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Katherine A. Walker, Men, Women, and the Birthing of Modern Science, Social History of Medicine, Volume 20, Issue 3, December 2007, Pages 644–645, https://doi.org/10.1093/shm/hkm102
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Extract
In the introduction to Men, Women, and the Birthing of Modern Science, Judith P. Zinsser explains that the work is concerned with two interrelated arguments. The first is that the study of ‘natural philosophy’ evolved into the distinct categories of ‘philosophy’ and modern ‘science’ over the course of the early modern period, but that this process was a complicated transition rather than an abrupt break (p. 7). The other strand of the argument deals with the influence of women in this shift, even though their opportunities diminished over time (p. 7). The editor sets up a sense of change over time by dividing the book into three sections. In the first, ‘Women Natural Philosophers’, are three essays by Susanna Åkerman, Hilda L. Smith and Zinsser, which focus on elite women (Queen Christina, Margaret Cavendish and Emilie de Breutueil) who acted as authoritative natural philosophers. Zinsser's chapter on Gabrielle Emilie le Tonnelier de Breteuil, Marquise Du Châtelet, draws attention to the way that she presented herself as an authority (p. 56). The conclusion to Zinsser's study crystallizes the themes that she fleshes out in the introduction, as Breteuil's writings represent ‘more proof of the continuing role of theological and philosophical speculations in the scientific thought of the first decades of the eighteenth century’ (p. 62) and she stands as evidence of a woman actively contributing to the Enlightenment.