European Religion & Science
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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 scientif
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inds in the French fabliau she discusses is an imagery that shows the distinction made between men and women:
To "know" women in this standard fabliau paradigm is to define female nature as irrational, pleasure-seeking, and wholly corporeal in opposition to the rationally endowed, thinking male. The fabliau inherits this gendered dichotomy that pits knowledge against pleasure from the Genesis narrative in which the fleshly Eve seduces the first man away from his more rational bond with God (Burns 28).
Burns thus shows that the impetus for the distinctions made between male and female in the Scientific Revolution have a much more ancient origin in the Genesis story.
Merchant shows how the sixteenth century continued to hold up nature as a female and to make use of imagery supporting the idea of nature as inviolate, supportive, and to be protected because she was a living organism. She notes how mining, which involved the rape of the earth and the removal of her bounty, was seen by poets as a sin:
Not only did mining encourage the moral sin of avarice, it was compared by Spenser to the second great sin, human lust. Digging into the matrices and pockets of earth for metals was like mining the female flesh for pleasure. The s
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 2251
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page)
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