Chapter 2

Nature

MIND AND BODY

Conceptions of knowledge have been unwittingly tied up with notions of masculinity ever since the scientific revolutions of the seventeenth century conceived of themselves in terms of a new masculine philosophy. It is because we are used to the claims of science being made in terms of the universal and impartial language of reason that it has been hard to identify what is at issue.

The ‘success’ of scientific endeavours within the physical world has been enough to silence any opposition when it came to applying ‘scientific methods’ more universally to the cultural and human sciences. It has taken the emergence of an ecological movement to warn us of the dangers of a scientific tradition that sees progress as a ...

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