A World Without Women: The Christian Clerical Culture of Western Science

by David F. Noble

In this groundbreaking work of history, David Noble examines the origins and implications of the masculine culture of Western science and technology. He begins by asking why women have figure so little in the development of science, and then proceeds—in a fascinating and radical analysis—to trace their absence to a deep-rooted legacy of the male-dominated Western religious community. He shows how over the last thousand years science and the practice and institutions of higher learning were dominated by Christian clerics, whose ascetic culture from the late medieval period militated against the inclusion of women in scientific enterprise. He further demonstrates how the attitudes that took hold then remained more or less intact through the Reformation, and still subtly permeate out thinking despite the secularization of learning.Noble also describes how during the first millennium and after, women at times gained amazingly broad intellectual freedom and participated both in clerical activities and in scholarly pursuits. But, as Noble shows, these episodic forays occurred only in the wake of anticlerical movements within the church and without. He suggest finally an impulse toward “defeminization” at the core of the modern scientific and technological enterprise as it work to wrest from one-half of humanity its part in production (the Industrial Revolution’s male appropriation of labor) and reproduction (the millennium-old quest for the artificial womb). An important book that profoundly examine how the culture of Western Science came to be a world without women.

Genres: History, Science, Religion, Christianity, Anthropology, Nonfiction, History Of Science

329 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 28, 1992

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.

David Franklin Noble was a critical historian of technology, science and education.

Reviews

[Kurt]

AI is Revealed as Inherently Misogynistic

This book reads like Marx, for those who would avoid it for this characteristic. Like Marx it is filled with profound revelations about the society around us. Not that the powerful are listening. They are too busy making replacements for women.

[Mel]

This book is a bit academic, but it's fascinating. I knew nothing about the history of the early church. I am now flabbergasted that there is even one woman who is catholic. The entire religion was formed in opposition to women. I'll definitely be blogging about this one.

[Sarah]

I expected much more history of science than this book contained. The first 150-200 pages are a history of monasticism and various Christian sects. Interesting, but totally not what I wanted out of it.

[Lolotehe]

A little slow to start, but interesting history.

[Mustafa Alnasery]

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