Synopses & Reviews
Had God intended Women merely as a finer sort of cattle, he would not have made them reasonable. Writing in 1673, Bathsua Makin was one of the first women to insist that girls should receive a scientific education. Despite the efforts of Makin and her successors, women were excluded from universities until the end of the nineteenth century, yet they found other ways to participate in scientific projects. Because these were being carried out inside private houses, rather than in universities or industrial laboratories, experiments often involved the whole family.
As well as collaborating in this home-based research, women corresponded with internationally renowned scholars, hired tutors, and even published their own books. They played essential roles in work that was frequently attributed solely to their husbands, fathers or friends. Women, in this way, have not been written out of the history of science: they have never been written in. If mentioned at all, they appear in subservient roles as helpless admirers or menial assistants. Historians always decide which facts to emphasise, and they generally choose to depict a vision of scientific progress that ignores women's activities.
Review
"Fara's history foregrounds and makes a virtue of its construction: this is one way of telling the story, it declares, but there are others. This method might sometimes be heavy-handed but it is an excellent way of including women without doing men down. Fascinating in its details, Pandora's Breeches is also ground-breaking in the way it reframes the history of science." Judith Hawley, The Guardian
Review
"Warning against refashioning neglected women as martyrs, Patricia Fara neither overstates nor undervalues their contributions, allowing them to remain embedded in the social and domestic structures and beliefs of their time....Pandora's Breeches is vital reading for anyone interested in the rapid growth of Enlightenment science, and the varied ways in which women indisputably affected the course of Western philosophy." Angelique Richardson, the Times Literary Supplement (read the entire Times Literary Supplement review)
Synopsis
Pandoras Breeches explores how women of the 17th and 18th centuries engaged in scientific activity and contributed to its rapid growth. It sets out a new and compelling version of sciences past.
Synopsis
Had God intended Women merely as a finer sort of cattle, he would not have made them reasonable.” Writing in 1673, Bathsua Makin was one of the first women to insist that girls should receive a scientific education. Despite the efforts of Makin and her successors, women were excluded from universities until the end of the 19th century, yet they found other ways to participate in science. Taking a fresh look at history, Patricia Fara investigates how women contributed to scientific progress. As well as collaborating in home-based research, women corresponded with renowned scholars and simplified important texts. Throughout this work, Fara shows how they played essential roles in work frequently attributed to their husbands or fathers. Patricia Fara lectures on at Cambridge University. She is the author of the highly praised work Newton: The Making of Genius.
Synopsis
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