The machine world view removed ethical scruples against destroying nature
Evidence
These socioeconomic ends could be realized by mining the earth for gold, copper, iron, and coal, by cutting its forests for fuel for the refining of ores, and by constructing ships to be used in transporting the products. The death of the world soul and the removal of nature’s spirits helped to support increasing environmental destruction by removing any scruples that might be associated with the view that nature was a living organism. Mechanism substituted a picture of the natural world, which seemed to make it more rational, predictable, and thereby manipulable. — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature, 852
Categorization
- XREF: Pays off the organic-cosmology-as-ethic-restraint claim from chs. 10, 11, 14 in chs. 17-22’s material ecology. — connects to: Mechanism removed the moral barrier that had made controlling nature seem impious — Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 419; The mechanistic worldview licensed exploitation of nature by rejecting the feminine as real. — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology,…, 39; Shifting metaphors converted restraint on exploiting the earth into sanction for it — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology,…, 78 (+8 more)
Broader Connections
- Viewing humans as separate from nature enables resource exploitation without conscience.
#corroborates(0.95) — James D. Kirylo (ed.), Reinventing Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 1009 - The philosophical-scientific worldview blocks environmental ethics from valuing insentient nature
#corroborates(0.90) - Vitalism’s monistic worldview inherently restrains the exploitation of nature
#contradicts(0.75) — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature, 933 - Modern societal organization can weaken moral drives and make immorality more plausible
#corroborates(0.70) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 566 - Modern societies adopt a gardener’s stance of engineered order over nature
#expands(0.70) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 171