Helpsheet created for Phi 383W, Spring 2002.
Helpsheet on
VANDANA SHIVA:
-- Shiva largely rejects the agenda of science, on grounds that it is patriarchal, capitalist,
and reductionist.
--- She re-examines the origins of modern science in the 15th and 17th centuries,
focusing especially on Bacon (1561-1626), whom she contrasts with the alternative
tradition represented by Paracelsus (i.e. she contrasts Paracelsus'"hermetic" worldview to
Bacon's "mechanical" worldview).
--- She also contrasts the Baconian, mechanical worldview with traditional Indian views
of nature as Pakriti,a feminine principle.
--- Note the confluence of these developments, in the 15th-17th centuries:
~ The rise of modern science, with its replacement of organic metaphors by mechanistic
metaphors. (E.g., earth is no longer Mater [mother] but rather matter.)
~ The rise of capitalism and the exploitation of nature as a resource for human industry.
~ Witch-hunting and violence against women.
~ Rise of nation-state, which steps in to turn the new myths into institutionalized
ideology.
--- Hence we get a variety of forms of reductionist thinking:
~ Organism reduced to mechanism
~ All value reduced to money value
~ Diversity reduced to homogeneity
~ Knowledge reduced to context-free abstraction
--- Contemporary fruits of these processes:
~ "mal-development" posing as economic progress
~ ecological destruction; violence against nature
~ imperialism and violence against subsistence economies
~ violence also against women