The Death of Nature

...Such distortion, in our present predicament, gives solace in those quarters where none should be allowed, while it deprives us of ah historical tradition from which we might legitimate a democratic, egalitarian, and communistic (small "c') program...

...Historically, vitalism became democratic only when refined in the crucible of science...

...Letters of not more than 250 or 300 words naturally have a better chance of being published...

...It was then that the first revolutionary generation of pantheists and materialists, intent upon democratizing their society, were defeated...

...Both as metaphor and as a program for action the new mechanical understanding of the universe proclaimed, in Merchant's words, "the new image of nature as a female to be controlled and dissected through experiment [and it] legitimated the exploitation of natural resources...

...tradition - while busying himself in Germany trying to find the most ruthlessly efficient means of extracting metals from the earth...

...One of the other assumptions Kiefer makes is that authentic liturgy is based on anthropology...

...Nonetheless, it is the result of a secularization of the liturgy...

...Merchant correctly perceives that Descartes was not a materialist...

...sentially unbiblical platitudes and rhetoric of humanists who want only a moral carte blanche from us...

...He has translated several of Karl Rahner's works, including Spirit in the World...

...But the route to dialectical materialism lies not in the ancient vitalism as such but through the new science...

...Progressivist brethren are needed to convict the world of its failure because of social sins...

...And that is to encourage the present movement to allow institutions and practices to grow out of the scriptural roots of the liturgy and theology and to base liturgical practices upon communities formed first of all by the authentic preaching of the Gospel...

...That is not simple and cannot be summarized in any liberal fprmula...

...We are presently seeing that on the political front...

...FATHER WILLIAM V. DYCH, S.J., teaches theology at the University of Illinois...

...There is no surer way to build a conformist and theologically vapid church than by such means...

...It is often assumed that since liturgy is ritual one can turn to anthropological literature on ritual behavior to find the basis for a reworking of liturgy for modern men and women who have lost contact with "a liturgy of dynamic power...

...POPE McCORKLE has written on media for Commonweal, the Columbia Journalism Review, Society, and other journals...

...What we say and what we do has "dynamic power" if we follow Jesus to Jerusalem...

...Likewise Hobbes was no pantheist-he repudiated any form of vitalism-but the eighteenth century pantheists and materialists made him, along with that seminal thinker, Spinoza, an important source for social criticism...

...It is equally tragic when our progressivist brethren become confused by the biblical-sounding but esCommonweal welcomes letters on subjects treated in its pages...

...Too often conservative Christians are unduly afraid that their progressivist brothers are pushing for worthwhile changes at too quick of a pace, while progressivist "liberal" Christians often tend to forget to show enough respect for their conservative/ "orthodox" brothers' legitimate concern that changes do not depart from a Christ-directed tradition laboriously shaped by saints through many centuries for the benefit of us, their spiritual descendants on earth...

...I submit that precisely because Commonweal is a magazine of integrity and intelligence the Commonweal staff should not discriminate against proponents of orthodoxy...

...Given current realities where would the issues of justice and peace be under such conditions...

...Their, political and ideological defeat at the hands of scientists like Boyle and Newton did not signal the demise of their republican vision, nor did it lead their eighteenth-century successors to repudiate the mechanical understanding of nature...

...They rightly perceived that the old vitalism, without a scientific understanding of nature, ultimately endorsed feudal and manorial exploitation, priestly authority, and divinely sanctioned monarchy, and not the communalism attributed to it by Merchant...

...Among other things, a scientific understanding of the universe made it possible, but not inevitable, to equate God with nature- and this form of atheism undercut traditional religiosity and the support it could offer absolutist regimes...

...What they abandoned was sectarian radicalism in favor of a cosmopolitan yet republican radicalism which at every opportunity assaulted European absolutism and the power of state-supported churches...

...The aforementioned critics seem to think that Commonweal should always present itself as a * nice and proper journalistic enterprise of the liberal persuasion...

...To choose that route is only to leave the way completely open for a reactionary reversal...

...Most of all, all the brethren must learn to stick together lest the evil in the world play us against one another and bring the gospel to shame...

...In their disparate writings we can find vitalism abundant, but it is coupled with a rigorous analysis of who owns what...

...MARGARET C. JACOB teaches early modern European history at the Graduate Center of The City University of New York...

...Formal democr racy may be the simple answer given by all liberals inside and outside of the church, but that is not the way to build community...

...This book begins with an ideological perspective sorely needed in historical research and writing about the origins of modern science...

...He worked on a network news unit during the 1980 presidential campaign...

...Where the Gospel is preached to the poor and the oppressed, liturgy and doctrine will be profoundly moving, because we will all be sharing in the act of laying down our lives for one another...

...Persuasively, Merchant argues that the new scientists of the seventeenth century-Descartes, Hobbes, Boyle, Newton, for example-took over an essentially neo-Platonic description of nature as female and in need of constant shaping and manipulation...

...he was too concerned with the maintenance of Christian orthodoxy and social order to countenance a philosophical heresy with such dangerous social implications...

...ERNEST Evans is assistant professor in the politics department of The Catholic University...

...The new science was capable of receiving a multitude of ideological interpretations...

...Diderot and d'Holbach were heirs to that critique...

...These successors accepted the discoveries of seventeenth-century science...

...Likewise, conservative brethren are needed to continue to call the world to repent of personal sins, which are often fundamental to social maladies...

...One may agree that the new mechanical philosophy, as articulated by Hobbes and Descartes, rendered nature dead and hence exploitable...

...I am under the impression that Com-monweal's staff consists of people who are not afraid that its readers might be willing to give audience to the other side (e.g., The New Oxford Review) out of fairmindedness...

...There is no way we can understand the origins of Diderot's materialism, or d'Holbach's, and finally that of Marx, without seeing the historically crucial role played by the new science of the seventeenth century...

...Contrary to Merchant's portrait, philosophers like Lady Anne Conway and Leibniz - both vi-talists with a strong interest in science-attacked any form of atheism that permitted nature to possess an independent existence and they were horrified by the social program of the English revolutionaries...

...and ideology that has strongly romantic tendencies actually distorts the past...

...But many of his eighteenth century followers, not least among them Diderot, extracted modern materialism from his writings...

...DAVID K. SEIDmefully pit us against...

...Leibniz, the vi-talist, supported absolute monarchy, while Spinoza, the pantheist, whom Merchant fails to understand and whom she comes dangerously close to dismissing, was a republican...

...But Merchant fails to perceive that they had successors-radicals who by dint of wiser experience accepted the new science and then used it to fashion a new pantheism...

...Please don't disappoint me and thousands of other readers with a narrowness of mind and heart...

...Machado, one of the critics, appealed for rejection on the basis that such ads do not belong in "a magazine of integrity and intelligence...

...The defeated philosophy of "spirit alive in nature" allowed nature to be androgynous, says Merchant, and that necessitated, at least by implication, communal ownership and use of human resources without their wanton destruction...

...Correspondence (Continued from page 514) proposal advanced is one of radical democratization: The choice of ministers through popular acclamation or approval...

...The odd thing about this argument is that instead of being a new reformation of liturgical practice, it follows the same principles as the Romanization of the liturgy in the fifth century...

...GARTH GILLAN Associate Professor, Philosophy Southern Illinois University Pawns & platitudes Vicksburg, Miss...

...But Merchant appears not to know that in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries many radical critics, of the established order found in that very mechanical vision of the universe the foundation for a new dynamic, even dialectical, view of humanity, nature, and history...

...In fact, I am willing to bet that Commonweal staffers take their pride in being a loyal opposition rather than in being simply an opposition for the sake of opposition against the leadership of the church...

...But her analysis ultimately founders in a wealth of historical detail, particularly about seventeenth century England, that has been poorly assimilated...

...If I may comment further, I would like to mention that I pray frequently for reconciliation between the many factions in our troubled church...

...Indeed Leibniz repudiated a contemporary pantheist like John To-land (1670-1722) -one of those inheritors of the mid-century revolutionary REVIEWERS UNA CHAUDHURI teaches English at Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania...

...And are there not signs of that on the ecclesial front...

...Recourse to anthropology will have the same effect...

...But even that sort of natural religion had also to be combined with a concrete political analysis of the origins and nature of economic exploitation...

...Merchant fails to grasp that well-documented historical link because she does not see the importance, comprehensiveness, and durability of the radical tradition initiated by English sectaries during the mid-century Revolution and developed by eighteenth-century radical intepreters of Spinoza, Hobbes, Descartes, and even Newton...

...Merchant sees that the English Revolution (1640-60) was a turning point in the history of Western science...

...The children of light must not be deceived by wolves in sheep's clothing...

...Roman court ritual has over the centuries fostered a public worship...

...Like other contemporary commentators, among them the German philosopher, Heidegger, Merchant perceives that the mechanization of nature also fostered its exploitation...

...There is a way out of the dilemma presented by the failure of our discipline, doctrine, and liturgies to make honest statements...

...But is the history upon which Merchant rests her analysis of the Scientific Revolution essentially correct...

...I like both magazines, and, hence, I was dismayed to see a couple of critics in your "Correspondence" column [July 3 ] urge you to refuse advertising space to The New Oxford Review...

...How sad it is when conservative brethren become the unwitting pawns of political reactionaries whose professed respect for Christian tradition is only pharisaical...

...Her bias in favor of the old vitalismto the point of ignoring the political filiations of its proponents-leads Merchant to imagine that "the most radical analysis of activity in nature" was put forward by Paracelsus, a sixteenth-century medical practitioner and theorist, and two of his seventeenth century followers, the Van Helmonts, and Lady Anne Conway...

...Good ideology does not good history make...

...To the Editors: I am a subscriber to both Commonweal and The New Oxford Review...

...For instance, in The Masculine Birth of Time Francis Bacon (1561 -1626) urged men to interrogate nature, "to bind her to your service and make her your slave...

...DAVID K. SEID...

...Her book argues that the historical triumph of the mechanical conception of nature-the central achievement of the seventeenth-century Scientific Revolution-coincides with the destruction of a more ancient and humane vitalism...

...Strangely enough it has been that most undemocratic of institutions, the papacy, that has kept alive the Gospel's commitment to the poor and the oppressed in the modern world...

...Margaret C. Jacob OUR present system of environmental exploitation, as dictated by the necessities of capitalism, urgently requires that we search for the origins of modern science in relation to the history of Western economic development...

...Her books include The Newtonians and the English Revolution, 1689-1720, and The Radical Enlightenment: Pantheism and Republicanism in the 18th Century...

...Add to this necessary urgency the equally viable feminist perspective which sees in the exploitation of natural and human resources a particularly male drive and we have identified the ideological framework out of which Carolyn Merchant has written The Death of Nature...

...This is simply not historically accurate...

...Both in retrospect and at the time, the most radical analysis of activity (and therefore change) in both nature and society was put forward during the English Revolution by the pantheistic Levelers, the yet-to-be-tamed Quakers, and by that major political theorist, Gerard Winstanley...

...However, I, a theological conservative (if you must use labels), think Commonweal is worth reading because it does not prostitute itself to the type of one-sided propagan-dism and ugly anti-authoritarianism that characterizes some liberal publications...

...Since the nineteenth century the scientific materialism that emerged from the radical reading of the Scientific Revolution has offered the most compelling and coherent programmatic alternative to the very environmental and social exploitation that Merchant seeks to understand historically...

...Their philosophy permeated the clandestine literature of the early Enlightenment and it was coupled with a compelling critique of absolute monarchy, oligarchy, and established religion...

...In the course of the seventeenth century the new science unquestionably destroyed the old vitalism, but has Merchant understood the implications of that intellectual revolution...

...In early modern Europe vitalism was not "inherently anti-exploitative" any more than it is today...

...In her account of the Scientific Revolution, she finds that emergent capitalism, male domination, and ruthless environmental exploitation were historically connected, just as they remain ideologically linked today...

...we must be more wary and distrustful of the causes and isms we would espouse than we are of our brothers whom many of these ideologies shamefully pit us against...