The Death of Nature

The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology and the Scientific Revolution
AuthorCarolyn Merchant
LanguageEnglish
SubjectEnvironmental History
Published1980
PublisherHarper & Row
Publication placeUnited States
Media typePrint
Pages348
ISBN0062505955

The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology and the Scientific Revolution is a 1980 book by historian Carolyn Merchant. It is one of the first books to explore the Scientific Revolution through the lenses of feminism and ecology.[1] It can be seen as an example of feminist utopian literature of the late 1970s.[2] The author investigates how a historic shift away from seeing Earth as a living organism, and towards seeing it as a machine, was consequently used to justify the domination of both nature and women.[3] Through the exploration of images and metaphors directly linking nature and women, and changing attitudes towards science and technology, the book purports that what was once a need to exercise constraint transformed into a permission for control and exploitation.[4]

The Death of Nature contributed to the development of ecofeminism in the United States in the 1980s, alongside works by authors such as Margot Adler, Mary Daly, Susan Griffin, Charlene Spretnak and Starhawk.[5] It has had a noted impact in the fields of environmental history, philosophy, and feminism for its "unprecedented scholarly attention" to the historical linkages between the feminization of nature and the naturalization of women.[4]

  1. ^ "The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology & the Scientific Revolution // Review" by Merchant, Carolyn - New Internationalist, Issue 283, September 1996". Archived from the original on 2020-07-27. Retrieved 2020-07-27.
  2. ^ Park, Katharine (2006). "Women, Gender, and Utopia: The Death of Nature and the Historiography of Early Modern Science". Isis. doi:10.1086/508078. ISSN 0021-1753. S2CID 7079025.
  3. ^ Kevin C. Armitage (2000-09-01). "Review of Merchant, Carolyn, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology and the Scientific Revolution". www.h-net.org. Retrieved 2020-07-27.
  4. ^ a b Warren, Karen J. (1998-06-01). "The Legacy of Carolyn Merchant's the Death of Nature". Organization & Environment. 11 (2): 186–188. doi:10.1177/0921810698112005. ISSN 1086-0266. S2CID 145304275.
  5. ^ Epstein, Barbara (1991). Political Protest and Cultural Revolution: Nonviolent Direct Action in the 1970s and 1980s. Berkeley: University of California Press. p. 176. ISBN 0-520-07010-0.