A Science for the Conquest: the Objectification of Life as the Genesis of the Socio- environmental Crisis

Abstract

This article reflects on how knowledge about nature has determined in the last centuries the way in which humanity conceives its relationship with the rest of living and non-living beings. This is a fundamental question at the beginning of this century in which our society – biosphere is going through a deep socio-environmental crisis that has an epistemological root in the modern world view. This conceives a binary separation between human and nature, stripping this of intrinsic values and denaturing the human. An objectification is imposed on the world, which can be translated as reification and which leads us to interpret this vision of the world as ownership over nature under control of a rational being that refers to adult, heterosexual, white males who are owners. Under this process, nature is reduced to land as just a productive factor. This conception was imposed on both sides of the Atlantic since the conquest of America. The question guiding this work refers to the possibility that the way of knowing and interpreting nature in modern science is causally related to the current ecological crisis.