a­cle. When Wil­son wrote Con­silience, he sure­ly knew that his call for the uni­fi­ca­tion of all branch­es of knowl­edge (includ­ing art, moral­i­ty, and reli­gion) under the flag of sci­ence would raise a few hack­les. He could­n’t have asked for a more exhil­a­rat­ing rejoin­der than Berry’s scrap­py Life is a Miracle.

Two bril­liant men — one a Har­vard biol­o­gist and world-famed founder of socio­bi­ol­o­gy, the oth­er a Ken­tucky farmer and author of dozens of books of poet­ry, fic­tion, and non­fic­tion — jab­bing at each oth­er with that lit­tle stilet­to word, yet.

Two men who care pas­sion­ate­ly about the envi­ron­ment. Two cham­pi­ons of con­ser­va­tion with dia­met­ri­cal­ly opposed views of what it is we mean to con­serve and how we might con­serve it, march­ing to the fray armed with the same lit­tle weapon, yet.

For Wil­son, yet is humil­i­ty. For Berry, yet is arrogance.

How can such a lit­tle word bear such a bur­den of meaning?

Wil­son is pro­found­ly impressed by the pow­er of the sci­en­tif­ic method to unrav­el the secrets of the world. Just look at what we have learned so far — the whirling mael­stroms of the dis­tant galax­ies, the dervish dance of the DNA. Who can say of the reach of sci­ence, this far and no far­ther? We are prod­ucts of our evo­lu­tion­ary his­to­ry, bio­log­i­cal and cul­tur­al. There are no gods, no spir­its, no ghosts in the machine. The world is based on dis­cov­er­able laws, and we are part of the world. Our lives and loves and hopes and dreams are part of this world, and, there­fore, poten­tial­ly knowable.

We just don’t know them yet.

The word yet, for Wil­son, is a hedge on over­reach­ing, a con­fes­sion of present igno­rance, an expres­sion of con­fi­dence in future understanding.

And, for Berry, the opposite.

Wilson’s yet is a taunt, Berry states: “He can­not bring him­self to say that sci­en­tists do not know some­thing; he must say that they do not know it yet.” Yet is Wil­son stak­ing a claim on things he can­not know and will nev­er know. Yet is a denial of lim­its, the squeak of hubris, the antithe­sis of humility.

The things that make us human — local­i­ty, par­tic­u­lar­i­ty, our unique­ness — are beyond the reach of empir­i­cal sci­ence, Berry asserts. Life is a mir­a­cle, nev­er, ever to be reduced to chem­istry and physics. To expe­ri­ence life is not to “fig­ure it out” but “to suf­fer and rejoice in it as it is.” There is sim­ply no “not yet” about it.

Yet has con­se­quences, Berry states.

A mys­tery sched­uled for solu­tion is no longer a mys­tery; it is a prob­lem. And who can love a prob­lem? Who can cher­ish an agen­da? If life is just a bio­chem­i­cal machine, a con­fla­tion of nature’s unal­ter­able laws, then why both­er sav­ing it? Peo­ple exploit machines. They defend what they love. And no one loves a machine.

Yes, indeed, yet has con­se­quences, Wil­son states.

Yet is the Enlight­en­ment belief “that entire­ly on our own we can know, and in know­ing, under­stand, and in under­stand­ing, choose wise­ly,” he insists. To say that his­to­ry unfolds by process­es too com­plex for ratio­nal analy­sis is a cop-out, a sur­ren­der of our human ratio­nal­i­ty, the lazy mod­ern equiv­a­lent of “it’s the will of God.” If we are going to save the envi­ron­ment, we bet­ter know every­thing we can about what it is we mean to save. If life is tru­ly “a mir­a­cle,” then our best efforts will come to naught. Ratio­nal­i­ty and will are pow­er­less in the face of miracles.

This much is cer­tain. With­out yet, sci­ence is impos­si­ble. Sci­ence works on the bor­der between the known and the unknown, push­ing back the tide of mys­tery. For the sci­en­tist, yet is a state­ment of faith that the game is not over yet, that more knowl­edge is yet to be gained, that the human ratio­nal enter­prise has years — cen­turies, mil­len­nia, maybe for­ev­er — yet to run. In all of this, Wil­son is on indis­putable ground.

And yet, Berry is right, too. The great­est ques­tions of art, lit­er­a­ture, and reli­gion so far stand undi­min­ished by the aston­ish­ing progress of sci­ence, and it’s hard to imag­ine how and when it might be oth­er­wise. Why is there some­thing rather than noth­ing? Why do the inno­cent suf­fer and the wicked pros­per? Why, when we look into the star­ry sky or the face of a beloved, are we struck dumb with wonder?

Why does one man die strong, hale, and hap­py, while anoth­er dies in bit­ter­ness of soul and with­out rich­es? And yet — and yet — and yet they shall sleep togeth­er in the dust and worms shall cov­er them.

Even the most skep­ti­cal and sec­u­lar Wilson­ian might accede to Eli­u’s request in the Book of Job: “Suf­fer me a little…for I have some­what yet to speak in God’s behalf.”