A lively debate among humanists

A lively debate among humanists

John J. Audubon's illustration of Columbian hummingbirds

Originally published 28 November 2000

E. O. Wil­son and Wen­dell Berry are unlike­ly oppo­nents in the cul­tur­al wars.

Both men have roots in rur­al Amer­i­ca. Both men are moti­vat­ed by a love of nature. Both men are pro­lif­ic writ­ers whose work is rep­re­sent­ed almost side by side in the Nor­ton Anthol­o­gy of Nature Writ­ing. Both men see envi­ron­men­tal cat­a­stro­phe in the off­ing if humans con­tin­ue their wan­ton ways. Both men cham­pi­on con­ser­va­tion and biodiversity.

Yet they are at log­ger­heads on two of the biggest ques­tions of our time: What is the human self? And what is our surest guide to a humane future?

Two years ago, Edward Wil­son, Har­vard pro­fes­sor and world-famed ento­mol­o­gist, took his stand on these issues in a best-sell­ing book titled Con­silience. He called for a com­ing togeth­er (con­silience) of the arts and sci­ences on the basis of a sci­en­tif­ic under­stand­ing of the world.

We are a species of ani­mal that evolved in a par­tic­u­lar envi­ron­ment, with behav­iors and pre­dis­po­si­tions shaped for opti­mum sur­vival in that envi­ron­ment, Wil­son stat­ed. Even the crown­ing glo­ry of our species — our large, aware, and self-reflec­tive brain — is a sur­vival adaptation.

The most fruit­ful way of under­stand­ing our­selves is to work from the bot­tom up — physics, chem­istry, biol­o­gy, socio­bi­ol­o­gy, evo­lu­tion­ary psy­chol­o­gy. Even art and reli­gion might poten­tial­ly be under­stood as man­i­fes­ta­tions of our evo­lu­tion­ary history.

Wil­son believes “that entire­ly on our own we can know, and in know­ing, under­stand, and in under­stand­ing, choose wise­ly.” His self-con­fi­dence stems from the growth of sci­en­tif­ic knowl­edge, which has taught us much about our­selves. Human­i­ty, like all of life, is self-assem­bled, he said. No one brought us here, and no one can help us but ourselves.

Explain­ing life and con­scious­ness will be huge­ly dif­fi­cult, Wil­son stat­ed, but to say that they can­not be explained is defeatist, the lazy mod­ern equiv­a­lent of “it’s the will of God.” Even our rules of ethics are prod­ucts of our genet­ic and cul­tur­al co-evo­lu­tion, and there­fore poten­tial­ly open to sci­en­tif­ic understanding.

All of which dri­ves Wen­dell Berry to distraction.

Berry is a farmer and a writer. After an ear­ly fling in aca­d­e­mics, he returned to his native region of Ken­tucky in 1965, where he began cul­ti­vat­ing the land and putting words on the page. His prodi­gious lit­er­ary out­put includes nov­els and poet­ry. His essays on land man­age­ment, econ­o­my, and envi­ron­ment have won him a rep­u­ta­tion as one of the great spir­its of the envi­ron­men­tal movement.

His newest book, Life Is A Mir­a­cle: An Essay Against Mod­ern Super­sti­tion, is point­ed direct­ly at Ed Wilson’s Con­silience. Berry accus­es Wil­son of an arro­gant and futile attempt to sub­ju­gate the human­i­ties to science.

His argu­ment is a pas­sion­ate restate­ment of Wordsworth’s “we mur­der to dis­sect.” A mys­tery sched­uled for expla­na­tion is no longer a mys­tery, Berry insists, and humans can­not live humane­ly in a world with­out mys­tery. Liv­ing crea­tures are not machines, they can­not be reduced to chem­istry and physics, and they will nev­er be ful­ly under­stood by science.

Wilson’s pro­fessed humil­i­ty in the face of com­plex­i­ty is only polite­ness, Berry stat­ed, a thin­ly dis­guised impe­ri­al­is­tic design on the sov­er­eign ter­ri­to­ries of art and reli­gion. He accus­es sci­ence of “pro­pri­etari­ness,” of assum­ing own­er­ship of what it does not own. He calls instead for “pro­pri­ety,” a sense of lim­i­ta­tions, of con­text, and of con­for­mi­ty to the usages of tra­di­tion­al society.

Of course, “pro­pri­etary” and “pro­pri­ety” have the same Latin root, mean­ing “own­er­ship,” and Berry, like Wil­son, stakes his own claim for truth. His quar­rel with Wil­son is an old one — the Roman­tic ver­sus the Enlight­en­ment. Wordsworth drew the same line in the sand two cen­turies ago, to no avail; sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy have enjoyed unim­ped­ed advance.

Berry pro­fess­es to allow sci­ence its prop­er realm, but opts for a sup­pres­sion of human curios­i­ty — the dri­ving force of sci­ence — in favor of folk wis­dom. Wil­son aligns him­self with the Enlight­en­ment ide­al of rea­soned progress, and hopes to make the best of a prob­lem­at­ic future.

The stark black-and-white jack­et of Wilson’s book sug­gests some­thing of the hard-edged method­olo­gies of sci­ence. The design­er of Berry’s book jack­et adopt­ed imi­ta­tive design motifs, but replaced the life-deny­ing black and white with bright pas­tels and a detail of an Audubon paint­ing of hum­ming­birds suck­ing nec­tar from gor­geous blossoms.

The con­trast­ing jack­ets stack the deck in Berry’s favor. The appeal of Roman­ti­cism has always been its han­ker­ing for an ide­al­ized past; an Edenic world were hum­ming­birds eter­nal­ly suck nec­tar from blos­soms, where sick­ness, vio­lence, pover­ty, and the exploita­tion of life by life do not exist. Wilson’s equal­ly ide­al­ized future may not have the same pas­tel appeal, but at least his jour­ney starts in the here and now, and aims for a rea­son­ably attain­able destination.

These two bril­liant books, by bril­liant men, cast into sharp focus one of the most impor­tant debates of our time. Edward Wil­son and Wen­dell Berry are wor­thy oppo­nents. But, in the only bat­tle that real­ly counts, they are nat­ur­al allies — two life-affirm­ing human­ists who speak for knowl­edge and gen­eros­i­ty in the face of the always-present pow­ers of igno­rance and greed.

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Reader Comments

  1. Add to this well wrought dis­tinc­tion the great prob­lems with the Roman­tic and Tran­scen­den­tal approach. 

    1. Berry, Wordsworth, Emer­son, et al ulti­mate­ly find truth in per­son­al rev­e­la­tion, and per­son­al rev­e­la­tion is sub­jec­tive. They are con­fi­dent that all true mys­tics will share rev­e­la­tions sim­i­lar to theirs. That assump­tion has been revealed to be untrue. Did Hitler have a rev­e­la­tion? Now we go to the sec­ond great problem.

    2. When per­son­al rev­e­la­tions are strong­ly held and backed by mus­cle and tech­no­log­i­cal pow­er, they often lead to vio­lence. But have we ever had a war fought over con­tra­dic­to­ry sci­ence? No, because sci­ence is not a belief but a way of explain­ing and refin­ing expla­na­tions. Rev­e­la­tion inevitably leads to the dic­ta­tion of a fixed truth. And that leads to con­flicts that can­not be resolved by reason.

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