Catalogue Number
NMLH.2023.87.3
Object Name
Poster
Title
The mastery of nature: the age of science and reason
Date
1985
Description
The Poster Collective was a collective formed in 1971 at the Slade School of Art,  a group formed to initially produce posters in response to the miners strike and on the wars in both Vietnam and Ireland. It was formed on the basis of developing a coherent visual style, which addressed the political issues of the time. This included the armed struggles against colonialism in Africa, the struggle of women for equal rights and the continuing struggle against racism. The collective was active in the 70's and 80's, producing posters on a wide range of issues, including for educational purposes. The group was not-for-profit and used a variety of hand-printing techniques to create their posters. Between Future and Past
A set of posters looking at the ideological and economic structures underlying the unequal position of women in society at different junctures in history from feudalism to present. It also shows points at which women have fought to change existing social relations. This is the third poster in the series and is titled "THE MASTERY OF NATURE: The Age of Science and Reason" it has an orange and red background with illustrations of Galileo, Francis Bacon, Descartes, and Isaac Newton. The central image is of a man in fancy clothes and a hat saying "Progress... Control... Competition... Exploration... Profit..." The main text of the poster reads: "The scientific revolution of the 17th century took place at a time of intense social and political conflict. It served to form the basis of knowledge for the emerging capitalist system. The view that nature was essentially something governed by magical forces beyond human control, was replaced by a view tha saw nature as an object which worked
rather like a complex clock. As such, the parts and laws of its mechanical working could be discovered through observation and experiment. Once known, nature could be continually mastered and put to use in the rapidly expanding production process. Likeiwse, the workers in this process became extensions of the mechanical workings of the machine, with each task being divided from the rest (the division of labour). Women were almost entirely excluded from the formation of new forms of knowledge. Idead fo women genrrated through the witch purges and religious ideas of women's natural inferiority served as the basis of this exclusion. The developing public world became almost exclusively male. Women were defined as part of the natural world, and, like nature itself, were open to being treated as an object to be dominated. In the modern world, women's rtole came to be defined as being bound to the 'private world' of the home, engaged in housework and childcare." Beneath the text is a quote
from Jean Jacques Rosseau: "The search for abstract and speculative truths, for principles and axioms in science, for all that tends to wide generalisation, is beyond a woman's grasp; their studies should be thoroughly practical."
