The Scientific Revolution’s death of nature licensed nature’s manipulation
Evidence
The removal of animistic, organic assumptions about the cosmos constituted the death of nature—the most far-reaching effect of the Scientific Revolution. Because nature was now viewed as a system of dead, inert particles moved by external, rather than inherent forces, the mechanical framework itself could legitimate the manipulation of nature. Moreover, as a conceptual framework, the mechanical order had associated with it a framework of values based on power, fully compatible with the directions taken by commercial capitalism. — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature, 761
Categorization
- XREF: This is the chapter where the book’s title thesis lands: links to the ecofeminist-multispecies strand’s critique of mechanism and to the course thread on instrumental reason over nature. — connects to: Corporations patent community-bred seeds by altering a few genes, an act communities call biopiracy — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education: Toward Diverse,…, 1460; Shifting metaphors converted restraint on exploiting the earth into sanction for it — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology,…, 78; Mechanism’s view of dead passive matter sanctioned nature’s exploitation — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology,…, 444 (+11 more)
Broader Connections
- The organic-to-mechanistic shift reconstructed nature as dead and subordinate
#expands(0.85) — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature, 51 - Stripping nature of value licensed its exploitation without moral restraint
#expands(0.85) - Controlling nature and controlling humans advance together within science
#expands(0.82) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 614 - Bacon framed scientific method as the capture and enslavement of a female nature
#exemplifies(0.82) — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature, 676 - Modern Western science displaced metaphysics and religion as the supreme authority over knowledge
#expands(0.75) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 290 - Monotheism’s disenchantment of nature enabled scientific exploration and atheism
#complicates(0.72) — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 561