The Scientific Revolution andThe Death of Nature

Abstract

The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution, published in 1980, presented a view of the Scientific Revolution that challenged the hegemony of mechanistic science as a marker of progress. It argued that seventeenth-century science could be implicated in the ecological crisis, the domination of nature, and the devaluation of women in the production of scientific knowledge. This essay offers a twenty-five-year retrospective of the book's contributions to ecofeminism, environmental history, and reassessments of the Scientific Revolution. It also responds to challenges to the argument that Francis Bacon's rhetoric legitimated the control of nature. Although Bacon did not use terms such as "the torture of nature," his followers, with some justification, interpreted his rhetoric in that light. I N 1980, the year The Death of Nature appeared, Congress passed the Superfund Act, ecofeminists held their first nationwide conference, and environmentalists celebrated the tenth anniversary of Earth Day. The Death of Nature, subtitled "Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution," spoke to all three events. The chemicals that polluted the soil and water symbolized nature's death from the very success of mechanistic science. The 1980 conference "Women and Life on Earth: Ecofeminism in the '80s" heralded women's efforts to reverse that death. Earth Day celebrated a decade of recognition that humans and ecology were deeply intertwined. The essays in this Isis Focus section on the twenty-fifth anniversary of The Death of Nature reflect the themes of the book's subtitle, and I shall comment on each of them in that order. I shall also elaborate on my analysis of Francis Bacon's rhetoric on the domination and control of nature.

The five dimensions of sustainability

“…Whether there is such a dichotomy at all is often questioned. Merchant (1980Merchant ( , 2006 resisted the idea of nature and culture as a structural dualism and argued that such dissociated nature could be easily 'dominated by science, technology, and capitalist production'. Macnaghten and Urry (1998, p. 29) also believe that 'there is no simple and sustainable distinction between nature and society' because, to a great extent, nature is a cultural construction.…”

Cultivando a ambiguidade: considerações sobre questões de complexidade no discurso crioulo

“…The alchemical approach as a version of divide and rule is still very much a part of the dominant discourse in social sciences research (MERCHANT, 2006;VON WERLHOF, 2001). Even esteemed American anthropologist Edward Hall's term "extension transference" can be traced to alchemical traditions given its structuralist interpretation: extension transference is conceptualized as the representation of knowledge externalized into perceivable units (1976, pp.28-40).…”

Éticas ecofeministas: la comunidad de la vida

“…De acuerdo con Ruether (2001) la tradición bíblica y cristiana es una fuente de la teología y de ética ecológica, aunque no es la única aproximación posible y resulta adecuada sobre todo para aquellos de origen cristiano; la ética y la teología son complementarias en tanto establecen una relación moral con la naturaleza. En el caso del cristianismo, algunas ecofeministas buscan recuperar versiones no hegemónicas como la de San Francisco de Asís, de acuerdo con la cual es necesario resacralizar la naturaleza o entrar en hermandad con los demás seres que la habitan (Merchant, 2006). Algunas autoras se inclinan por una relectura de lo religioso de tipo politeísta o animista que muchas veces termina por consolidar y reproducir esencialismo dicotómicos entre lo masculino-femenino, lo que implicaría en todo caso una forma de sexismo que se fundamenta en la comprensión mistificada de la mujer (Warren y Cheney, 1991).…”