The Creation, by E O Wilson

This is an important book, by an extremely important guy — a Harvard biologist who happens to think that we might be screwing up our world pretty quickly. (Check out his awesome new project, the Encyclopedia of Life, a TED wish.) The book’s central premise is that the communities of science and religion, so often portrayed as being at odds with each other, share a common cause: saving the earth.

This is obvious, of course. Wanting to save the earth because it’s God’s creation or because of the incredible science in it — it doesn’t really matter.

What’s not obvious to me is why this idea, this coalition, doesn’t show up more. I have a sense that it’s because religion in America has become politicized by the Right, and environmentalism has become politicized by the Left.

But something that Larry Lessig said at a dinner I attended a year or so ago gives me some optimism: he said that coalitions (like today’s on the Right) are always marked by unexpected collaborations — of groups that decide that one particular common cause is more important than any of their dozens of less important differences.

So maybe. Or perhaps the right word is unless.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 6th, 2007 at 6:22 pm and is filed under Books, politics. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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