Book contents
- Frontmatter
- 1 Introduction: The Age of the New
- Part I The New Nature
- Part II Personae and Sites of Natural Knowledge
- 6 The Man of Science
- 7 Women of Natural Knowledge
- 8 Markets, Piazzas, and Villages
- 9 Homes and Households
- 10 Libraries and Lecture Halls
- 11 Courts and Academies
- 12 Anatomy Theaters, Botanical Gardens, and Natural History Collections
- 13 Laboratories
- 14 Sites of Military Science and Technology
- 15 Coffeehouses and Print Shops
- 16 Networks of Travel, Correspondence, and Exchange
- Part III Dividing the Study of Nature
- Part IV Cultural Meanings of Natural Knowledge
- Index
- References
7 - Women of Natural Knowledge
from Part II - Personae and Sites of Natural Knowledge
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2008
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- 1 Introduction: The Age of the New
- Part I The New Nature
- Part II Personae and Sites of Natural Knowledge
- 6 The Man of Science
- 7 Women of Natural Knowledge
- 8 Markets, Piazzas, and Villages
- 9 Homes and Households
- 10 Libraries and Lecture Halls
- 11 Courts and Academies
- 12 Anatomy Theaters, Botanical Gardens, and Natural History Collections
- 13 Laboratories
- 14 Sites of Military Science and Technology
- 15 Coffeehouses and Print Shops
- 16 Networks of Travel, Correspondence, and Exchange
- Part III Dividing the Study of Nature
- Part IV Cultural Meanings of Natural Knowledge
- Index
- References
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Summary
“L’esprit n’a point de sexe” (“the mind has no sex”), declared François Poul-lain de la Barre (1647–1723) in 1673 in an effort to level what he considered “the most remarkable of all prejudices”: the inequality of the sexes. An ardent Cartesian, he set out to demonstrate that the mind – distinct from the body – has no sex. New attitudes toward women, such as those voiced by Poullain and others, raised questions about female participation in natural knowledge, itself a novel enterprise struggling for recognition within established hierarchies. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the relation of natural inquiry to church, king, households (grand and humble), princely coffers, and global and local marketplaces was in a state of flux. Important questions remained to be answered about natural knowledge – its ideals and methods, its proper limits, and who should mold them. The looser institutional organization and openings in attitudes allowed women to enter into natural inquiry through a number of informal arrangements and, in some cases, make important contributions to natural knowledge.
At a time when participation in natural inquiry was regulated to a large extent by social standing, men and women seeking to understand nature came primarily from two distinct social groups: learned elites and artisans (see Shapin, Chapter 6, this volume). The humanistic literati mixed in courtly circles, scientific academies, and salons, while skilled craftsmen and craftswomen fashioned telescopes and astrolabes, made maps, and refined techniques for capturing with exactitude the minutest details of natural phenomena. In addition to these two groups, European peasants, fishermen, women who gathered medicinal herbs, and others served as informants to naturalists.
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- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge History of Science , pp. 192 - 205Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2006
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