Embracing Mystery
I just got back from a conference on "proverbs in the medieval cultures of northern Europe." Discussing the intricate differences between "proverbs", "maxims", "gnomic utterances" and (my favorite) "proverb-like" statements in Saskatoon ... in November ... do I know how to have a good time or what?
The text I spoke about is a "catalogue poem"--basically a list of pithy observations about the world. One of the comments that came up again and again at the conference was that these medieval catalogue poems don't resolve...they don't "conclude". God's creation is so vast and mysterious that we're never going to be able to compile an exhaustive catalogue of knowledge about it.
On the flight home, I read Wendell Berry's essay "Life is a Miracle," which criticizes the modern reverence for science. Berry's greatest problem with current scientific trends is that they have lost the ability to wrestle with "mystery." The created world no longer has mysteries to be wondered at, but only problems to be solved. In light of the literature I'd spent the last two days discussing, Berry's essay filled me with a twinge of sadness at how we have lost the ability to delight and wonder in the vast creation God has given us.
Now, I can hear what you're thinking ... doesn't this line of anti-scientific thought lead down the road to crazy-town, as currently represented by many of the Republican candidates for the US presidential election?
What is interesting to me is that those GOP candidates (despite their rejection of science) share that very same modern sensibility which Berry condemns in most scientists: the idea that the world is (and should be) "solvable". The extreme scientific view believes the world is solvable by science. The extreme religious view believes the world is solvable through the revelation God has already given us (namely, the Bible). Neither is willing to deal with mystery.
Berry is not condemning scientific advances, or the discoveries science has made about the impact our rabid consumption has had upon the planet. He is, on the other hand, soundly condemning a worldview (even one grounded in religion) which would dare to assume that the infinite complexity of God's creative activity can be fully comprehended in human terms.
As much as I love the medieval world, I do not suggest that we go back to a pre-modern lifestyle (I like Doctor Who far too much). And if I do have a criticism of Berry's writing, it is that he overly romanticizes the local subsistance farm as the answer to all society's ills.
At the same time, perhaps we do have something to learn from our pre-modern ancestors. They looked out into the world and they saw infinite possibility and mystery. They wrestled with the problem of knowledge, even when they never expected to find the answers. That took courage and intellectual fortitude. And--I think--those who compiled medieval wisdom literature lived in a world far richer and more wondrous than ours.
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Re: Point of Order
I think Wendell Berry's arguments would be against any line of thought (whether scientific or religion) which offers us a "reductionist" view of the world. There are certainly many scientists who would not hold such a view (like your favorite Carl Sagan), just like there are many religious type who (as you put it) would want to offer simple reductions of life's mysteries to the most literal interpretation of the Bible. I think the valid point Berry makes is that is it a "modernist" view which understands the natural world as a "machine" with easy answers (and certainly many brands of fundamentalist religion are products of such modernism).
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Point of Order!
I'm going to respectfully disagree with Wendell Barry and perhaps you on this matter. Science and the scientific method are about constantly questioning and not settling for any given answer, despite how solid, comforting, or traditional it is. Science acknowledges an objective universe that can be understood, so in that sense, they may not have a sense of "mystery" but there are trapdoors of doubt which always leave room for skepticism. In an odd way, science can never be satisfied as no evidence will ever be considered perfect given the limits of human perception and reason.
On the other hand, so much of religion is perceived as offering "Answers." "This is how the world began. This is how it will end. This is why bad things happen." For many who attack religion, it is this sense of certainty that is at the root of so much danger. "I can perpetuate this evil because I Know God wants me to do it." "We can't teach anything that might or might seem to contradict scripture because we Know it to be true and doubt will corrode faith."
I think a more nuanced view of how religion relates to Truth and how Science attempts to question Truth would be of aid to us all.