One
phenomenon feminist historians have focused on is the rape and
torture metaphors in the writings of Sir Francis Bacon and others
(e.g. Machiavelli) enthusiastic about the new scientific method.
Traditional historians and philosophers have said that these
metaphors are irrelevant to the real meanings and referents of
scientific concepts held by those who used them and by the public for
whom they wrote. But when it comes to regarding nature as a machine,
they have quite a different analysis: here, we are told, the metaphor
provides the interpretations of Newton's mathematical laws: it
directs inquirers to fruitful ways to apply his theory and suggests
the appropriate methods of inquiry and the kind of metaphyiscs the
new theory supports. But if we are to believe that mechanistic
metaphors were a fundamental component of the explanations the new
science provided, why should we believe that the gender metaphors
were not? A consistent analysis would lead to the conclusion that
understanding nature as a woman indifferent to or even welcoming rape
was equally fundamental to the interpretations of these new
conceptions of nature and inquiry. Presumably these metaphors, too,
had fruitful pragmatic, methodological, and metaphysical consequences
for science. In that case, why is it not as illuminating and honest
to refer to Newton's laws as "Newton's rape manual" as it
is to call them "Newton's mechanics"?
