WOMEN SCIENTISTS IN EUROPE
in floods there is a lot of water but most of it is not drinking water
The same thing happens in the network with information you might be browsing for “women scientists in Europe�
•Émilie du Châtelet, •María Winkelmann, • María Gaetana Agnesi, •Laura Bassi, • Mary Fairfax Somerville, • Ada Byron, • Sofia Kovalévskaya , • Hertha Marks Ayrton …
Surely you can find another eight ones. You can think “Many women”. No! You are wrong! They are exceptions. They are far from explaining the reality.
In the 4th century, Augustine of Hippo managed to extend Christian orthodoxy and the church rule to all walks of life in Europe . Therefore, an ideology and a patriarchal social order, which more often than not excluded and despised female scientists for fifteen centuries (!), was implanted. For one thousand five hundred years!
The ultimate reason for this social order is God, who is according to all church denominations (catholic or protestant alike) an almighty man. In honor to his name, they started wars or they burned at the stake those scientists who questioned the word of religion men,
At the end of 19th century and at the begining of the next one, Science managed to distinguish factual knowledge from faith and religious beliefs. Questioning, at the same time, the consequent social order. We owe the action of feminism through these cracks, the fact that we can speak nowadays, almost with all normality, about women scientists in Europe.
PHYSICS Newton demonstrated that the planets and elements of the Universe are attracted because of the gravitational forces. Angels do not push them!
BIOLOGY Thanks to the microscope, bacteria are discovered. They are responsible for diseases and not the
METEREOLOGY Storms, floods and weather are a consequence of natural phenomena. God does not produce them!
GEOLOGY Shocks between plates creates the mountains. God did not create them. And the cause of catastrophes, volcanoes, earthquakes is in Nature. It is not in God’s revenge!
MEDICINE The first dissections are made. Inside the body are the viscera. They did not find the soul!
ANTHROPOLOGY Darwin proved that we are the consecuence of a chain of mutations in the monkey. God did not create us by looking at this own image!
PSYCHOLOGY Freud proposed that we are the consequence of the struggles between sex and desires on the one hand and the norms of the parents (of the environment, of the institutions) of the other hand.
CHEMISTRY In the table there is no divine element!
TECHNOLOGY Edison showed that humans can also create light.
Zepellings and planes allowed humans to fly. With the telegraph, remote information could be sent, ‌.
ASTRONOMY Smart design is questioned. If there is no other, who has designed the intelligent designer?
MA TH S
Every logical system (and therefore every ideological system) has unprovable
PHILOSOPHY Marx made an economic reading of History. God had not chosen the kings. Winds of revolution spread throughout
Anyway, at the end of the 19th century, scientists: -were just men, -they had studies, -they were admired and - most of the time, they worked for the rich.
In fact, women, apart from some rare exception, had no option of receiving higher studies.
A reality of fifteen centuries changed during a single century. Today, in Europe, in the university, men and women have the same opportunities to be scientific.
With regard to the achievement of their rights, without a doubt, the greatest work belongs to women themselves. This does not prevent us from recognizing the role of force in Science when it came to making public the generalized questioning of a belief system that marginalized women.
This has been what we wanted to emphasize in this work: Another good reason for women and Science to go hand in hand!
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