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How Did Carolyn Merchant Criticize The Conventional Narrative Of The Scientific Revolution?

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2. Historian Carolyn Merchant has criticized the conventional narrative of the Scientific Revolution by arguing that modern science is not as progressive as it is portrayed; Rather in circumstances it has regressed the course of society and environment. Merchant argues that the technological discoveries of modern science caused harms to the nature as well as introduce sexist terminologies in scientific research. Merchant argues that modern science has been responsible for some of the major problems in human history such as World Wars and Global warming. Chemical and nuclear pollution affected men and women's reproductive system. It shows that scientific discoveries in modern science were not exactly beneficial for society and environment. …show more content…

Nature was seen as a woman needing to be forced to reveal the secrets; this was the motivation behind experimentations in the Scientific Revolution. 12 Merchant argued that the metaphors used for nature and science proved to exclude women from science and encouraged the exploitation of nature. Francis Bacon, as Merchant argues, was a lead character in encouraging the exploitation of nature and sexism while referring to nature. Bacon was seen to use words such as spy on, bind, mold, straiten and constrain for experimentation of nature. `13 Nature was given a female gender in the works of Francis Bacon, who wanted to force the nature to give up its mysteries and related it to the torturing of a witch in medieval times; modern scientific methods seemed to be seen as a masculine symbol of power. This reflects on the argument that Scientific Revolution's research was not politically and socially motivated. There is a question if the methods in modern science were originally 'pure science'? Or do their origins have personal motives behind

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