ABSTRACT
When George Sarton, founding father of the History of Science Society, published the Society's first journal in 1913, he named it Isis after the Egyptian mother goddess associated with the annual flooding of the Nile. Nature as object, whether conceived as things or as corpuscles is composed of dead passive matter set in motion by efficient or final causes or the transfer of motion. Stemming from Aristotelian roots as the ideology of objectivity is the association of passivity with femaleness and activity with maleness. The symbolism associated with Nature deified that began with Isis' refusal to disclose her robe in the passage from Plutarch that Sarton quotes underwent significant changes in the Middle Ages and after. Liberation entails recognizing that nature is a real autonomous actor rather than a passive object of experimentation and utility—Isis as active bringer of the renewal of life rather than harborer of Nature's secrets.
