ABSTRACT

The Scientific Revolution was characterized by the transition from the organism to the machine as the dominant metaphor. “Between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the image of an organic cosmos with a living female earth at its center gave way to a mechanistic world view”. Merchant knows that the historical coupling of organism and the feminine is well founded. The original meaning of “nature” is “to give birth,” Latin: (g)nasci, natus, a root in such words as native, nation, natal, navel. The life story is different, because in biology, unlike physics, chemistry, geomorphology, or astronomy, something can be learned. An organism is “informed” about how to make a way through the world, how to cope in its niche. A more considered if Anthropocene future is celebrated in An Ecomodernist Manifesto, advocated by a dozen and a half international environmental leaders.