According to historians of science Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison, the sculpture "blends the ancient trope of the veil of Isis, interpreted as nature's desire to hide her secrets, with the modern fantasy of (female) naturely willingly revealing herself to the (male) scientist, without violence or artifice." According to historian of science Carolyn Merchant, the sculpture is emblematic of transformation of conceptions of nature that came with the Scientific Revolution: "From an active teacher and parent, she [Nature] has become a mindless, submissive body." In a similar vein, biologist and essayist Gerald Weissmann has noted the similarity between Nature's pose in Barrias' sculpture and that of the central figure in the 1876 painting Dr. Pinel Unchaining the Mad by Tony Robert-Fleury, a released inmate from an insane asylum who has "the detached look of the very lost." Literary critic Elaine Showalter imagines a companion piece depicting Science would consist of "a fully clothed man, whose gaze bold, direct, and keen, the penetrating gaze of intellectual and sexual mastery".