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wanderinggoy's review
1.0
I have to agree with earlier reviews: this book is very dry and poorly written. The author makes very limited use of discourse markers; one dry statement merely follows the other, making it hard to get into the (non-existent) ‘flow’ of the book.
I didn’t finish this book.
I didn’t finish this book.
rebelqueen's review
4.0
Dense history of the way industrialization and early capitalism led to the exploitation of the environment and harsher subjugation of women. Exploration of how nature often has a feminine connotation so it is fine to rape and exploit.
zoe_'s review
Very interesting, I might come back to this someday and read it for fun more thouroughly.
octavia_cade's review
3.0
I'm so glad this is over.
That sounds like a terrible thing to say, because this is in many ways an excellent book. The research is incredibly thorough. And the argument itself is fascinating: that the history of science allows us to track changing attitudes towards nature, and that those attitudes have knock-on consequences for political and economic thought, and that they have particular consequences for the treatment of women. Merchant therefore observes, in frequently exhaustive detail, the similarity of approach to both nature and women during the Scientific Revolution, and how attitudes to the two often moved in synch.
She is very, very convincing, and I would love to have given this book four stars, because the quality of the research deserves that at least. It's just the book is so very, very dull. Well, not dull exactly. It is dry. It took me weeks to get through, a little a day, and even then I had to reread at least half the paragraphs at least twice, because I'd space out halfway through and go looking for water. I realise that academic prose is not easy, and I have certainly inflicted my terrible share of it, but that doesn't make it any better to read. In fact, what made it worse was that every so often there'd be several pages that were genuinely, appealingly readable, just plain readable, and I'd perk up for all of five minutes before being catapulted back into stodge.
It is truly a fascinating argument, buried underneath the soporific prose. If only I could bear to read it again... but I can't. I'm sorry, once is enough.
That sounds like a terrible thing to say, because this is in many ways an excellent book. The research is incredibly thorough. And the argument itself is fascinating: that the history of science allows us to track changing attitudes towards nature, and that those attitudes have knock-on consequences for political and economic thought, and that they have particular consequences for the treatment of women. Merchant therefore observes, in frequently exhaustive detail, the similarity of approach to both nature and women during the Scientific Revolution, and how attitudes to the two often moved in synch.
She is very, very convincing, and I would love to have given this book four stars, because the quality of the research deserves that at least. It's just the book is so very, very dull. Well, not dull exactly. It is dry. It took me weeks to get through, a little a day, and even then I had to reread at least half the paragraphs at least twice, because I'd space out halfway through and go looking for water. I realise that academic prose is not easy, and I have certainly inflicted my terrible share of it, but that doesn't make it any better to read. In fact, what made it worse was that every so often there'd be several pages that were genuinely, appealingly readable, just plain readable, and I'd perk up for all of five minutes before being catapulted back into stodge.
It is truly a fascinating argument, buried underneath the soporific prose. If only I could bear to read it again... but I can't. I'm sorry, once is enough.
gobblebook's review
5.0
This book remains a classic after over 40 years in print, and rightfully so.
Merchant examines how the Scientific Revolution happened hand-in-hand with the rise of capitalism, the justification of ecological exploitation, and further suppression of women's freedom. Before the Scientific Revolution, nature was seen as an organic whole, and humans were an integral but equal part in this organic system. Science focused on studying the relationships between microcosms and macrocosms and understanding the system as a whole. Nature was portrayed as a goddess who gave bounty in exchange for reverence and harmony.
Then the Scientific Revolution began to focus on laws that can be universally applied, and on breaking things down into small components and understanding those components individually. It also focused on how to exploit nature to get the most out of it in the interests of capitalism. In essence, the Scientific Revolution re-imagined the world as a machine rather than a living organism. A machine has predictable behavior, exists to serve man, and has no life or soul. This shift in thinking completely changed the course of history.
Merchant examines in detail how this shift happened, in both scientific thinking and in literature. It's clear from reading this that the Scientific Revolution was the beginning of rampant capitalism, the current climate crisis, and our difficulty with understanding nature as a whole system instead of as a bunch of discrete parts. It's fascinating to think about how different the world would be if these changes hadn't happened.
bedepharoahlunn's review
informative
medium-paced
3.0
It tends to be a bit tautological, and its analysis feels quite dated. That said, still interesting.
christytidwell's review
2.0
This book was quite simply not what I expected.
If you're looking for a history of conceptions of nature explored from a feminist and environmentalist perspective, this book is great; if, however, you are looking for a more theoretical approach to the interconnections between women and nature (as the subtitle seems to promise), this book isn't quite what you're looking for.
It does definitely deal with those interconnections and gives lots of specific examples of how women and nature have been brought together in rhetoric and imagery of texts from the Greeks to the Scientific Revolution, which makes this a great resource, but it doesn't add much to my depth of understanding of this connection.
Furthermore, much less time was spent elaborating these connections than was spent providing very detailed histories of various practices and schools of thought regarding nature (including ecological practices, community structures, scientific debates). It is an extremely well-researched book--there's no escaping that. It's unfortunate, however, that I am not currently interested in the history of this time period.
Given my lack of interest, I didn't give this book a very high rating, but I do recognize its value in making apparent what might not otherwise be apparent (or would not have been apparent in 1980, when this book was first published): our current views of nature and of scientific practice are not ahistorical or purely rational, as we are taught to think they are. They have been formed through a series of very specific historical instances, instances which are inextricably caught up in gender politics, commerce, and forms of government.
If you're looking for a history of conceptions of nature explored from a feminist and environmentalist perspective, this book is great; if, however, you are looking for a more theoretical approach to the interconnections between women and nature (as the subtitle seems to promise), this book isn't quite what you're looking for.
It does definitely deal with those interconnections and gives lots of specific examples of how women and nature have been brought together in rhetoric and imagery of texts from the Greeks to the Scientific Revolution, which makes this a great resource, but it doesn't add much to my depth of understanding of this connection.
Furthermore, much less time was spent elaborating these connections than was spent providing very detailed histories of various practices and schools of thought regarding nature (including ecological practices, community structures, scientific debates). It is an extremely well-researched book--there's no escaping that. It's unfortunate, however, that I am not currently interested in the history of this time period.
Given my lack of interest, I didn't give this book a very high rating, but I do recognize its value in making apparent what might not otherwise be apparent (or would not have been apparent in 1980, when this book was first published): our current views of nature and of scientific practice are not ahistorical or purely rational, as we are taught to think they are. They have been formed through a series of very specific historical instances, instances which are inextricably caught up in gender politics, commerce, and forms of government.
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