2006/09/01 by Katharine Park · 19 citations
Arts and Humanities · Psychology · #Aesthetics #Ambivalence #Art #Art history #Context (archaeology) #Epistemology #Gender studies #Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes #Historiography #History #History of Science and Natural History #History of science #Law #Literature #Narrative #Philosophy #Political science #Psychoanalysis #Psychology #Religion, Gender, and Enlightenment #Social science #Sociology #Utopia #Variety (cybernetics)
paper · open access · doi:10.1086/508078
published in Isis 97(3), 487-495 (University of Chicago Press)
openalex publication_date 2006/09/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/23
This essay reflects on the ambivalent reception of The Death of Nature among English‐speaking historians of early modern science. It argues that, despite its importance, the book was mostly ignored or marginalized by these historians (as opposed to historians interested in feminist or environmental studies) for a variety of reasons. These included the special role played by the “Scientific Revolution” in the grand narrative that increasingly shaped the historiography of science beginning in the 1940s and the subsequent “hyperprofessionalism” of the discipline as a whole. The essay concludes by placing Carolyn Merchant’s work in the context of feminist utopian writing of the late 1970s and calls for renewed attention to the history of the utopian genre as a resource for teachers and feminist scholars of the history of science.