Raising a Masculine Science:

Women in Science, 16th - 18th Centuries

Fronspiece to Hobbes’ Leviathan, 1651

Early Scienfic Women

Instuons

Ideology & Symbolism Early Scienfic Women

• Émilie du Châtelet • Laura Bassi • Maria Winkelmann

Instuons

• Chrisan Clerical Tradion • Renaissance Salons • Cra Tradions • Scienfic Academies

Ideology & Symbolism

• Women and the Enlightenment • Icons of science • A “masculine science” Émilie du Châtelet, 1706-1749

Émilie du Châtelet. Painng based on one formerly aributed to Maurice Quenn de la Tour. Collecon Marquis de Breteuil. Fronspiece of Voltaire’s Élemens de la Philosophie de Newton (1738), engraved by Jacob Folkema aer Louis- Fabricius Dubourg. Brish Library. “a great man whose only fault was being a woman” -Voltaire

“a woman who… conducts learned controversies on mechanics like the Marquise de Chatelier might as well have a beard”

-Immanuel Kant Laura Bassi, 1711-1778

Laura Bassi as a Petrarchan muse, 1732. From Biblioteca Comunale dellArchiginnasio, Bologna Algaro’s Newtonianism for Ladies, 1737 “I hope to be able to pursue quietly by this means [those studies which I am obliged to profess] with greater freedom. Therefore I have chosen a person who walks the same path of learning, and who, from long experience, I was certain would not dissuade me from it.”

-Laura Bassi, on her marriage Maria Winkelmann, 1670-1720 “There is [in Berlin] a most learned woman who could pass as a rarity. Her achievement is not in literature or rhetoric but in the most profound doctrines of astronomy. …I do not believe that this woman easily finds her equal in the science in which she excels…She observes with the best observers, she knows how to handle marvelously the quadrant and the telescope.” -Leibniz, 1709 Early Scienfic Women

• Émilie du Châtelet • Laura Bassi • Maria Winkelmann

Instuons

• Chrisan Clerical Tradion • Renaissance Salons • Cra Tradions • Scienfic Academies

Ideology & Symbolism

• Women and the Enlightenment • Icons of science • A “masculine science” Chrisan Clerical Tradion, 6th-11th C

Kildare Monastery in Ireland, est. by St. Brigit in 5th C, a “double monastery” for men and women Universies, 12th-15th C

17th Century engraving of University of Paris Bologna, 14th Century “Women should study for their own sake, or, in the best case, for the educaon of their children as long as they are very lile. It is not proper for a woman to be in charge of schools, to socialize with strange men, to speak in public, or to teach at the risk of jeopardizing their own [virtue] and chasty. The honest woman stays at home, unknown to others. In public meengs she should keep her eyes down, be silent and modest, seen but not heard.”

-Vives’ Dues of Husbands, 1529 Renaissance Salons and Noble Networks

Salon Geoffrin University of Paris (mid 16th century) Meeng of Doctors From a medieval manuscript of "Chants royaux". Bibliothèque Naonale, Paris.

Guilds and Cra Tradions

Lucia and Luigi Galvani and assistants in home laboratory Johannes and Elizabeth Hevelius (Polish astronomers) (mid 17th)

Royal Sociees, 17th-18th C

• Royal Society of London, 1662 • Paris Academy of Sciences, 1666 • Berlin Academy of Science, 1700

Brish Royal Society

An 1862 engraving of the Royal Society fellowship of eminent sciensts 300 years of exclusion

• Royal Society of London, 1662 (first woman 1945) • Paris Academy of Sciences, 1666 (first woman 1979) • Berlin Academy of Science, 1700 (first woman 1949)

Early Scienfic Women

• Émilie du Châtelet • Laura Bassi • Maria Winkelmann

Instuons

• Chrisan Clerical Tradion • Renaissance Salons • Cra Tradions • Scienfic Academies

Ideology & Symbolism

• Women and the Enlightenment • Icons of science • A “masculine science” Cartesian feminism

“Thus .. . does it ... fully appear, how falsely we are deem'd, by the Men, [to be] want- ing in that Solidity of Sense which they so vainly value themselves upon. Our Right is the same with theirs to all publick Employments; we are endow'd, by Nature, with Geniuses at least as capable of filling them as theirs can be.... Our Souls are as perfect as theirs, and the Organs they depend on are generally more refined.... I would therefore exhort all my Sex to throw aside idle Amusements, and to betake themselves to the Improvement of their Minds, that we may be able to act with that becoming Dignity our Nature has fied us to ... and compel [Men] to confess ... that the worst of us deserve much beer Treatment than the best of us receive.” -Judith Drake, Essay in Defense of the Female Sex, 1696 Women and the Enlightenment

Abigail Adams: “don’t forget the women” Separate spheres

“Far from blushing at their weakness, they make it their glory. Their tender muscles are without resistance. They pretend to be unable to li the lightest burdens. They would be ashamed to be strong. Why is that? It is not only to appear delicate; it is due to a shrewder precauon. They prepare in advance excuses and the right to be weak in case of need.” -Rousseau, Emile Icons of Science

Hypaa, by Charles William Mitchell Isis in Oedipus Aegyptiacus A “masculine” science Objecvity, science, and masculine codes of honor Fronspiece to Hobbes’ Leviathan, 1651 Early Scienfic Women

• Émilie du Châtelet • Laura Bassi • Maria Winkelmann

Instuons

• Chrisan Clerical Tradion • Renaissance Salons • Cra Tradions • Scienfic Academies

Ideology & Symbolism

• Women and the Enlightenment • Icons of science • A “masculine science” Next Wednesday: Screening of “It Came From Beneath the Sea,” 4-6 pm at Harvard Film Archive

Copyright Sarah Richardson 2015