Carolyn Merchant and E. Jane Burns in their respective works discuss the nature of European religion and European science as the two dominant metaphors from the sixteenth through the seventeenth centuries and find that they are fundamentally anti-female and pro-male. One of the reasons for this is a shift in thinking that took place as human beings moved from an acceptance of nature as a power in itself, with nature conceived of as a female entity, a reflection of the goddess that is the earth, and instead turned to a metaphor for controlling nature, with the male as the powerful entity capable of accomplishing this by taming the goddess. We can see these metaphors being revived in our own time with a new emphasis in some quarters--notably from feminist scholars--as to the importance of the goddess in human affairs. The goddess is seen as an entity to be accepted and accommodated. The female metaphor is a metaphor of fecundity, with nature providing, and with the human beings living in harmony with the bounty of nature. The male metaphor, on the other hand, is the metaphor of science, the metaphor of struggle as the human being wrests the secrets of nature away from her and turns them to a different use, a different conception. Science is a matter of exerting control, while nature is a matter of harmony. These metaphors can be seen in different literary expressions of the time and of later periods, and they can also be seen reflected in the development of the scientific method under thinkers like Sir Francis Bacon.
Merchant sees the power of these metaphors in contemporary civilization and notes that today there is a global ecological crisis extending beyond the environment crisis of the 1970s so that it now threatens the health of the entire planet. She also notes how the female metaphor can thus be seen as being both revived by those who are calling for a new accommodation with nature and reviled by those who see nature ...