The organic cosmos gave way to a mechanical order where power meant active intervention
Evidence
In the organic world, order meant the function of each part within the larger whole, as determined by its nature, while power was diffused from the top downward through the social or cosmic hierarchies. In the mechanical world, order was redefined to mean the predictable behavior of each part within a rationally determined system of laws, while power derived from active and immediate intervention in a secularized world. Order and power together constituted control. — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature, 758
Categorization
- DEFINE: Contrasts organic versus mechanical definitions of order and power — shared vocabulary central to the ecofeminist course strand.
- XREF: connects to: Material ecological changes and the organic social order’s collapse paralleled the cosmos’s mechanical transformation. — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology,…, 436; Bacon’s bureaucratic utopia mirrored the mechanical philosophy’s passive-inert universe — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology,…, 741; Modern order is mechanical coordination, not cosmic harmony (+1 more)
Broader Connections
- Modern order is mechanical coordination, not cosmic harmony
#expands(0.85) - Modern power fuses instrumentalism with force while premodern force stayed constrained by higher precepts
#expands(0.78) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 386