Consecrating Science: Wonder, Knowledge, and the Natural World by Lisa H. Sideris (review)

The title of Lisa Sideris’s book, Consecrating Science: Wonder, Knowledge, and the Natural World, made me wonder: Would this consecration expose me to something wondrous? While I don’t think the word wondrous quite fits my response, the book is a rewarding read. Sideris, a talented writer, introduces pointed questions to guide her study. I was particularly impressed with her nuanced evaluation of the new cosmologies that claim to bring science and spirituality together. In addition, the author’s erudite discussion stands out as a refreshing example of why the kind of critical thinking encouraged by the humanities has value.

Sideris, Professor of Religious Studies at Indiana University, opens the volume by explaining that the lack of coherence between the religious vision for nature of environmental ethicists and the realities of Darwinian science were subjects of her own earlier research, which includes a general indictment of anthropocentrism (the view that humankind is the most significant entity of the universe). She then adds that this book is an extended meditation on wonder and that she uses wonder to express her concern that a growing constellation of movements within both religious and secular environmentalism take science rather too seriously. Essentially, her argument is that, when properly oriented, wonder can foster intellectual and moral habits that are also encouraged by what she calls the “ignorance-based worldview” (p. 193) and its emphasis on sensory engagement with the world; however, as I discuss below, her examples of people who advocate for an ignorance-based worldview do not emphasize such sensory engagement with the world. Her larger point is that, although a common story and unified global ethic may sound appealing, particularly in times of great environmental and political upheaval, a global, science-based story cannot do justice to the enormous variety of places, people, problems (and possible solutions) that are part of the richness and complexity of life on this planet. In other words, universal narratives are inadequate, especially when we look at the particularities of environmental injustice and disparities of wealth and accountability. Moreover, no one person, or even a community of people, can provide a story for the rest of humanity, nor should they try.

The book’s strength is Sideris’s ability to deftly illustrate that many of the new grand narratives and cosmogenesis stories use scientific framings in ways that distort our vision and/or experience of both nature and science. The critiqued and overlapping set of “stories” go by names like the Epic of Evolution, the Universe Story, the New Story, the Great Story, Big History and so forth. Advocates of these new cosmologies, some of whom have scientific backgrounds, include Thomas Berry, Brian Swimme, Mary Evelyn Tucker, John Grim, Loyal Rue, David Christian, Eric Chaisson, Ursula Good-enough, Connie Barlow and Michael Dowd. Their narratives largely define humans as the part of nature that has become conscious of itself and frequently integrate ideas from sociobiology and evolutionary psychology.

Sideris’s problems with such myths (or stories) include their emphasis on the centrality of humans and human consciousness, their interpretations of intentionality or directionality, how they combine scientific and religious traditions, and a proselytizing impulse most evident in how they position humans as cocreators of the universe within the “Good Anthropocene” narratives related to global climate change. Cocreation within the spiritual cosmologies suggests that the fate of the planet involves humans understanding our unique cosmic role in shaping the environment and also includes a measure of spiritual self-awareness. Sideris claims that sometimes their arguments seem hubristic and/or hierarchical. She also claims that at other times their visions of (or arguments about) the environment seem indistinguishable from the environmentally disastrous and morally bankrupt voices of the Anthropocene, the geological era in which human activity began to significantly impact climate and the environment.

The book also critiques expressions about wonder in the work of scientists, Richard Dawkins and E.O. Wilson...