ABSTRACT
Within an Enlightenment vision of modernity there is an assumption that knowledge is independent, objective and impartial, for the Enlightenment was largely cast within the terms of the scientific revolutions of the seventeenth century. This marked a profound shift1 from an organic towards a mechanistic conception of nature. With the ‘death of nature’ we witness the reduction of nature to matter which is largely to be explained through the discovery of scientific laws. Progress is identified with the control and domination of an external nature just as it is in relation to inner natures. Just as outer nature is there to be controlled, since it is governed through external laws, so our inner natures also have to be controlled if we are to exist as rational selves. This was crucial to Descartes, who prepared the secular terms for the mind-body dualism which has also characterised modernity.
