32th EPS Conference'

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Woman Science Thinking about the relationship
between gender and science

• E. Barbato, A Riccio
• Asociazione EURATOM-ENEA sulla Fusione, Frascati,
  Italy
• Universita La Sapienza,Roma, Italy

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Introduction

• The gender ideology, as any other ideology, does
  not enter explicitly in building up scientific
  theories.
• On the contrary, it works indirectly on
• the formation and selection of aims,
• preferred values,
• used methods and preferred explanations.
• It acts trough the culture of the society

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• Therefore we are forced to start from the very
  beginning, asking ourselves very fundamental
  questions, typical of sociology of science that
  puts scientific development in the social and
  political context
• What is science?
• Which was the human perspective in his
  relationship with nature during the history?
• Which is the relation between gender conception
  and knowledge conception during the time?
• Which culture, modern science is based on and
  contributed to form?
• Are new paradigms coming out?

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Main references

• E.F Keller, Science and Gender
• Evelyn Fox Keller is Professor of History and
  Philosophy of Science at MIT.
• Professor Keller received her Ph.D. in
  theoretical physics at Harvard University and
  worked for a number of years at the interface of
  physics and biology.
• J.P. Briggs, F.D. Peat
• Universe beyond the mirror
• Edited by (1998)

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How do we know? What makes knowledge possible
and how do we get knowledge?

• The answers imply an underlying idea of the
  relationship between mind and nature, subject and
  object.
• This idea has changed during the science history
  and is related with different conception of sex
  and gender.

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What is science?

• Science aim is giving name to nature. Theories
  and models can be viewed as more worked out
  names.
• With all these baptisms, scientists build up and
  contain nature.
• But the perspective they use is not chosen by the
  single scientist , it rather belongs to the
  scientific community and to the culture of the
  society.

E.F. Keller a scientist and a social
commentator (living)
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The cultural perspective of the ancient Greece

• Plato though that man and nature
• were symmetric rationality, which
• expresses itself in human mind and in
• the regularities of nature, is what
• allows knowledge

But, as body and its passions bound the mans
mind, nature also sinks into the marsh of
disorder and of obscure forces which are
represented as feminine goddess.
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• To create a knowledge theory
• free from the the dangerous
• power of irrationality,
• and able to allow
• the mind to reach transcendence,
• Plato put the object of the
• knowledge into an ideal world,
• beyond the nature .
• Saul needs wings to fly and discover the ideal
  shapes of the nature

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Eros as a media to get knowledge

• Mind, trapped in the
• body, can achieve
• trueness only when
• guided by Eros.
• As Eros generates love,
• pure love generates
• knowledge.
• The methaphor for the
• knowledge process is the
• platonic omosexual
• relationship.

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The deductive method dominated in the middle age

• In the middle age knowledge
• is deduced from
• the self evident
• Aristotle's statements

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Bacon the origin of modern science
On the contrary Bacon proposes the inductive
method starting from the observation of the
nature. He proposes to put the origin of the
knowledge in the experience,rather than in dogma.
Science does not need wings and feathers, but
weighs and measuraments
Francesco Bacone, Londra, 1561 - 1626
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Bacon the origin of modern science
Our aim is the knowledge of the causes,
movements and internal forces of nature, as well
as the extension of the boundaries of human
power to everithing possibile. (Nuova
Atlantide)
Boyle crop
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Power nature control in Bacons science

• In Bacons concept of science a new methaphor
  is introduced
• Knoledge is an innocent and legiptim marriage
  between mind and nature
• Such a metaphor introduces
• ierarchy, power and interest in the
• knowledge kingdom.
• Im here to lead nature to you and
• subject her to you

Francesco Musante
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Dualism between subject and object in modern
science

• Descartes introduces a separation
• between observer/mind (res
• cogitans) and observable/ nature
• (res extensa ).
• This dualistic attitude, typical of
• mechanistic philosophy, is
• complementary to the
• separation between spirit and
• matter and mind and heart.

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Basis features of modern science

• Knowledge starts from experience
• Nature and mind are separated entities, but
  nature can be known, i.e. there is a
  correspondence between nature and mind.
• The nature obeys to unchanging eternal laws that
  scientists, rational and objective observers,
  discover, according to a mechanical view of nature

I. Newton 1643-1727
The theory in Principia by Newton was the
major success of such a concept of science
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• Newtons results were so impressive that Laplace
  declared that, one day,
• a single equation would have described all
  the physics laws.
• Such view of a mechanical nature and of a pure
  and absolute science, was first criticized by the
  empiricist Hume, who noticed that
• everything derive from the observer perception
• the inductive method does not lead to certainty

David Hume (1711-1776)
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Mach Knowledge, being based on the observer
sensations, is a relationship between sensorial
experiences
Are not bodies that generate sensations, but
sensations all toghether that make bodiesErnst
Mach (1838-1916) Whether behind sensations
there is something objective was classified by
Mach as a metaphisical question and therefore a
not scientiphic one.

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The scientific revolution in XX century

• A new theory, the Quantum Mechanics upset the
  basis of the traditional scientific method
• the separation between observer and observable
  during the measure process (uncertanty principle)
• the deterministic aspect of the nature laws (Q.M.
  provides a probabilistic description).
• At the same time Relativity changed our concept
  of space and time

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Popper Science theories falsification, a deep
revision of the science image and of the
scientific method of building theory

• Popper recognizes that the scientist is not an
  objective and separated observer. On the
  contrary, he interacts with nature.
• The scientist proposes theories, but his duty,
  rather then to demonstrate them, is to falsify
  them by means of crucial tests
• When a theory is shown to fail, must be left or
  deeply revised.

Karl Raimund Popper (1902-1994)
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With this approach, Popper saved the image of a
unique and high level science in comparison to
the other human soft disciplines.
Escher, Evoluzione
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Khun is science socially conditioned?

• In the 60s, T. Khun asked himself not how
  scientists would behave, but how they effectively
  behave during a transition period, i.e., during
  a crisis of the ordinary paradigm
• How does it happen that a new theory affirm
  itself?

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To leave back our models and points of view is
not easy
Khun first observed that scientists, differently
from Popper indications, offer a deep resistance
to consider a theory as wrong, even when
experiments clearly contradict it. Instead of
leaving theories, scientists try to modify them,
keeping , as long as possible, their main frame
and underlying concepts.
Thomas Kuhn (1962)                  The
Structure of Scientific Revolutions
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Is the theory, affirming itself, really the
best?

• Khun comes to the
• conclusion that during the
• scientific revolutions
• theories affirming
• themselves are not
• necessarly the best in
• terms of simple and
• stringent criteria.
• Only much later than the
• new paradigm has
• established, conclusive
• evidences come out.

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Is science independent and progressive?

• Khun work poses an important question mark, never
  considered before, about the independence of
  science and its ability to progress toward a
  complete and precise description of nature,as it
  is.

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Scientists look at the world from a different
point of view

• Kuhn does not object the power of science in
  predicting and explaining reality.
• But he notes that, after a paradigm change, the
  new world vision scientists acquire, has a
  multifactorial basis and it is not only due the
  science internal logics.

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E. Fox Keller Different world interpretations
become possible

• As a consequence, not only different data
  collections, different scientific focal points,
  but also a different knowledge organization and
  world interpretations become possible and
  coherent with what we call science
• E. Fox Keller gave an important contribution
  to understand the relation between gender and
  science and to stress and indicate a new optics
  in science

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The importance of stereotypes in science gender
relationship (F.Keller)
In 70s Evelyn Fox Keller suggested that two
main stereotypes act in the science gender
relationship 1) the coincidence objectivity
masculinity, and subjectivity femininity . 2)
the consideration that science is an unaffective
human activity without personal and emotional
connotations.
This double stereotype kept women far from
science, considered too much masculine, and
shaped science as rigidly objective.
Francesco Musante
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A nature ordered in its complexity instead of a
nature legalized in its simplicity (F. Keller)

• A new concept of science where order takes the
  place of law.
• Order is a larger category which contains not
  only imposed organization models but also the
  spontaneous and self generating ones
• Biology and non linear systems in physics are
  much better represented in such an optics.

The fractal dog
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Barbara McClintock, a case of methodological and
philosophical dissent in the scientific community

• American most distinguished cytogeneticist, won
  Nobel prize in 1983.
• B.M.C. thought that nature complexity overcomes
  any human imagination ability
• One can find everything one can imagine
• Try to insert everything in one dogma, fixed in
  advance, is vain

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Respect difference, without demanding it to
disappear

• Her criticism to the updated research is based
  on what she called a lack of humility
• the researcher attitude should be
• to listen to the matter.
• But instead of that, sometimes he already knows
  the answer and than only look at positive
  results, disregarding, as errors, the negative
  ones
• In this way he looses the possibility to discover
  a multidimensional reality.

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Which is now the relation between mind and
nature? Is it an integrated system?

• We are quite far, these days, from the
• traditional concept of an objective and
• absolute science. Observer and nature
• are deeply connected. We know trough
• our mind a reality, we take part of, that
• we influence and that in turn influences
• us.

One could push this argumentation further and
look at the knowledge process as one where data
and ideas, matter and conscience, observer and
nature act all together in a sort of non linear
interaction, as an integrated system.
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Is our dualistic culture going to be revised?

• The occidental culture
• is polarized in a multiplicity
• of social and conceptual
• dicothomies
• masculine - feminine,
• objective - subjective,
• mind - body,
• idealism-materialism

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Integration is a necessity

• Nowadays we are much more conscious about the
  global connection between societies, cultures,
  human disciplines genders, and we know that our
  fate is related to our ability to recognize,
  respect accept and integrate differences.

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Now relax.. some sentences about science..
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Science andlove

• The normal person approaches closer the essence
  of the scientific process when falls in love
• (Goodfield, 1981)

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Science andcrazyness

• Again I elaborated something, in gravitation
  theory, thatlet me running the risk to be placed
  in a mental home
• Albert Einstein(lletter to Paul Ehrenfest
  1917)

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Science and deviance

• That is not an
• argument to be
• discussed in a scientific
• conference that is a
• matter for police
• Prof. Wilhelm Weygandt, at the Amburg
  Neuropsychiatry conference (1910),
• referring to
• the Sigmund Freud talk
• Dream Interpretation.

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Science andmagic
Of 1 make 10. Leave 2 and 3, and you will be
rich. Trough then 4 away. Of 5 e 6 make 7 and
8, and viceversa. 9 goes with 1, and 10 by
itself The Witchs pitagoric table in
Faust by Goethe.
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This crazy rigmarole is a formula allowing to
pass from the natural 3X3 matrix of the numbers
from 1 to 9, to a magic matrix, where the sum of
the numbers on rows, columns and diagonals is 15.
P. G. Odifreddi La Repubblica, 26.5.05