Stanford historian & former CASBS fellow Paula Findlen chats with renowned environmental history, philosophy, & ethics scholar - and two-time former CASBS fellow -- Carolyn Merchant, on the 40th anniversary of her revolutionary book “The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution.”
"Science Turned Upside Down: Carolyn Merchant’s Vision of Nature, 40 Years Later"
"The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution"
"The Anthropocene and The Humanities: From Climate Change to a New Age of Sustainability"
Narrator: From the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University, this is Human Centered. We're bringing you a special episode today in celebration of the 40th anniversary of former CASBS fellow Carolyn Merchant's provocative and inspiring book, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution. The book propelled the topics of environmental history, ecofeminism, and the study of women in science into a broader public discourse. Former CASBS fellow and historian of science professor Paula Findlen recently revisited The Death of Nature in a wonderful piece for Public Books, which we'll link to in the show notes here. In which she says that few books in the history of science have had such a broad and diffuse impact, and few have been generative of so many other fields. Together they reflect on The Death of Nature, not only its content but how it came to be while Merchant was at CASBS, its far-reaching impact, and Carolyn's most recent book, The Anthropocene and the Humanities: From Climate Change to a New Age of Sustainability.
Paula Findlen: Carolyn, this is such a wonderful pleasure to have a chance to talk with you about your book after we had talked about the book when I had this chance to write an essay for Public Books. Right.
Carolyn Merchant: That was a wonderful essay.
Paula Findlen: Oh, thank you. And I have to say, since I'm in my office, I actually am here with my two copies of your book. One is the original one that I bought when I was you know, in 1981 when I was a student, about probably about a year or so after the book came out, so I have that one. But because it was trapped in my office during COVID the editors at Public Books kindly sent me up to my cabin in the Sierras the 40th anniversary copy. So I feel like we have great karma here because we have the bookends of the reason why we're here today, you know, to talk about The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution. So of course, as you know better than anybody, this book recently celebrated its 40th anniversary just a bit ago. And I'm wondering, I mean, could you have ever imagined that it would have this kind of enduring influence and impact? And why do you think that is? Why do people keep coming back to The Death of Nature, in your view as the author?
Carolyn Merchant: Thank you. I'm not sure I could have imagined it at the start. But I think it happened in part because it was the outcome of the movements of the 1960s and '70s, and the book was published in 1980, and those movements were still going on and they're still going on today. And so I think it's still relevant to today, and I think it's partly because of the three words in the subtitle. It's called The Death of Nature, which I write in the new preface, I thought of as I was looking at the rocks in Bryce Canyon and then went to sleep in the camping ground with my two kids afterwards. And it seemed suddenly the title came to my mind because the rocks seemed alive. And rocks used to be alive in the Renaissance and prior to the 17th century when everything became dead and it was the death of nature. And so the fact that the rocks were beautifully colored and such wonderful spires and eroded in beautiful forms, so that's how I came to think of The Death of Nature. But The Death of Nature really describes, I think, the three words in its subtitle, which are women, ecology, and the scientific revolution. Those are still here, but they have changed over time. Women, you know, in the 1970s, '60s and '70s, certainly starting with Simone de Beauvoir in the '50s and Betty Friedan, and then several of the other women At that time, women began to understand not only their own oppression, but they had power and they could get together and they could get together in groups and they could gain power. And so today they've achieved a lot more power. They're members of Congress and governors and so on, and they're professors. We weren't professors back then. And so they've achieved a lot, but there's still a lot— a long way to go. We're still not totally equal to men. But on the other hand, there are new rules and regulations that are set up in the universities where we work that make— try to make sure that we're considered.
Paula Findlen: Well, and now too, you know, just to add into this, Carolyn, right? I mean, women have a rich and long history. I mean, where— I mean, one thing I, I'm tempted to ask you is also, when you started this, you know, were you thinking explicitly, I'd like to write women into the Scientific Revolution, I would like to write ecology into the Scientific Revolution? Because the Scientific Revolution had a lot of wonderful things, but neither women nor ecology immediately come to mind as being central to that story.
Carolyn Merchant: Yeah, exactly. The Scientific Revolution basically didn't include women before Carolyn Merchant. But there were other people, other women who were writing about that period. And so I, because I came out of feminism, I began to think about it. And I also began to think about ecology I mean, women, it was part of my early, earlier life in the '60s and '70s. And I left my husband and came out to California on my own with 2 children. And I found a job at the University of San Francisco. And so I became, as a woman, I became independent and I began to be able to sort, to support myself. I only had a half-time job, but I still was able, because my grandmother had left me a little money, I was able to rent a house and start working. And so that was a big part of what gave me the confidence that I could do things. And ecology was emerging also, especially in the '60s and '70s, and that came forward to me because my first husband had been a botanist. And on our first date, we went out and looked at a prairie, and all of a sudden he took matches out of his pocket and lit fire to the prairie. And so I was aghast, but we drove around in the car and watched it burn, and the prairie was one of the Wisconsin prairies that still had indigenous plants, and it burned the prairie, and it's what the Indians, Native people, used to do. And we drove around and watched it burn, and then the next spring we went out and it was a mass of beautiful prairie flowers because the prairie flowers have growing points that are several inches under the soil. And so when they're burned, then they come back in the spring and start growing again. So that was my first, one of my very first experiences with ecology.
Paula Findlen: Well, and I think that's such a great lesson too about how the things we learn from nature end up changing how we think about history, right? When we come to write that past, am I right in thinking it then led you to be asking these kinds of questions as you looked at nature's past as a historian of science?
Carolyn Merchant: Yes, and because I had been, you know, educated in the importance of ecology, I began to think about what it meant before the Scientific Revolution, which was my passion. I loved the science. I loved Newton and Leibniz. My dissertation was on Leibniz, and my closest friend out here had done his dissertation on Newton, and so we had continual discussions about the two of them. And I love the, the history of science.
Paula Findlen: Well, this is another question I love thinking about with a book that has had such a long life, is that If you were writing "The Death of Nature" today, would you do anything different at this point as an author now?
Carolyn Merchant: Well, I think that the 3 words in the subtitle are still totally relevant. And I might write a book called "The Second Death of Nature," which is upon us. And if we don't do things to help with climate change and with endangered species and ways of conserving water and restoring the prairies and the forests and the oceans, we are going to experience a second death of nature. And we have to do this through laws. We have to pass more laws through Congress. Women can help do that. Women are very sensitive in many ways, not just because of their gender, but because often, like me, of their upbringing. And we can achieve that kind of thing, but we have a lot of work to do because we could begin to see the second death of nature in 30 years by the mid-century or by the end of the century.
Paula Findlen: Yeah, no, this, I mean, this leads me to want to have you talk a bit more about what you've been working on recently, because it seems to me we're headed in that direction now in this part of the conversation. So your new book is entitled The Anthropocene and the Humanities: From Climate Change to a New Age of Sustainability. And what do you want people to take away from this work? And where do you see this fitting into the arc of your career, right, from The Death of Nature now to The Anthropocene and the Humanities?
Carolyn Merchant: Well, The Death of Nature was my first book, which was written at the center at Stanford, and The Anthropocene is my last book, which was also written about 2 or 3 years ago when I was again a fellow at the Center. And so the 2 books bookend my career, and they also bring together the themes. In many ways, The Anthropocene is a continuation of what The Death of Nature argued. The Death of Nature argued that By the 17th century, matter was dead, and you could think of nature as a machine. You could manipulate nature with external forces, and therefore you could control nature. And because you could control it, you were also in danger of destroying it or of not using it in the most ethical way possible. But the Anthropocene— so the death of nature ends in the first 2 or 3 decades of the 18th century. When Leibniz dies in the early 17th century, and then Newton dies after a couple more, another decade and a half. And what happens then? There is great enthusiasm in the Enlightenment about the ideas that have been discovered and the possibility of putting them into action. But then in the late 18th century comes the beginning of the Anthropocene. And that has to do with James Watt's steam engine. And Watt and Boulton created a steam engine in which they could burn coal and they could turn that coal into steam, and the steam could be used to raise ore and minerals from the ground, and then it could be used to create steam engines that would propel steamboats and then ultimately automobiles and airplanes. And all of those things put pollutants into the atmosphere. And so the atmosphere is getting more and more problematic, and also for human health and the health of the whole planet. And so what we need to do is to move toward a new age of sustainability. We need to be able to use renewable energy, windmills, and we need to be able to have solar panels on every roof, and we need to be able to get off the grid and maybe have electric cars that we can power from our own garages and have enough solar power to power that, to keep down the pollutants and to try to keep people healthy and safe.
Paula Findlen: I have, again, as a fellow historian of science, I'm tempted to invite you to think about What Leibniz, who you're one of your favorite authors, right? And what Leibniz, who cared so much and argued so passionately for the living force of nature, what kind of advice do you think he would offer people today if he were here to see the concerns about the second death of nature that you've just raised?
Carolyn Merchant: Yeah, he would say, nature is alive, nature is living, nature is vital. Carolyn Merchant, you're wrong, it's not dead. But on the other hand, he would understand, I think, what had happened. But he would want us to make sure that we save the life that has evolved over these millennia on the Earth, and to save it by conserving areas where nature has not been abused or changed. And restoring it by human actions to actually restore it with an ethic of trying to understand what the ecology is and making, passing laws, and as well as making human actions that would restore what was there. And keeping areas apart so that people can't destroy them or obliterate them. Yeah, no, I agree with you.
Paula Findlen: I mean, Leibniz was a great moral philosopher as well as, you know, a very fine and creative scientific mind. And I think he would indeed want people to rethink the equilibrium between nature and machines, you know, as— and reinsert an ethics, you know, in all sorts of ways. So are there any big unanswered questions related to the things that we've been discussing that you've researched in your career at this point? What are you still hoping to answer?
Carolyn Merchant: Well, I think the main thing is we have to understand what to do next. The big unanswered questions are how are we going to go about changing things and how are we going to understand what was done in the past so that we can go forward and so that we can restore nature. I think we need a new ethic for the future, which I call a partnership ethic. And it's a way for humans to interact with the ecosystems around them and to take what we need, being very careful, and then to renew them and to restore what we have taken, and then to be very careful about non-renewable resources. So my job at Berkeley was in the College of Natural Resources, and so we're all very conscious there of what can happen and what we need to do to make it possible for humans to live on this earth for as many years as possible. We have to understand ecology in greater detail, and we have to start teaching children ecology in the first grade and the second grade and help them to grow vegetables in their backyards and to grow vegetables in the schoolyards, and so that everybody is brought up with not only an appreciation and understanding but also a passion to try to save it and to keep it.
Paula Findlen: Carolyn, what kind of advice would you offer young scholars, you know, a recent PhD in environmental history or history of science or allied fields, about the role that they could play? You know, how should they grow their garden?
Carolyn Merchant: Yes, they should grow their intellectual gardens. History of science is still a For me, it's my major profession, and I moved into environmental history after that, but the two things come together, and the environment and the history of science, I think, could merge more and could invite people to work more carefully on the intersections between the two. And so that we can understand better what it is that we have left behind and what we need to restore and what we need to do for the future.
Paula Findlen: Yeah, no, that's— and I think we definitely see this younger generation interested in that kind of rapprochement between history of science and environmental history, you know, to look at both sides of the story in the way that you've done in your own work. Is there anything else that I haven't asked that you want to talk about right now while we're having this fun conversation?
Carolyn Merchant: Well, I think the main question thing is it was wonderful to be at the Center when I was there in 1978. I was there during the year, uh, calendar year, and while I was at the Center, I had an interview at Cal Berkeley, and I then was able to get the job there at Berkeley. And so that— I thank the Center for giving me that opportunity. And then in 2017, I was again at the Center, and I want to thank the Center for everything that they did then And one of the main differences is they didn't have external phone booths. They had now phones and people had cell phones in their studies. So when I was telling Margaret Levy that when I heard about my offer at Berkeley, that I had had to go outside to step outside my study and pick up the phone on the corridor and answer the phone. And the chair of the department said, "Well, we've been conducting our discussions about the interviews." And he said, "Do you really want this job?" And I said, "Yes, of course I want it." So he said, "Well, where are you going to be in the next 5 minutes?" So I said, "Well, I'll be right here." And so he said, "Well, I'll call you back." And so in another 5 or so minutes, he called back and he said, "We'd like to offer you the job." And so I said, "Well, I'd like very much to accept it." And then of course, We then worked out the details, and he wanted me to start right away. And I said, well, I am— he wanted me to start that fall, but I said I have another several months here at the Center, and I would really like to finish my book, The Death of Nature, if I possibly could. And so they agreed to let me postpone the beginning of my job until the following January. And in December, just as I left the Center, I mailed the final manuscript to Harper San Francisco. And from then on, they started copy editing and putting it into press.
Paula Findlen: Well, and we were also glad that they did. And I have to say that having been a fellow at the Center, I think it was in 2007, 2008, '08. This, for many of us, is part of the aura, right? That, you know, as I was working on my own projects, I was thinking, "And this is where Carolyn Merchant wrote 'The Death of Nature'." It was very inspiring. So I love the opportunity that we can talk about this as well as about your wonderful book. I mean, so we have to both thank CASBS for getting us together to talk about what's happened to our field over, you know, all these decades now. It is a field that is still, as you say, retains at its core many classic issues in the history of science that, that, that still matter. And, you know, here we have to bring in also the fact that Thomas Kuhn was a fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies before either of us, so that was also another part of the aura for me.
Carolyn Merchant: And when I was there, right across the sidewalk from me was Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and she was in my class, and I got to know her slightly. Another person who was there the year I was there was Charles Nider, and he wrote Beyond Cape Horn, and he had taken a voyage around the Cape and he wrote the book there. One of the things about the Center was sitting out in the terrace at tables and getting to know other Fellows and talking about ideas that you didn't even imagine and that sometimes found their way into your work.
Paula Findlen: Exactly, it's that kaleidoscope of disciplines. So it's not just the deep history of what's gone on in your own area that inspires you, it's also the unknown of what else you're gonna encounter when you're there. Well, Carolyn, I wanna thank you so much. This has been enormously fun. Thank you so much for this conversation.
Carolyn Merchant: Well, I'm so honored, Paula, to have talked to you and had you ask me these questions. And I'm so honored to have been interviewed for this by the Center.
Narrator: That was Paula Findlin in conversation with Carolyn Merchant discussing her book, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution. In the show notes, we've linked to Paula Findlin's wonderful essay in celebration of the 40th anniversary of The Death of Nature, and we've thrown in links where you can pick up your own copy as well as a copy of Carolyn's more recent book, The Anthropocene and the Humanities: From Climate Change to a New Age of Sustainability. We've got another episode of the Social Science for a World in Crisis series coming up shortly. And of course, more interviews exploring the work of fellows here at the center. So subscribe in your podcast app of choice so you don't miss those. You can learn more about the center and all the incredible scholars and the work they do here by visiting our website at CASBS. Stanford.edu, or you can always see what we're up to right now on Twitter. We're @CASBSStanford. Until next time, from everyone at CASBS and the Human Center team, thanks for listening.