The Death of Nature by Carolyn Merchant

Author:Carolyn Merchant
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2019-03-25T16:00:00+00:00

The earth, though notwithstanding it yieldeth thus naturally the richest and most precious commodities of all others, and is properly the fountain and mother of all the riches and abundance of the world, partly . . . bred within its bowels, and partly nourished upon the surface thereof, yet is it observable, and found true by daily experience in many countries, that the true search and inquisition thereof, in these our days, is by many too much neglected and omitted.46

John Dury and Samuel Hartlib, followers of Bacon and organizers of the Invisible College (ca. 1645), forerunner of the Royal Society, connected the study of the crafts and trades to increasing wealth. One of Dury’s objectives was to make observations of the inventions and sciences “as may be profitable to the health of the body, to the preservation and increase of wealth by trades and mechanical industries, either by sea or land; either in peace or war.”47

The avowedly Baconian utopia “The Kingdom of Macaria, (1641), attributed to Hartlib but probably written by Gabriel Plattes, an English writer on husbandry and mining, was dedicated not merely to the “knowledge of causes and secret motions of things,” as was the New Atlantis, but to the total agricultural, commercial, and medical improvement of society.48 In Macaria, the king has improved his forests, parks, and lands “to the utmost”—bringing in huge revenues. Owing to the efforts of the council of husbandry, “the whole kingdom is become like to a fruitful garden, the highways are paved, and are as fair as the streets of the city.” Any man who held more land than he could develop and improve was admonished and penalized for each year during which he continued to leave it unimproved, until at last “his lands be forfeited and he banished out of the kingdom, as an enemy to the commonwealth.” A council of fishing was to establish laws “whereby immense riches are yearly drawn out of the ocean,” while the councils of trade by land and sea were to regulate the number of tradespeople and encourage all navigation that “may enrich the kingdom.”

The health of the inhabitants was maintained by a “college of experience, where they deliver out yearly such medicines as they find out by experience.” As members of the Society of Experimenters, all were required to defend any new ideas before a Great Council, which judged the truth or falsity of the discovery. “If any divine shall publish a new opinion to the common people, he shall be accounted a disturber of the public peace and shall suffer death for it.”

Dissent, not only in science but also in religion, would be avoided “by invincible arguments as will abide the grand test of extreme dispute.” Rational scientific judgment would thus overcome the passions and individualism of religious sects and promote health, welfare, and commercial growth in Macaria.

The virtuosi of the Royal Society were interested in carrying out Bacon’s proposal to survey the history of trades and augment their usefulness. The English divine

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