Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-lj6df Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-08T02:46:47.958Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Modeling the Gender Politics in Science

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 March 2020

Elizabeth Potter
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Feminist science scholars need models of science that allow feminist accounts, not only of the inception and reception of scientific theories, but of their content as well. I argue that a “Network Model,” properly modified, makes clear theoretically how race, sex and class considerations can influence the content of scientific theories. The adoption of the “corpuscular philosophy” by Robert Boyle and other Puritan scientists during the English Civil War offers us a good case on which to test such a model. According to these men, the minute corpuscles constituting the physical world are dead, not alive; passive, not active. I argue that they chose the principle that matter is passive in part because its contrary, the principle that matter is alive and self-moving, had a radical social meaning and use to the women and men working for progressive change in mid-seventeenth century England.

Type
Research Article
Information
Hypatia , Volume 3 , Issue 1: Special Issue: Feminism and Science, Part 2 , Spring 1988 , pp. 19 - 33
Copyright
Copyright © 1988 by Hypatia, Inc.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bloor, David. 1982. Durkheim and Mauss revisited: Classification and the sociology of knowledge. Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science 13:267–297.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boas, Marie. 1958. Robert Boyle and seventeenth‐century chemistry. Millwood, NY: Kraus Reprint Co.Google Scholar
Conway, Anne. 1982. The principles of the most ancient and modem philosophy. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.Google Scholar
Doell, Ruth. 1986. Agency and value judgment: A perspective from biology. Forthcoming in Critical issues in feminist inquiry, ed. Hartman, Joan E. and Messer‐Davidow, Ellen. Modern Language Association.Google Scholar
Easlea, Brian. 1980. Witch hunting, magic and the new philosophy: An introduction to debates of the scientific revolution 1450–1750. New Jersey: Humanities Press.Google Scholar
Harding, Sandra and Hintikka, Merrill, eds. 1983. Discovering reality. Boston: D. Reidel.Google Scholar
Hesse, Mary. 1974. The structure of scientific inference. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Hill, Christopher. 1982. The world turned upside down. New York: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
Higgins, Patricia. 1973. The reactions of women. In Politics, religion and the English civil war, ed. Manning, Brian New York: St. Martin's Press.Google Scholar
Hooke, Robert. 1682. A discourse on the nature of comets. In The posthumous works of Robert Hooke. 1705. Ed. Waller, R. London.Google Scholar
Hrdy, Sara Blaffer 1981. The woman that never evolved. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Jacob, J.R. 1972. Journal of European Studies 2:1–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jacob, James R and Jacob, Margaret C. 1980. The anglican origins of modern science: The metaphysical foundations of the whig constitution. Isis 71:251–267.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jacob, Margaret C 1976. The newtonians and the English revolution, 1689–1720. Ithica: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Keller, Evelyn. 1983a. Gender and science. In Discovering reality. See Harding and Hintikka 1983.Google Scholar
Keller, Evelyn. 1983b. Feminism and science. In The signs reader: Women, gender and scholarship, ed. Abel, Elizabeth and Abel, Emily K. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Longino, Helen. 1983. Beyond bad science: Skeptical reflections on the value‐freedom of scientific inquiry. Science, Technology and Human Values 8:7–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Longino, Helen and Ruth, Doell 1983. Body, bias and behavior: A comparative analysis of reasoning in two areas of biological science. Signs 9:206–227.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Merchant, Carolyn. 1979. The vitalism of Anne Conway: Its impact on Leibniz's conception of the monad. Journal of the History of Philosophy Vol. 7.Google Scholar
Merchant, Carolyn. 1980. The death of nature. San Francisco: Harper and Row.Google Scholar
Quine, W.V.O. 1978. The web of belief. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Rattansi, Peter. 1963. Paracelsus and the puritan revolution. Ambix 11:24–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rattansi, Peter. 1968. The intellectual origins of the royal society. Notes and Records of the Royal Society 23:129–143.Google Scholar
Stone, Lawrence. 1977. The family, sex and marriage in England 1500–1800. New York: Harper and Row.Google Scholar
Tanner, Nancy. 1981. On becoming human. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Tanner, Nancy and Adrienne, Zihlman 1976. Women in evolution. Part I. Innovation and selection in human origins. Signs 1:585–608.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thomas, Keith. 1958. Women and the civil war sects. Past and Present 13:42–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yates, Frances A 1964. Giordano Bruno and the hermetic tradition. New York: Vintage.Google Scholar
Zihlman, Adrienne. 1978. Women in evolution. Part II. Subsistence and social organization among early hominids. Signs 4:4–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar