Mon 31 March: Science History, Ecology and the Idea of Nature

Discussion seminar Carolyn Merchant March 31 – Reflection by Kristina Berglund

How has Merchant helped you in your understanding of environmental history? (Has she?)

Carolyn Merchant’s thought-provoking book ‘The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution’ was in the 1980’s groundbreaking for its thoroughly examination of the connection between women and nature and the exploration of how the view of nature and women have changed throughout history. By focusing on these topics Merchant later gained the epithet ‘Ecofeminist’. The fact that Ecofeminism stems from Merchant’s ideas (amongst others) was new to me, even though I am familiar with the notion of Ecofeminism since before. Ecofeminism as a philosophy and movement has underwent some changes since Merchant’s earliest work is and can be somewhat hard to define. It seems however that it is based on the premise that the oppression of women the domination of nature is fundamentally linked and that this is due to the existence of a patriarchal dualism that places women and the concept of ‘nature’ in the same classification. Despite some relevant criticism that ecofeminism has been exposed to, for example that it holds an essentialist view of women and their affinity to nature, I think it includes some significant points – such as promoting a gender perspective in the environmental debate in general, both in decision making as well as in seeing how women and men are affected by climate change in different ways.

Merchant argues that during the rise of industrialism, when the destruction of the environment worsened the oppression of women also increased in a way never seen before. As the mechanistic world view gained strength, the age old view of the world perceived as a living breathing entity to be nurtured and protected faded away. The before positive perception of women and nature ‘as one’ turned into an obstacle and thus women became more oppressed. As discussed in class though, women have been dominated by men for a very long time, and I am not entirely sure if I see the big difference in female oppression before the scientific revolution and after. In many ways, the situation of women has also improved after the rise of industrialism, and many of the rights I take for granted today I have acquired thanks to the struggle of many women and feminists before my time.

For me, Merchant’s book ‘The Death of Nature’ has added to my understanding of environmental history as a comprehensive review of history of ideas and theory about changing perceptions of women and ecology. Her ideas of a transition from an organic worldview to a mechanistic worldview and the dichotomies of human-nature are not new for us in the global environmental history program. It has been discussed in different ways in the Current Debates course by both Alf Hornborg and Jason Moore as well as in the previous semester. However, I found Merchant’s specific focus on the connection between women and nature and the Ecofeminism theories to be an interesting expansion of my understanding of environmental history, and I am sure it will be possible to continue to discuss it in connection to future themes in the program.

Seminar 5, Mon 31st March:
Science History, Ecology and the Idea of Nature.
Reflections by Sabbath Sunday

Carolyn Merchant’s book, ‘The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology and the Scientific Revolution.’ is a continuous mainstream approach by history scholars to link natural history to human history in their attempt to strengthen environmental history as a multidisciplinary field of study. Donald Worster who is believed to be the ‘founder’ of environmental history, argued that it entails three categories: natural history or environments of the past, modes of production and ideas, perceptions, values and philosophy. So, it is from this background that I draw my reflection on how relevant is Carolyn Merchant’s book to environmental history.

Carolyn Merchant combines all categories of environmental history, from the point of view of ecological philosophy. She develops her ideas/arguments through a metaphor about a ‘pristine’ nature in a picture of a productive woman who co-creates and sustains life through human ecological reproduction/succession. She identifies a period in which humans interacted harmoniously with nature until such a time when humans started to convert the organic nature into mechanistic nature with the onset of renaissance. This was the period of cultural development in form of political power and technology that unleashed terror to ‘Mother Nature’ by stripping ‘Her’ naked in search of raw materials for industries, thus degrading the global ecological systems. The process did not end on the surface but also ripping of ‘her flesh’ through excavations. The rush for the ‘New World’ wealth was a direct result of industrialization in Europe where natural resources had been exhausted. Mining, extensive agriculture, and deforestation were the main activities that caused nature ‘the productive woman’, to be subordinated by a capitalistic system.

Carolyn Merchant’s philosophy calls for reawakening of women to realize their positions in human ecology in relation to their attitudes towards all environmental systems that form nature. Environmental activism and philosophy like ecofeminism is an attempt to restore/rehabilitate the humiliated ‘Mother Nature’ to an ethical state of harmony and respect. Women should be at the forefront of fighting for nature because both nature and women have been dominated from time immemorial. However, this can only be achieved through a sustainable perspective of development and gender equality, because humans have always depended on the products of nature.

Reflection by Yaqi Fu
Question: How does Merchant help us understand Global Environmental History?

From the book “The death of nature” and her lecture, I have got a clear trail of changes on how human viewed nature in different time among Western countries. From the nurturing mother in ancient time to the witch image in renaissance age, and then to subordinates of human’s control, and last to now the partnership with human, nature’s image is always changing. Though examining these changes, I understand more of the global Environmental history in terms of ideas and thoughts.

Among these changes, what I found most interesting or still confusing me is the change from the nurturing mother to witch. This change is by no means trivial, and indeed a big shift. How did it happen? Merchant explained the disorder of nature happened because “the discoveries of ‘new science’”, “the social upheavals” and the release of people’s vices. Although she also admitted, nature is both virgin and witch like woman, what she wanted to stress in the renaissance is nevertheless the witch portrait of nature. But backing to ancient time, she did by no means present the witch side as a part of nature. Then I wondered how the witch nature could hide so long behind the nurturing mother in ancient time until the Renaissance. In common sense, natural disasters should be serious and untamed which made people suffered more before the age science was developed. Probably Merchant did not admit this side in ancient time or because the ancient writers did not provide her such materials or she partially used the records. Whatever, I may think the lack of evilness in ancient nature would be the part she did not explain clearly. What I hope is that she could if possible provide a more comprehensive view about the image of nature in the ancient time.

Reply to Mirabel’s reflections by Sabbath Sunday

I agree with you Mirabel in your introduction that there is still a challenge in linking human/cultural and natural histories in order to strengthen our perceptions in environmental history as a multidisciplinary field. This is perhaps because individual disciplines are still ‘protective’ and conservative of their fields. However, the real issues being raised in environmental history require scholars and learners like us to make compromises and shed off the old thinking. Carolyn Merchant is a good example of this observation because in her book, she balances natural history with human/cultural history. Her philosophy of nature as a organic whole in the metaphor of a productive ‘woman’ who has been subjected to domination and degradation in time and space calls for natural history analysis. Meanwhile, the history of humans/culture is depicted in the intensification of exploitation of ‘Mother Nature’ through power and technology which she calls ‘mechanistic nature’.

I am attracted to your mentioned ‘partnerships ethics’ which I agree with because it brings worthwhile ideas which have been agreed on by everybody and can stand the test of time. This actually brings us very close to sustainability as you may know that in order to restore/rehabilitate the environment some long time programmes must be drawn basing on ethics and respect for ‘Mother nature’. The main issue here is to ‘live and let live’. If all mankind were in a collective ethical partnership in conservation and sustainable development then nature would be in harmony with humans. This takes us again to the issue of ecofeminism which I think is a call for gender balance in the ‘partnership ethics’ to protect nature. Needless to say, Carolyn Merchant’s approach to this discourse is ecofeminist because she develops her perceptions of nature in the picture of a woman who has been dominated and humiliated who needs to liberate ‘herself’. However, the onus is on all mankind (both women and men) if we have to continue surviving in harmony with nature. In fact the ‘partnerships ethics’ should be gender sensitive and also between the rich and the poor.

Finally, until today the unfavourable and exploitative relationship between the organic and the mechanical world still looms, but if environmental activism/idealism were intensified, of course including ecofeminism; decision making and policy formulation would be redirected for positive results. Thank you Mirabel for raising these issues.

It is not difficult to see how Caroline Merchant’s The Death of Nature has had such a impact. Merchant tackles the formation of a contemporary world-view that has re-conceptualized nature as a machine, rather than a living organism. I was very interested in how Merchant discusses the decline of an organic world-view and an alliance with mechanism, which has become fundamental to the history of conservation and ecology.
My area of research is the Amboseli basin, in southern Kenya, much of which has been encompassed by a national park since the 1960s, though a protected wildlife area since the 1920s. The research agenda on this landscape has been dominated by responsible management of Amboseli’s resources for long-term benefit and sustained yield (though discourses regarding communities who should be benefiting have shifted over the year). Amboseli is a landscape managed in the name of environmental quality, and researchers have used such methods as ecosystem modeling, manipulation, and prediction of outcomes to influence policy and scientific study.
I was so fascinated to read in Merchant’s chapter “The Management of Nature” that the roots for such a utilitarian approach to ecology (as practiced in Amboseli and many sub-Saharan National Parks) were apparent in the ideas of the natural philosophers of Restoration England, who according to Merchant are John Evelyn (1620-1706), John Ray (1627-1705), William Derham (1614-1687), and Raph Cudworth (1617-1688). Merchant talks about how just like in the seventeenth century, today’s managerial ecology subjects nature to rational analysis for long-term planning. She talks about how by reducing the vegetative community to an ecosystem, the anthropomorphic connotations of group sharing give way to physical descriptions and equations associated with quantitative analysis. I had never before really thought about how the rise of modern science has contributed to the Amboseli landscape being viewed as not an organism, but instead a machine.
Merchant also discusses how the reductionist model of the new ecologists which developed in the 1950s has its limits. It is difficult, if not impossible to successfully program contexts and patterns into a computer. Merchant writes that taking components or abstracting data from the environmental context can alter the whole, distorting its behavior (252). She goes on to criticize systems theorists who claim a holistic perspective, because they wrongly assume that they are taking into account the ways in which all the parts in a given system affect the whole. She points out that the gestalt is not mathematized, and that the ways in which each part in any given instant take their meaning from the whole (291).
I think that a huge part of the failure to meet conservation goals in Amboseli stems from something Merchant discusses: “the more open, adaptive, organic, and complex the system, the less successful is the formalism” (291). The kind of ecology embraced in the 1950s, and the conservation pathos really needs to be applied to a closed, precisely defined, and relatively simple system. Unfortunately, sub-Saharan African savannas have never resembled anything of the kind.
Merchant does believe though that ecology as a discipline can change. She calls for an alternative to the managerial ethic that developed out of seventeenth-century mechanism, she welcomes an organismic small-community approach, which relies on human decision makers and participatory democracy rather than on experts (252). Community based conservation theories which became popular in the mid 1990s have really embraced these ideals, though whether or not it works is still very much open to debate.
This got me thinking some more. Merchant writes that ecologists today must really develop holism as their philosophy of nature, as communities that have succeeded in living in equilibrium with their environments have holistic perspectives. Holism was proposed as an alternative for mechanism by J.C. Smuts in 1926. Merchant quotes Smuts who wrote rather beautifully that “Holism is a process of creative synthesis: the resulting wholes are not static, but dynamic, evolutionary, creative… The explanation of nature can therefore not be purely mechanical; and the mechanistic concept of nature has its place and justification only in the wider concept of holism.” Holism in ecology sees nature as cyclical, but the cycle is dynamic and interactive. The parts of the cycle are interlocking, and no elements can be removed, and each part is defined by and dependent on the total context. I think this is still too simplistic and mechanistic a view of nature.
So that is kind of where Merchant lost me. But in keeping with her thread of new interpretations of the past providing perspectives on the present I thought I would explore how 1950’s style new ecology has embraced to varying degrees resilience theory instead of holism. Unlike Merchant’s discussion of holism, resilience theory works with processes of change and nested hierarchies of individual adaptive cycles. Resilience theory seems to me to be the response to critiques of systems theory in ecology, much like holism. Resilience theory is even more radical in its avoidance of easily conceptualized systems than holism.
Personally I am supremely uninterested in fitting my own research into any sort of theoretical framework structured around systems. I understand that they are important for people who are doing a grand synthesis, and working at the top level managing massive systems like those in government, law, conservation, economics etc. I think it is a noble goal to strive for. However, my research focus, at least at this stage in my life is much more biased towards the massive gaps in our knowledge of how the world functions, or has functioned in the past. I feel more comfortable with gathering data before I attempt to create or evaluate models.
Which is why I really enjoyed Merchants book, because I felt she was calling for ecologists to be less preoccupied with “the parts of the machine”. I also really value the book for illustrating that our world-views are biased and shaped by events such as changes in land tenure in Britain, and the industrial revolution (though I think colonialism could have garnered a chapter as well). These are events which happened centuries before I came into being but have influenced to such a profound degree the way I understand the world, and taking some time to reflect on that is wonderful. Thinking about how these events have impacted the management of a landscape in southern Kenya is also pretty fascinating. I feel I have a much richer appreciation for the history of conservation now, and will no longer trace its origins to the establishment of Yellowstone National Park.