Pandora's Breeches: Women, Science and Power in the Enlightenment

  • Patricia Fara
Pimlico: 2004. 288 pp. £12.50 1844130827 | ISBN: 1-844-13082-7
Joining forces: Emilie du Châtelet spread Newton's ideas by translating Principia into French. Credit: HTTP://WWW.BRIDGEMAN.CO.UK

Historians of science have been expanding their cast of characters beyond European male élites to include women, non-Europeans and members of the less-privileged classes. A second recent tendency has been to consider scientific ideas as inextricable parts of the social and cultural world in which they are generated. Pandora's Breeches gracefully straddles both movements. Patricia Fara's tactic in this elegant book is to use each of these approaches in the service of the other. Following female protagonists into the world of science during the Enlightenment, Fara enters its social and institutional dimensions, engaging in interpretation, translation and popularization. By focusing on these collective and communicative aspects of scientific work, she uncovers the main areas in which women were central to the pursuit of science.

Beyond their social and institutional roles, women occupied another niche, too. Early modern science involved much collecting and classifying, for which female assistants were often responsible. Pandora's Breeches takes a theme from this phenomenon, presenting itself as a sort of cabinet, a collection of women involved in the sciences. To the taxonomically inclined, a collection irresistibly invites classification, so here is my proposed taxonomy of the book's protagonists.

First come the inspirers: the correspondents and interlocutors. They include Elisabeth of Bohemia, who challenged Descartes to explain how immaterial soul and physical body can interact. There is Elisabeth's niece, Sophie Charlotte, Queen of Prussia, who pressed Leibniz on the problem of evil. And we have Anne Conway, whose theory of the intermingling of spirit and matter, worked out in correspondence with the Cambridge philosopher Henry More, helped shape Leibniz's ontology.

Next are the promulgators: the translators, commentators, illustrators and popularizers. Here we find Emilie du Châtelet, who translated Newton's Principia into French and wrote extensively on newtonian philosophy and its rivals, helping create a tradition of French newtonianism. There is Priscilla Wakefield, whose Introduction to Botany, which presented the linnaean system to women, became a standard text. And let us not forget Marie Paulze Lavoisier, who illustrated the chemistry texts of her husband, Antoine Lavoisier.

But Paulze Lavoisier belongs equally on several other shelves. For example, she should be among the assistants, having worked in Lavoisier's laboratory. Here she is accompanied by Elisabetha Hevelius, who conducted astronomical observations with her husband, Johannes Hevelius. The importance of her collaboration is signalled by the instruments they used, which included a sextant that required two people to operate it.

Finally, we have the institution-builders. Again we find Paulze Lavoisier, who hosted a weekly salon where people discussed scientific matters along with other gossip. She also oversaw Lavoisier's household. Fara compellingly argues that when experimentation took place in private houses, the wives who ran these houses played the role of laboratory managers. In this way, Jane Dee managed John Dee's astrological and alchemical workshops and his staff of assistants.

How shall we classify Mary Shelley? Fara presents her as a commentator and critic, and views Frankenstein as a response to contemporary debates about the nature of life and a warning against the dangers of unbridled experimentalism. These are conspicuously peripheral roles compared with the other figures' scientific activities.

At the opposite end of the spectrum sits another member in a category of her own. Caroline Herschel conducted astronomical observations both with her brother, William Herschel, and also independently. They built massive, powerful telescopes and methodically charted the stars, an enormous labour of observation, calculation and classification. Caroline's own work yielded eight comets and several nebulae and star clusters. She published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society and gained an international reputation, becoming an honorary member of the Royal Astronomical Society, winning various awards, and earning a salary from King George III. An astronomer in her own right, she stands out among the inspirers, promulgators, assistants and institution-builders.

The implications of any collection are best revealed by the entries that are hardest to classify. Shelley and Herschel, from opposite extremes, indicate the risks of including women by fundamentally transforming the story. Fara urges us to stop telling heroic tales of individual brilliance and show the sciences in their true light, as cooperative projects. To be sure, geniuses have never been ‘lone’. But we risk confirming the traditional view that women are capable of collaboration but not brilliance. Does Jane Dee, who oversaw her husband's household, belong in the same collection as Emilie du Châtelet, one of only a handful of people in her generation capable of understanding Newton's Principia?

In other words, does this collection implicitly confirm that modern science is fundamentally a masculine philosophy and rationalism the attribute of masculinity? Or is there a different interpretation? Perusing this rich, beautifully crafted book you realize that, assuming that the sciences require both individual insight and community, even when women were continually assigned the latter, they often contributed the former.