Scientific Seduction

2018 ◽  
pp. 76-103
Author(s):  
Tita Chico
Keyword(s):  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Scientific Practice ◽  
Aphra Behn ◽  
Conversion Process ◽  
Learning Science ◽  
Moral Self ◽  
Philosophical Inquiry ◽  
Philosophical Education ◽  
Elizabeth Carter ◽  
Understanding Science

Beginning with Bacon, natural philosophy texts frequently present scientific practice as an erotic quest, establishing a correspondence between sexual seduction and natural philosophical inquiry. Bernard de Fontenelle’s and Francesco Algarotti’s scientific dialogues, translated by Aphra Behn and Elizabeth Carter, respectively, adopt the literary plot of seduction to explain and promote Cartesianism, Copernicanism, and Newtonianism. Both Behn and Carter embrace the suitability of natural philosophical education for women. For Fontenelle and Algarotti, understanding science necessitates new ways of thinking that are possible only with one’s imagination and requires that characters undergo a process of seduction. Learning science is a conversion process, simultaneously rational and affective. Mathematicians, like lovers, are persuasive and persistent, ultimately demanding submission. These scientific dialogues reframe erotic plots to promote intellectual and moral self-improvement, qualities posited as uniquely modern and widely available to the texts’ readers.

Understanding science from the perspective of the sociology of scientific knowledge: an overview

1994 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 245-258 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven Yearley
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
Scientific Practice ◽  
Public Understanding Of Science ◽  
Public Understanding ◽  
Mutual Benefit ◽  
Public Controversy ◽  
The Public ◽  
Sociology Of Scientific Knowledge ◽  
Understanding Of Science ◽  
Understanding Science

In this paper I argue that the analytic perspective known as the `sociology of scientific knowledge' (SSK) provides an appropriate platform for examining issues in the public understanding of science. In particular. I suggest that three pervasive features of academic scientific practice identified by SSK—trust, judgement and long-termism—are central to interpreting difficulties with the `public understanding of science' in many situations of public controversy. The paper concludes by identifying areas where studies in SSK and the public understanding of science would be of mutual benefit.

Wir sind noch nie richtig Tier gewesen

2019 ◽  
Vol 67 (4) ◽  
pp. 634-648
Author(s):  
Mara-Daria Cojocaru
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Philosophical Anthropology ◽  
Early Article ◽  
Complex Interplay ◽  
Moral Self ◽  
Philosophical Inquiry ◽  
Women Philosophers ◽  
Mary Midgley

Abstract Mary Midgley belongs to a small group of most inspiring women philosophers of the 20th and early 21st century. Her impressive oeuvre, characterised by an exceptionally clear and witty style, combines contributions to such different fields of philosophical inquiry as moral philosophy, philosophical anthropology, philosophy of science in general and of biology in particular, as well as philosophy of religion. With her early article “The Concept of Beastliness”, we have something like a germ cell of her philosophy, introducing a range of concerns that will remain central to her work. The commentary focuses on five of them, traces how they show up in later works of Midgley’s, and suggests how they could inform philosophizing about humans and (other) animals today. These are, first, Midgley’s adherence to the concept of ‘human nature’. Second, her insistence that a comparative, ethologically informed perspective on humans and (other) animals helps to refute myths about both the (generically understood) animal and the human animal. Third, her alerting us to the fact that concepts of ‘human nature’ always influence our moral self-understanding. Fourth, her focus on the positive, open instincts in humans like caring, friendship, loyalty, or sociality that exist not only alongside but in a complex interplay with negative, open instincts such as aggression, and the idea that both classes of instincts can be shaped to some extent. And, finally, her focus on the conditions of social life that are important for people to be able to structure their lives in meaningful ways.

scholarly journals Paideia and Cosmopolitan Education: On Subjectification, Politics and Justice

2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 68 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Adami
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Local Community ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
Relational Autonomy ◽  
Moral Self ◽  
Philosophical Inquiry ◽  
Social Community ◽  
Cornelius Castoriadis ◽  
Adriana Cavarero ◽  
Cosmopolitan Education

<em>Can human rights in education enhance students and teachers capacity to reimagine their local community and to rethink the rules and laws that support such a social community? This paper is a political philosophical inquiry into human rights in education, drawing on the work of Hannah Arendt, Cornelius Castoriadis and Adriana Cavarero. By placing learning at the center of political philosophy through the notion of paideia, we need to ask how such an education can look like. According to Castoriadis, society exists only insofar as it is embodied in its social individuals. Society and its individuals are in a constant process of becoming toward relational autonomy that implies a moral self-limitation. At the core of my philosophical inquiry into moral subjectification is the need to re-think human rights and the pedagogical subject in relational terms that imply self-limitation and political engagement in a wider cosmopolitan community</em>

“Such Masculine Strokes”: Aphra Behn as Translator ofA Discovery of New Worlds

1996 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 229-250 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Goodfellow
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Gender Roles ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Academic Community ◽  
Aphra Behn ◽  
Literary Canon ◽  
Scientific Texts ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Female Audience ◽  
The Relationship

Aphra Behn (1640–89) stands simultaneously at the center and on the edge of Restoration literature. As one of its most prolific writers, her success as a playwright was rivaled only by Dryden; however, as a woman, she defied and challenged contemporary ideas about sex, gender, and authorship. Behn was remarkably aware of the ambiguity of her position; a widow, a writer, and a professional, she inhabited and personified the grey areas of seventeenth-century gender roles. For these reasons, her work provides an interesting window through which to view the relationship between gender and literature in the late seventeenth century.The subject of several book-length studies and many more articles, Behn has experienced a renaissance in the academic community during the last ten to fifteen years and has been installed in the seventeenth-century literary canon. Two related aspects of her career however have been overlooked. The first is her interest in natural philosophy, including her criticism of philosophers for not sharing their knowledge. The second aspect is her work as a translator, especially as a translator of scientific texts. Perhaps the enduring perception of translation as an essentially derivative activity has led scholars to dismiss Behn's translations as uninteresting or unoriginal. In so far as natural philosophy was a “masculine” discipline, however, Behn's translations demonstrated her ability to participate in and translate between elite natural philosophy, often written in Latin (the most “masculine” language), and a general or female audience.

James Watt and the Business of Natural Philosophy

2020 ◽  
pp. 163-188
Author(s):  
David Philip Miller
Keyword(s):  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Working Life ◽  
Steam Engine ◽  
Family Education ◽  
Primary Concern ◽  
Philosophical Inquiry ◽  
Problematic Relationship ◽  
James Watt ◽  
Natural Philosophers

This chapter re-evaluates the place of natural philosophical inquiry in Watt’s life and work, and its relationship to his practical projects. It examines how family, education and working life opened up natural philosophical inquiry for him, and shaped his orientation towards it. Watt’s bursts of experimentation on steam and on the nature of airs are described, which led to his claim to have discovered the compound nature of water, and to his work in pneumatic medicine. It is argued that Watt developed a coherent chemistry of heat that has not been fully appreciated and that informed his steam engine improvements in fundamental but indirect ways, providing a framework for understanding its internal processes. Finally, the varied sites of Watt’s inquiries beyond the laboratory are considered, as is his problematic relationship with the community of natural philosophers, showing that the business of natural philosophy was his primary concern.

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