Carolyn Merchant

A festschrift honoring Carolyn Merchant’s work, After the Death of Nature, edited by Kenneth Worthy, Elizabeth Allison, and Whitney A. Bauman, appeared in 2018. This book examines and builds on Carolyn Merchant’s legacy of environmental thought and her critical responses to modern mechanistic and patriarchal conceptions of nature and women, as well as her systematic taxonomies of environmental thought and action. Scholars featured in the book assess, praise, critique, and extend her work to arrive at a more extended understanding of the human place in nature today. The book examines and builds on Carolyn Merchant’s decades-long legacy of innovative environmental thought and her critical responses to modern mechanistic and patriarchal conceptions of nature and women, as well as her systematic taxonomies of environmental thought and action. The ideas hold the potential for healthier and more just relations with nature and among peoples in the future.

Carolyn Merchant has also written more than 100 single-authored research articles. A symposium honoring her work was held in 2018.

The Anthropocene and the Humanities focuses on the original concept of the Anthropocene first proposed by Paul Crutzen and Eugene Stoermer in their foundational 2000 paper. Here they argued that the Anthropocene—The Age of Humanity—was launched in 1766 with the invention of James Watt’s version of the steam engine, making possible steam engines, steam boats, trains, and factories, and ultimately leading to automobiles and airplanes. Using history, art, literature, religion, philosophy, ethics, and justice as the focal points, Merchant traces key figures and developments in the humanities throughout the Anthropocene era and explores how these disciplines might influence sustainability in the next century.

The book has been translated into the following languages: Japanese (1985), German (1987, 1994, 2020), Italian (1988), Swedish (1994), Chinese (1999), Korean (2005), Spanish (2020), French (2020), and Portuguese (2021). There is also a CD collection read by Juliet Jones for HarperAudio (2020).

In 1984, she was a Fulbright Senior Scholar at the University of Umeå in Umeå, Sweden, where she taught in the Department of History of Ideas.

The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology and the Scientific Revolution (1st edition, 1980; 2nd edition, 1990; 3rd edition, 2020) is Merchant's most well-known book. In this book, she emphasizes the importance of gender in the historiography of modern science. Additionally, she focuses her book on "the sexist assumptions that informed sixteenth- and seventeenth-century conceptions of the universe and human physiology." Merchant expresses the importance of gender in early modern writing on nature, and the use of environmental, social, and literary history as a context for the history of science.

In 1979, she became Assistant Professor of Environmental History, Philosophy, and Ethics, at the University of California, Berkeley, Associate Professor in 1980, and Full Professor in 1986. She retired in 2018 and since then has been Professor of the Graduate School at UC Berkeley.

Merchant’s The Death of Nature leaves a scholarly legacy in the fields of environmental history, philosophy, and feminism. The book is considered groundbreaking due to her connection between the feminization of nature and the naturalization of women. Along with this connection, she backs up her claim with historical evidence during the time of enlightenment. However, Merchant was not the first to present ecofeminist ideals and theories. Françoise d'Eaubonne coined the term ecofeminisme to portray the influence of women and their ability to generate an ecological revolution in her 1974 book Le Feminisme ou la Mort. Susan Griffin's 1978 book Woman and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her, which also talks about women and ecology, was written just before the Death of Nature. The Death of Nature is influential despite these earlier works because it is the first interpretation of an ecofeminist perspective on the history of ecology.

In 1971 Merchant was one of the first women to be invited to join the exclusive History of Science Dinner Club at Berkeley.

She was a lecturer in the History of Science, Department of Physics and Natural Sciences Interdisciplinary Program at the University of San Francisco from 1969 to 1974, assistant professor from 1974–76, and associate professor from 1976–78. She was a visiting professor at Oregon State University in the History of Science Department and General Science Department in 1969.

She then went to the University of Wisconsin–Madison to earn an M.A. and Ph.D. in the History of Science. There, she was one of the first to be awarded the E. B. Fred Fellowship, to demonstrate that women could make significant contributions to professional fields. In 1963, Merchant, along with 13 other women out of a pool of 114 applicants, was awarded a three-year grant to fund field non-specific graduate research.

Merchant has been a member of the History of Science Society since 1962. From 1971–1972, she was co-president of the West Coast History of Science Society. She was chair of the Committee on Women of Science from 1973–1974 and co-chair from 1992–1994. She has been a member of the American Society for Environmental History since 1980 and has held positions such as vice-president and president in addition to serving as associate Editor of the Environmental Review and as a member of the Rachel Carson Prize Committee for best dissertation.

In 1954, as a high school senior, Merchant was among the Top Ten Finalists for the Westinghouse Science Talent Search. She received her A.B. in Chemistry from Vassar College in 1958.

Carolyn Merchant (born July 12, 1936 in Rochester, New York) is an American ecofeminist philosopher and historian of science most famous for her theory (and book of the same title) on The Death of Nature, whereby she identifies the Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century as the period when science began to atomize, objectify, and dissect nature, foretelling its eventual conception as composed of inert atomic particles. Her works are important in the development of environmental history and the history of science. She is Professor emerita of Environmental History, Philosophy, and Ethics at UC Berkeley.

In 1887, a year after founding the Audubon Society, explorer and conservationist George Bird Grinnell launched Audubon Magazine. The magazine constituted one of the first efforts to preserve bird species decimated by the women’s hat trade, hunting, and loss of habitat. Within two years, however, for practical reasons, Grinnell dissolved both the magazine and the society. Remarkably, Grinnell’s mission was soon revived by women and men who believed in it, and the work continues today. Spare the Birds! presents the exceptional story of George Bird Grinnell and his writings and legacy. It features Grinnell’s biographies of ornithologists John James Audubon and Alexander Wilson and his editorials and descriptions of Audubon’s bird paintings.