Thomas Berry
Bio
1.
"From his academic beginning as a historian of world cultures and religions, Thomas Berry grew into a historian of the Earth and its evolutionary processes. He sees himself not as a theologian but as a “geologian.” Berry began his career as a historian of Western intellectual history. His thesis at Catholic University on Giambattista Vico’s philosophy of history was published in 1951. Vico was trying to establish a human historical science of the study of culture and nations comparable to what others had done for the study of nature.
Influenced by Vico, Berry gradually developed a comprehensive historical perspective in periodization and an understanding of the depths of our contemporary crisis due to the ecological destruction caused by humans. Eventually he saw the need for a new mythic story to extract humans from their alienation from the Earth. Berry described this alienation as pervasive due to the power of the technological trance, the myth of progress, and human autism in relation to nature. With his books, The Dream of the Earth, The Universe Story, and The Great Work, Berry aimed to overcome this alienation and evoke the energies needed to create a viable and sustainable future."
(http://www.religionandnature.com/ern/sample/Tucker--Berry,Thomas.pdf)
2. From the Wikipedia:
"Berry believed that humanity, after generations spent in despoiling the planet, is poised to embrace a new role as a vital part of a larger, interdependent Earth community, consisting of a "communion of subjects not a collection of objects". He felt that we were at a critical turning point, moving out of the Cenozoic era and entering into a new evolutionary phase, which would either be an Ecozoic Era, characterized by mutually-enhancing human-Earth relations, or a Techozoic Era, where we dominate and exploit the planet via our technological mastery.
Berry said the transformation of humanity's priorities will not come easily. It requires what he called "the great work"—the title of one of his books—in four institutional realms: the political and legal order; the economic and industrial world; education; and religion.
...
From his academic beginnings as a historian of world cultures and religions, Berry developed into a historian of the Earth and its evolutionary processes. He was influenced by the work of the Jesuit scientist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, and he served as president of the American Teilhard Association (1975–1987). Berry took Teilhard's major ideas on evolution and expanded them into an epic story to which we belong. To that end, with the cosmologist Brian Swimme he wrote The Universe Story (1992). The multimedia project Journey of the Universe (2011) was also inspired by this perspective. This is a film (dedicated to Berry), a book, a series of conversations on DVDs and podcasts, and online courses from Yale/Coursera.
Berry's work inspired his younger brother Jim to establish the Center for Reflection on the Second Law, which held annual conferences near Chapel Hill, North Carolina, from 1984 until Jim's passing in 1997, and which featured Thomas as a frequent speaker.
In 1995, Berry returned to Greensboro, North Carolina. While nominally retired, he continued to write, lecture, and receive friends at his home. In a tribute to Berry, Mary Evelyn Tucker said that his books—The Dream of the Earth (1988 reprinted, 2006), The Universe Story (with Brian Swimme, 1992), and The Great Work: Our Way into the Future (1999)—are "major contributions to discussions on the environment".[citation needed] A collection of his essays, Evening Thoughts: Reflecting on Earth as Sacred Community (2006), was jointly published by Sierra Club Books and the University of California Press. He completed two final books of essays in 2009, The Sacred Universe and The Christian Future and the Fate of Earth.
Berry also contributed two introductory essays ("Economics: Its Effects on the Life Systems of the World" and "The Earth: A New Context for Religious Unity") to the volume Thomas Berry and the New Cosmology, in which Brian Swimme, Caroline Richards, Gregory Baum and others discuss the implications of Berry's thought for a range of disciplines and paradigms. Berry's "Twelve Principles for Understanding the Universe and the Role of the Human in the Universe Process" offer a postscript to this 1987 work.
He died in 2009 at the age of 94."
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Berry)
Ideas
Developmental Time and Cosmogenesis
"In formulating his idea of the New Story, Berry is particularly indebted to the thought of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. During the 1970s Berry served as president of the American Teilhard Association. Berry derived from Teilhard an appreciation for developmental time. As Berry observes, since Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species we have become aware of the universe not simply as a static cosmos but as an unfolding cosmogenesis. The theory of evolution provides a distinctive realization of change and development in the universe that resituates the human in a vast sweep of geological time. With regard to developmental time, Teilhard suggested that the whole perspective of evolution changes our reflection on ourselves in the universe. For Berry, the New Story is the primary context for envisioning the immensity of cosmogenesis."
(http://www.religionandnature.com/ern/sample/Tucker--Berry,Thomas.pdf)
The Psychic-Physical Character of the Unfolding Universe
"Berry also derived from Teilhard an understanding of the psychic-physical character of the unfolding universe. For Teilhard this implies that if there is consciousness in the human and if humans have evolved from the Earth, then from the beginning some form of consciousness or interiority is present in the process of evolution. Matter, for both Teilhard and Berry, is not simply dead or inert, but is a numinous reality consisting of both a physical and spiritual dimension. Consciousness, then, is an intrinsic part of reality and is the thread that links all life forms. There are various forms of consciousness and, in the human, self-consciousness or reflective thought arises. This implies for Berry that we are one species among others and as self-reflective beings we need to understand our particular responsibility for the continuation of the evolutionary process. We have reached a juncture where we will determine which life forms survive and which will become extinct."
(http://www.religionandnature.com/ern/sample/Tucker--Berry,Thomas.pdf)
The Primordial Intentions of the Universe toward Differentiation, Subjectivity, and Communion
"the primordial intentions of the universe toward differentiation, subjectivity, and communion. Differentiation refers to the extraordinary variety and distinctiveness of everything in the universe.
Subjectivity is the interior numinous component present in all reality. Communion is the ability to relate to other people and all life forms due to the presence of both subjectivity and difference. Together these create the grounds for the inner attraction of things for one another. For Berry these are principles that can become the basis of a more comprehensive ecological and social ethics that recognizes the human community as dependent upon and interactive with the Earth community. This new ecological orientation suggests that humans are a subset of the Earth, not dominant controllers. In light of this perspective, nature is here not solely for our use but as grounds for communion with the great mystery of life."
(http://www.religionandnature.com/ern/sample/Tucker--Berry,Thomas.pdf)
Books
From the Wikipedia [1]:
- Berry, Thomas. Thomas Berry: Selected Writings on the Earth Community. Selected with an Introduction by Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim. Modern Spiritual Masters Series. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2014.
- Berry, Thomas. The Christian Future and the Fate of Earth. Edited by Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2009.
- Berry, Thomas. The Sacred Universe: Earth, Spirituality, and Religion in the Twenty-First Century. Edited by Mary Evelyn Tucker. New York: Columbia University Press, 2009.
- Berry, Thomas. Evening Thoughts: Reflecting on Earth as Sacred Community. Edited by Mary Evelyn Tucker. Berkeley: Counterpoint Press, 2015 (orig. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books & University of California Press, 2006).
- Berry, Thomas. The Great Work: Our Way Into the Future. New York: Harmony/Bell Tower, 1999.
- Berry, Thomas with Brian Swimme. The Universe Story: From the Primordial Flaring Forth to the Ecozoic Era – A Celebration of the Unfolding of the Cosmos. San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1992.
- Berry, Thomas. The Dream of the Earth. Berkeley: Counterpoint Press, 2015 (orig. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1988).
The Universe Story
"Berry’s approach is comprehensive in terms of cultural history and world religions, while Teilhard’s is scientifically comprehensive. These two approaches come together in Berry’s book, The Universe Story, written with the mathematical cosmologist Brian Swimme. Together they relate the story of cosmic and Earth evolution along with the story of the evolution of Homo sapiens and the development of human societies and cultures. While not claiming to be definitive or exhaustive, The Universe Story sets forth an important model for narrating the Epic of Evolution.
The Universe Story was based on Berry’s ideas first articulated in 1978 in an article titled “The New Story.” As he pondered the magnitude of the social, political, economic, and ecological problems facing the human community, Berry observed that humans are in between stories. The coherence provided by the old creation stories was no longer operative, Berry asserted, proposing instead the new evolutionary story of how things came to be and where we are now as a comprehensive context for understanding how the human future can be given meaningful direction. Berry stated that to communicate values and orient human action within this new frame of reference we need to identify basic principles of the universe process itself. These, he suggested, are the primordial intentions of the universe toward differentiation, subjectivity, and communion. Differentiation refers to the extraordinary variety and distinctiveness of everything in the universe.
Subjectivity is the interior numinous component present in all reality. Communion is the ability to relate to other people and all life forms due to the presence of both subjectivity and difference. Together these create the grounds for the inner attraction of things for one another. For Berry these are principles that can become the basis of a more comprehensive ecological and social ethics that recognizes the human community as dependent upon and interactive with the Earth community. This new ecological orientation suggests that humans are a subset of the Earth, not dominant controllers. In light of this perspective, nature is here not solely for our use but as grounds for communion with the great mystery of life."
(http://www.religionandnature.com/ern/sample/Tucker--Berry,Thomas.pdf)
More information
Most of the material above is from the Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature, Continuum, 2005.