In defense of Berry?

Something has sparked in my brain lately.

Two nights ago, I sat down and wrote about Berry's critique of sociobiology, reductionism in science, and all things E.O. Wilson. In the end, I couldn't agree with Mr. Berry. I don't like sociobiology, and I don't like extreme reductionism. And even though I haven't fully read it, I don't think I like the ending chapters of Wilson's Consilience. Berry had so much leeway with which to convince me, but his strange and winding route along a broadly anti-science path lost me quickly. I argued against his points, ended the post, and walked away. I felt okay about it mostly because there are a multitude of ways in which Wendell Berry fits the definition of "very crazy". Yet there was still something there nagging at me. It was tiny and sharp and it could be neither pinpointed nor ignored.

And yet.
And yet.

Those little words are two of the most insistent in the English language. They were there as I cooked breakfast, ran errands, fell asleep. They were still there as I packed for my return to campus. While sorting through books that could stay behind, I found a very old, dusty anthology on the subject plaguing my thoughts. I picked it up at a charity book sale because I liked the cover, I think. Names that I'd only recently learned emerged in the pages --Arthur Caplan, E.O. Wilson, Stephen Jay Gould. When coincidences like this happen, dammit you go with them. So, I started reading.

There were dozens of political, social and philosophical (re: Caplan) stances for me here, but I skipped over most. I wanted a scientific challenge to what Wilson was saying, something that would appeal to that tiny sharpness within me without losing an empathy for the field that I love.

Here I am now. It's 12:30am and I should be packing, and I should be sleeping, and I should be planning for tomorrow. I should be figuring a way to shatter the time-space continuum and do all of those things at once, but I am doing none of them. Instead, I am sitting here reading about the potential flaws of a gene-centric mindset, of pluralistic* causes of evolution, and of why I am not the first to note that tiny sharpness of hesitation.  In a roundabout sort of way, I suppose I owe an apology to Wendell Berry. At the very least, I owe him thanks for writing something that would make me angry enough to respond to. How are we to engage with the uniqueness of our continued existence, and what will we allow science's role to be in all of it? I still don't think the answer lies in faith, in theism, or in the untouched mystery that Berry prefers. But perhaps Dawkins and Wilson are also a little too invested in the gene, a little too deterministic about things.

And that's the thing I've slowly come to understand about this. I'll find myself persuaded by well-versed, insightful arguments from both sides. Each one will alter my approach in some small way. A question this difficult will remain unanswered in my mind for years. But there's one other very important thing I've come to understand:  you haven't reached a stalemate just because you don't have an answer.

With that, I'll admit that I'm tired and have nothing more to say. I hope that the hour hasn't turned this into a pointless rambling for me to wonder about in the morning. In any case, goodnight.

*Definitely worth your time if you're a biologist, evolutionary or otherwise -Gould and Lewontin's classic paper involving spandrels, Voltaire, and adaptation.  This is one of the first scientific papers I have actually enjoyed reading.