Gary Belovsky <> Eugene Cittadino <> John Haught <> Stuart Pimm <> Larry Rasmussen

Elspeth Whitney

Changing Metaphors and Concepts of Nature
Abstract

     This paper will analyze changing concepts of nature in Western culture from the ancient world through the Scientific Revolution and suggest possible links between these concepts and attitudes toward the manipulation of nature for human use.
Most scholars would agree that by the 18th century a view of nature as a living organic entity, possessing its own "ends" or desires, and expressed in metaphors of the body had largely been replaced by the concept of the universe as a machine, a vast clock work operating according to morally neutral natural laws. This shift in understanding was accompanied both by an increasingly positive evaluation of technology as a field of human endeavor and an increasing reliance on technology and technological invention within the economic, political and social spheres of human life.
     Within this very broad interpretation, however, many questions can be raised. How can these cultural attitudes, expressed almost entirely by an educated elite, be related to every?day technological practices? At what point in the history of the West did the decisive shift in attitudes occur and, finally, what were the underlying causes of the turn toward technology and technological development as a solution to human problems?
     Historians of technology, historians of the Western intellectual tradition and social historians have generally focused on two major areas in addressing these questions: the Judeo?Christian tradition and the development of economic structures, capitalism and the nation?state. This paper will analyze the major interpretative trends over the past forty years with particular attention to the issues raised by Lynn White's thesis that medieval Christianity is primarily responsible for the West's dependence on technology and exploitative attitudes toward nature. Juxtaposed to White's argument will be the work of other historians, such as Carolyn Merchant, George Ovitt and Jacques Le Goff, who see economic and social change as a fundamental element in the development of Western attitudes toward the natural world. Finally, the paper will address how historical interpretations both reflect and shape present?day concerns about the environment.