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Resemblance must be subjected to proof. Words and language were no longer ‘one of the

figurations of the world’ but rather, ‘it is the task of words to translate the truth’ (Foucault

1989, p. 2). Foucault supposes that this new configuration is called rationalism, and that ‘the

seventeenth century marks the disappearance of the old superstitious or magical beliefs and

the entry of nature, at long last, into the scientific order’ (1989, p. 60). It was not, however,

that ‘reason made any progress: it was simply that the mode of being of things, and of the

order that divided them up before presenting them to the understanding, was profoundly

altered’ (Foucault 1989, p. xxiv).

Enlightenment thinking and its colonial endeavours were part of the making of this

new period. Nature moved from the temper of God into the hands of “man”. This gave rise to

the thinking that “uncultivated land” (by European terms) was available for the taking

(Probyn 2000, p. 104). For example, the myth of terra nullius was founded upon the conceit

not only of empty land but also that indigenous people could not or would not cultivate their

land. This period did not necessarily mark a sever between nature and God/divinity and

certainly the Romantics maintained that nature was a medium of spirituality. In addition,

colonial possession of land was justified in terms of a ‘divine authority’ (Governor Phillip

th
th
Letter to Lord Grenville in Probyn 2000, p. 104). Rather, throughout the 18 and 19
centuries several ideas emerged that shifted agency to within nature itself and developed the

idea that humans, rather than divine entities, have control over nature. Part of the new

ordering of nature was the rise of new disciplines, as well as authoritative figures such as

botanists, agronomists and ichthyologists, who remain important figures in sustainability

practices and debates today. Ordering of the environment took on particular material forms

through collecting, naming and classifying. Natural science studies and the knowledge it

produced began to take disciplinary shape and form institutional spaces. During this period

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