Bacon framed scientific method as the capture and enslavement of a female nature

Evidence

Although a female’s inquisitiveness may have caused man’s fall from his God-given dominion, the relentless interrogation of another female, nature, could be used to regain it. As he argued in The Masculine Birth of Time, “I am come in very truth leading to you nature with all her children to bind her to your service and make her your slave.” “We have no right,” he asserted, “to expect nature to come to us.” Instead, “Nature must be taken by the forelock, being bald behind.” Delay and subtle argument “permit one only to clutch at nature, never to lay hold of her and capture her.” — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature, 676

Categorization

• XREF: Core ecofeminist thesis material for the polyad: domination of nature and of women fused in one metaphor-system; links to the eco-justice course’s critique of mastery language. — connects to: Early modern poets equated mining the earth with sexual violation of women — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology,…, 231; The organic utopias opposed Bacon’s exploitative science by observing and emulating nature — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology,…, 389; Scientific authority has repeatedly been deployed to justify female intellectual inferiority — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology,…, 653 (+11 more)

Broader Connections

• Nature’s figuration as submissive female gave scientific exploitation normative sanction #corroborates (0.90) — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature, 755
• Female virtue is the broken form in which exploited nature enters male culture #expands (0.80) — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 256
• The mechanistic worldview sanctioned domination of both nature and women #expands (0.78) — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature, 64