Woman and Nature

The Roaring Inside Her

Susan Griffin

• Publisher: Open Road Media
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781504012188
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Feminism & Feminist Theory
• Index: Social Sciences

A seminal work of the eco-feminist movement, connecting patriarchal society's mistreatment of women with its disregard for the Earth's ecological well-being Woman and Nature draws from a vast and enthralling array of literary, scientific, and philosophical texts in order to explore the relationship between the denigration of women and the disregard for the Earth. In this singular work of love, passion, rage, and beauty, Susan Griffin ingeniously blends history, feminist philosophy, and environmental concerns, employing her acclaimed poetic sensibilities to question the mores of Western society. Griffin touches upon subjects as diverse as witch hunts, strip mining, Freudian psychology, and the suppression of sexuality to decry a long-standing history of misogyny and environmental abuse. A sometimes aggravating, often inspiring, and always insightful literary collage, this remarkable volume offers sanity, poetry, intelligence, and illumination.

NOTES

In these notes, the following symbols are used for the following texts.

AM	The Architecture of Matter, by Stephen Toulmin and June Goodfield.
CD	Civilization and Its Discontents, by Sigmund Freud.
DC	Darwin’s Century, by Loren Eiseley.
DPT	The Development of Physical Theory in the Middle Ages, by James A. Weisheipl.
DS	The Dangerous Sex, by H. R. Hays.
EV	The Evolution of Physics, by Albert Einstein and Leopold Infeld.
HH	The Horrors of the Half-Known Life, by G. J. Barker-Benfield.
HS	A History of Science, by W. C. Dampier.
MES	Medieval and Early Modern Science, by A. C. Crombie.
MFM	The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science, by E. A. Burtt.
NGI	Not in God’s Image, edited by Julia O’Faolain and Lauro Martines.
NIL	New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, by Sigmund Freud.
PA	Patriarchal Attitudes, by Eva Figes.
PSV	The Physician and Sexuality in Victorian America, by John S. and Robin M. Haller.
SE	“The Spermatic Economy: A Nineteenth-Century View of Sexuality,” by Ben Barker-Benfield.
TH	The Troublesome Helpmate, by Katherine M. Rogers.
TP	The Tao of Physics, by Fritjof Capra.
UE	The Universe and Dr. Einstein, by Lincoln Barnett.

The citations below are provided so that the reader may identify sources for my parody of the patriarchal voice and my telling of the history of patriarchal thought regarding woman and nature. (Here and there, for the sake of humor or style, I take liberty with language, but still the essential arguments of patriarchy are not distorted.) Complete bibliographical information for these citations can be found in the Bibliography.

The notes for the rest of the book are not complete. It would have been tedious and probably impossible to list all the sources used for each section. Those texts which are listed are given to indicate the actual phenomenon or historical occurrences of which the writing is a reflection (for example in “Turbulence,” I cite an article on “The Biosphere” which explores the necessity of the turbulence of the sea to all life), and also to give credit to the thinking of others.

BOOK ONE

Page

7	that matter is transitory and illusory: see The Republic of Plato, “Allegory of the Cave,” trans. Francis Macdonald Cornford.
	Sic transit: see Thomas à Kempis, Imitatione Christi, trans. Anthony Hoskins.
	Matter … allegory for the next: see MES, vol. 1, p. 15. Crombie describes science before the twelfth century: “The study of nature was not expected to lead to hypotheses and generalisations of science but to provide vivid symbols of moral realities.”
	Matter … passive and inert: see Aristotle, The Physics, bk. 7, trans. Wicksteed and Cornford, vol. 2. Everything that is moved, he posits, must be moved by something. See also MES, vol. 1, p. 71. According to Crombie, Aristotle’s idea of substance was the basis of “all natural explanation” from the thirteenth through the seventeenth centuries.
	soul is the cause: see the Platonists of Chartres, as cited in MES, vol. 1, p. 30.
8	the existence of God can be proved: see Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, and HS, p. 86.
	reason exists to: see the “later scholastics,” as cited in HS, p. 86.
	God is unchangeable … Logos: see Origen, as cited in HS, p. 64.
	“And I do not know”: see St. Augustine, De Libero Arbitrio, as cited in MES, vol. 1, p. 14.
	that Genesis: see Thierry of Chartres, De Septem Diebus et Sex Operum Distinctionibus, cited in MES, vol. 1, p. 27.
	“He who does not know mathematics”: see Roger Bacon, Opus Majus, trans. Robert Belle Burke, vol. 1, p. 116.
	all truth: Bacon was influenced by the thought of Pythagoras.
	true explanation: see Robert Grosseteste, Summary of Philosophy, as c...