Through the comparison andcontrasting of two important views in Consilience, by E.O. Wilson and Life is aMiracle by Wendell Berry, the reader can learn more about their views on theworld, the sciences, and humanities while also being able to get a grasp on howthey feel as well. As we have grown from a child into young adults, we havebeen taught only the core courses that will apply to our lives.
By readingthese books, you dive deeper into how the world is perceived and get a glanceat why the two authors believe what they think is to be right. In his final chapter, E.O. Wilson devotes muchof it to genetic engineering and environmental issues, but leads to the holdingcapacity of the planet and the merits of the diversity of plant and animallife. Starting at the beginning of the chapter, Wilson talks about the centralidea of consilience, which is his view is a tangible phenomenon that can bereduced to the laws of physics. He supports this idea by talking about humanityand how it is kin to all other life forms.
As we all share the same geneticcoding, Wilson suggests that this places us among the monkeys and apes. Withthis belief about our hereditary, human nature, which has evolved duringhundreds of thousands of years, has still profoundly affected the evolution ofculture. As a sum of this, I think that Wilson is trying to let us know thateven though we have been slowly evolving throughout the years, we still are beingaffected by the past. Our culture is the life of our society. It is expressedin the many ways we tell our stories, celebrate and remember the past,entertain each other, and imagine our future. This is what our society is basedupon.
Without our cultures and backgrounds, we wouldn’t have anything. So asWilson states we have evolved over the millennia, we see how our human natureused to be and how we’ve grown from it into what society is today. Another point that Wilson makes in this chapter isthat people believe that science has little to do with most day to day things.The production of science, other than any major breakthroughs, are verymarginal. Most of what really matters to humanity, which goes back to evolvingfrom primates that have adapted form Darwinian fundamentals, are family, work, reproducing,security, entertainment, and spiritual fulfillment. They are assuming thatsocial sciences and humanities are independent of natural sciences, howeverthis is not the case.
Science is not marginal. It a very important part ofhumanity and knowledge, which is a vital part of society. Due to science andtechnology, we have the things we do today. By doing tests and gaining moreknowledge, we are advancing in technology. This is all due to synthesis. Peoplewho are synthesizers will be able to put the right information together at theright time and make wise decisions. Regarding Wilson on this subject he is verytrue.
People today have no value as to where things come from and howeverything comes together. They only worry about what matters to them and notthe world in general. Wilson believes that synthesis will be able to bringeverything together is an easy way to think, however there is a downside. If thepeople who are synthesizers run the world, then everything in life would becomea little simpler, but that is a hard thing to achieve because there are manypeople out there who believe in different ways of running a society.
To conclude Wilson in his final chapter, he goes backto an important topic, the Enlightenment. He writes, “The legacy of theEnlightenment is the belief that entirely on our own we can know, and inknowing, understand, and in understanding, choose wisely.” Throughout threeparagraphs following this statement, it seems to me that he is saying we can,through better understanding, choose wisely. We should not surrender to thecomplexity.
We need to develop and rely on our ethics. It is necessary forsurvival, and implicitly is best approached by consilience. Though a conservationist, like Wilson, Wendell Berrystrongly opposes the belief underlying Consilience,that scientific analysis can ultimately explain everything: “to reduce themystery and miracle of life to something that can be figured out is inevitablyto enslave it, make property of it and put it up for sale.” To start thischapter for Berry, he states that science and art are neither fundamental norunchangeable. They are tools for us to use. Science cannot replace art orreligion, but if they are divided then they can be used in collaboration.
Berrystates that the only reason we use these “tools” is the build and maintain ourhomes here on earth. However, if they can’t be used in collaboration then theywill be used as a mean of destruction. I feel that he is trying to state thatknowledge can serve only to instruct. If you add any emotional responses to itthen it will become your downfall. He sees Wilson’s points as an insult toknowledge and that Wilson doesn’t understand the arts and sciences. Berrybelieves that works of art cannot be extracted and believes that interpreting theboth to come together with biology is ridiculous.
Berry also introduces in this reading the way hesuggests that people should think, work, and conduct of themselves regardingorganizations/programs. The first suggestion is that we should work towards anappropriate subordination of all the disciplines to the health of creatures,places, and communities. The second one is that we should banish the word”machine” from our speech to ensure the improvements of creatures by notcalling them by that word.
The third one is that we are not susceptible to ourcircumstances. We live in world that is known to surprise us and be deceiving.The fourth one is to give up our “boomer ethics” of being greedy, cunning, andacting violent to accept settlement as our goal. The fifth is to require fromteachers, researchers, and scientists to be responsible for technologicalprogresses. The sixth is reduce our tolerance for ugliness. The final one is torecognize the inefficiencies of the abstract reductionist thought, to resistclassification. These bring together, in Berry’s view, a crucial issue of ourlanguage. In our lives, we are using many valuable words that are losing theirpower.
He believes that this a vital part and applies just as strongly to thesciences as to the arts and humanities. I think that this is talking about ingeneral the way people today are losing the true meaning of words. His sevensuggestions for people on how to conduct themselves can be valuable in certainways. They are put out there for others to think about how they behave and whatthey can do to try and fix themselves. Out of all the modules, I chose the Per/Complexitiesof Curriculum: Why we learn what we learn. In our society, the public-schoolsystems curriculum is decided in the U.S.
by each state, with the individualschool districts. Each state, however, builds its curriculum with greatparticipation of national academic subject groups selected by the United StatesDepartment of Education. It is a group effort by both groups, but the debateinvolves determining which body should have the heaviest hand in the finaldecision-making process, regarding what should be offered. Throughout thehistory of American education, a student’s need for the basics of reading,writing and arithmetic has been obvious and a concentration of the accepted curriculum.But, our national curriculum was not always nationally shaped. In the past,before America’s school system operated under national oversight, teacherstraveled from town to town and worked on a freelance basis for a few weeks.Without oversight, the teacher taught as he/she saw fit. New modern ways inscience have made classes able to focus on the branches of biology, computersciences and advanced mathematics, especially for the students wanting toattend a university or go into a field that requires further academic skills.
Elective studies, more often geared toward the arts tend to receive fundingbased on availability rather than necessity. This may cause problems for peoplewho decide to major in the arts because of lack of funding. This has beenrecognized nationally that there are classes that need to be taught and othersthat are not necessary to lead a successful life. These cut classes have beenclassified as optional when funding gets low, and more emphasis placed oninstilling the fundamentals of modern education. In turn national philosophiesare not always able to satisfy the needs, therefore curriculum is made withsome insight. To sum up of the how this relates to Wilsonand Berry, they both have their views on how they believe things should be put,but both had a thirst for knowledge and wanted to know more about the worldaround them. They both tried to perceive the things that they didn’t quiteunderstand and tried to grasp that of the unknown. By doing this, they madeothers want to examine their work and make their own assumptions.
This is howthe world works today. By learning about new things, we get a better graspabout our world. Wendell and Berry have made the sciences and humanities atopic of interest for those who want to understand these principles. In conclusion, the philosophy ofscience, and of its greater and relations to society is an important field tostudy.
As well as understanding the history of scientific and philosophicthought helps to and qualify word views. Wendell and Berry both have gonethrough this process, and the world views they present to us in the form oftheir books illustrate the philosophical thought that each of them try torepresent. The huge points for them are the relationships between science andthe humanities and the way they view the roles and future of science. Byreading their books, we are allowing ourselves the opportunity to get a graspon the sciences and humanities and if we truly believe that they should be puttogether better known as consilience.
