And I used to think of Bacon’s death-by-frozen-chicken incident in 1626 as a prime example of noble suffering in the pursuit of scientific knowledge. But now I think I have to root for the chicken.

This is also from Clifford C. Conner’s A People’s History of Science, as I wrote about in my previous entry. Sir Francis Bacon is lauded in history as an early advocate of the scientific revolution of the 17th century who cast a long shadow on how science would be practiced in English society, but his misogyny cast a long shadow on the culture as well:

The patriarchal imagery in Bacon’s writings reflected the social position of women at the beginning of the seventeenth century in England. Bacon invariably portrayed Nature as a female who was hiding her secrets. He wrote of the secrets “locked in nature’s bosom” or “laid up in the womb of nature,” and said she would have to be forcibly penetrated in order to make her give them up.

“I am come in very truth,” Bacon declared, “leading to you nature with all her children to bind her to your service and make her your slave.” We cannot “expect nature to come to us,” he said. “Nature must be taken by the forelock” (grabbed by the hair). It is necessary to “lay hold of her and capture her,” to “conquer and subdue her, to shake her to her foundations.” He cited the way women suspected of witchcraft were tortured by mechanical devices to extract confessions as a metaphor to indicate the methods of inquisition by which he thought Nature’s secrets should be extracted from her:

howsoever the use and practice of such arts is to be condemned…for the further disclosing of the secrets of nature…a man [ought not] make scruple of entering and penetrating into these holes and corners, when the inquisition of truth is his whole object.

Nature, he said, “exhibits herself more clearly under the trials and vexations of [mechanical devices] than when left to herself.”

The sexual imagery of penetrating, torturing, and enslaving Mother Nature should not be dismissed as harmless figures of speech unrelated to the way seventeenth-century English gentleman scientists perceived the world. The subordination of women was an essential component of their worldview, which was entirely committed to maintaining male dominance in a patriarchal society. To believe that the early scientists’ pronouncements were “value-free” with regard to women or any other social matters would be extremely naive.

By the way, for what it’s worth, 99% of the comment spam that we get is for erectile dysfunction medication.

This entry was posted by Kristin A. on Saturday, February 3rd, 2007 at 5:03 pm and is filed under They actually said that?. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.