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The Mind Has No Sex?: Women in the Origins of Modern Science
As part of his attempt to secure a place for women in scientific culture, the Cartesian François Poullain de la Barre asserted as long ago as 1673 that “the mind has no sex.” In this rich and comprehensive history of women’s contributions to the development of early modern science, Londa Schiebinger examines the shifting fortunes of male and female equality in the sphere of the intellect. Schiebinger counters the “great women” mode of history and calls attention to broader developments in scientific culture that have been obscured by time and changing circumstance. She also elucidates a larger issue: how gender structures knowledge and power.
It is often assumed that women were automatically excluded from participation in the scientific revolution of early modern Europe, but in fact powerful trends encouraged their involvement. Aristocratic women participated in the learned discourse of the Renaissance court and dominated the informal salons that proliferated in seventeenth-century Paris. In Germany, women of the artisan class pursued research in fields such as astronomy and entomology. These and other women fought to renegotiate gender boundaries within the newly established scientific academies in order to secure their place among the men of science. But for women the promises of the Enlightenment were not to be fulfilled. Scientific and social upheavals not only left women on the sidelines but also brought about what the author calls the “scientific revolution in views of sexual difference.”
While many aspects of the scientific revolution are well understood, what has not generally been recognized is that revolution came also from another quarter—the scientific understanding of biological sex and sexual temperament (what we today call gender). Illustrations of female skeletons of the ideal woman—with small skulls and large pelvises—portrayed female nature as a virtue in the private realm of hearth and home, but as a handicap in the world of science. At the same time, seventeenth- and eighteenth-century women witnessed the erosion of their own spheres of influence. Midwifery and medical cookery were gradually subsumed into the newly profess ionalized medical sciences. Scientia, the ancient female personification of science, lost ground to a newer image of the male researcher, efficient and solitary—a development that reflected a deeper intellectual shift. By the late eighteenth century, a self-reinforcing system had emerged that rendered invisible the inequalities women suffered. In reexamining the origins of modern science, Schiebinger unearths a forgotten heritage of women scientists and probes the cultural and historical forces that continue to shape the course of scientific scholarship and knowledge.
It is often assumed that women were automatically excluded from participation in the scientific revolution of early modern Europe, but in fact powerful trends encouraged their involvement. Aristocratic women participated in the learned discourse of the Renaissance court and dominated the informal salons that proliferated in seventeenth-century Paris. In Germany, women of the artisan class pursued research in fields such as astronomy and entomology. These and other women fought to renegotiate gender boundaries within the newly established scientific academies in order to secure their place among the men of science. But for women the promises of the Enlightenment were not to be fulfilled. Scientific and social upheavals not only left women on the sidelines but also brought about what the author calls the “scientific revolution in views of sexual difference.”
While many aspects of the scientific revolution are well understood, what has not generally been recognized is that revolution came also from another quarter—the scientific understanding of biological sex and sexual temperament (what we today call gender). Illustrations of female skeletons of the ideal woman—with small skulls and large pelvises—portrayed female nature as a virtue in the private realm of hearth and home, but as a handicap in the world of science. At the same time, seventeenth- and eighteenth-century women witnessed the erosion of their own spheres of influence. Midwifery and medical cookery were gradually subsumed into the newly profess ionalized medical sciences. Scientia, the ancient female personification of science, lost ground to a newer image of the male researcher, efficient and solitary—a development that reflected a deeper intellectual shift. By the late eighteenth century, a self-reinforcing system had emerged that rendered invisible the inequalities women suffered. In reexamining the origins of modern science, Schiebinger unearths a forgotten heritage of women scientists and probes the cultural and historical forces that continue to shape the course of scientific scholarship and knowledge.
368 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1989
About the author
Londa Schiebinger
38 books31 followersLonda Schiebinger is the John L. Hinds Professor of History of Science at Stanford University. She is the author of the award-winning Plants and Empire: Colonial Bioprospecting in the Atlantic World (2004), among many other works.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
March 3, 2016
A very informative book giving a history of women scientists as well as the scientific discussion of gender differences (whether they exist, their origins, and what effects they have or should have on the structure of society) throughout post-medieval Europe. A valuable lesson is that science is seldom as objective and value-neutral as it claims to be, even today. Gender studies as practised today, while it has the aim of uncovering and questioning these biases, is sometimes biased in itself (only in the opposite direction), unfortunately. This, however, doesn't mean its endeavours are unnecessary or that the subject itself is "unscientific", just because some of the methods practiced or assumptions made are. Questioning and scrutiny of the methods of gender studies are of course in order, but I should hope not at the cost of forgetting the aims of the science itself: to investigate gender-biases and -differences in science and society as a whole. Feminism or not, this is about questioning "truths", something that should ALWAYS be encouraged. That's what science is about, damn it!
May 29, 2022
The book has written by Londa Schiebinger who is a Professor of History of Science in 1989 which is the reason that I was drawn to read it in the first place. It is a well-rounded description of a woman's place in the scientific world that starts from the ancient world to our days. To strengthen the messages that she is conveying, she included so many vivid explanations and frontispieces of old books that show the female muses or scientists as prominent figures in the pragmatical/experimental endeavors. I thoroughly enjoyed looking at these frontispieces and finding out their meanings in the book. The book later describes, how the female imagery declined in the philosophical and scientific world left its place for male-dominated/ dull perspectives which further banished the women's involvement in the scientific endeavors. I highly recommend those who are curious about the evolution of women's place in the scientific world. It is enlighting the read about the historical walls of prejudice built against women and find out their reminiscent/artifacts in our modern days.
January 11, 2022
Appropriately infuriating throughout and wonderfully illuminating in the theoretical framework of its final chapters, Dr. Schiebinger’s book is a quiet masterpiece; the full weight of its case creeps up on the reader, culminating in a powerful and thorough indictment. I read Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex earlier this year, and Dr. Schiebinger’s social history provides such an excellent contextualization for that work. This should be required curriculum for high school students; I wish it had been for me.
June 14, 2017
A semi-narrative history of science and how it's just as socially constructed as many other institutions in society. Can be hard to get through after half-way but all exceptionally argued and the framework is spot-on for me.
May 14, 2024
I was assigned this book as a part of Dr. Samuel Huneke's Global History of Sexuality and Gender course that I took in the fall of 2023. I absolutely adored this book. I have always found the histories of scientific sexism and scientific racism to be fascinating issues and this book deals with both of these topics, while also providing profiles of great female scientists during eras in which women's contributions as scientists were denigrated and marginalized because of their sex. The book also contains numerous fascinating and illuminating black and white illustrations, such as that of a female skeleton with exaggeratedly feminine features and female reproductive organs with horns (because ladies having uterine horns used to be a thing people believed). The book discusses how discourses of scientific racism and scientific sexism converged. One particularly interesting example was the widely held belief in scientific circles that women of European descent had wider pelvises than women of African descent to better facilitate giving birth to European male babies with their large European, male brains. Dr. Huneke had previously worked with Londa Schiebinger in his own Ph.D. program and shared a lot of fun facts about her. I loved this book and I know I will return to it again and again as I write and think about the ways in which scientistic discourses have oppressed and continue to oppress marginalized people.
May 23, 2022
I usually don’t write reviews, but have to write here to emphasize how disappointing this book was. A book claiming to trace the origins of women in modern science that focuses exclusively on white women in Europe, as if to suggest that modern science began exclusively in Europe and was practiced only by white women. Was there not science being done in Africa, in Asia, in the Arab world? Were there not women practicing science in these regions of the globe? There were, but this book may have you think otherwise.
February 24, 2021
A great book on many aspects of sex and gender in western science over the centuries.
September 21, 2023
Girl don't tell them we have minds!
April 10, 2013
I found this to be a well rounded history if women and gender in the Scientific Revolution.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews