A World Without Women (el. knyga) (skaityta knyga) | David F Noble | knygos.lt

Aprašymas

Why did Western science become a male-dominated enterprise? Philosopher Sandra Harding notes "women have been more systematically excluded from doing serious science than performing any other social activity except, perhaps, frontline warfare." A World Without Women provides a full-scale investigation of the origins & implications of the masculine culture of Western science & technology, & in the process offers some revelations. Noble begins by showing that, contrary to common notions that the culture of learning in the West has always excluded women--an assumption based on the supposed legacy of ancient Greece--men didn't thoroughly dominate intellectual life until the start of the 2nd millennium of the Xian era. At this time science & the practices of higher learning became the province of the newly celibate Xian clergy, whose ascetic culture denied women a place in scholarly enterprise. By the 12th century, papal reform movements had all but swept away the material & ideological supports of future female participation in the world of learning. As never before, women were outside looking in. He further demonstrates that the clerical legacy of a world without women remained mostly intact thru the Reformation, permeating the emergant culture of science. He finally points to a dread of women at the core of modern scientific & technological enterprise, as these disciplines work to deprive half of humanity of its role in production (as seen in the Industrial Revolution's male appropriation of labor) & reproduction (the age-old quest for an artificial womb). It also makes plain the hypocrisy of a community that honors a female scientist with a bronze bust, as England's Royal Society did for Mary Somerville in the mid-19th century, yet denies her entry to its hall. A disturbing book, A World Without Women is essential reading for anyone concerned about the world of science & the world science has made.
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1/A World with Women
Mothers, Daughters, Sisters, Wives
Revivals
2/A World Without Women
Saints: The Ascent of Clerical Asceticism
Fathers: Patristic Anxiety to Papal Agenda
Brothers: The Militarization of Monasticism
Priests: The Monasticization of the Church
Bachelors: The Scholastic Cloister
3/Science
Revelation in Nature
The Scientific Restoration
Women in a World Without Women
Epilogue
Notes
Index
Permissions Acknowledgments