2006 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary
The Issue of Gender and Scientific Enlightenment in 18th Century Europe
| Project/Area Number |
15510214
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| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
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| Allocation Type | Single-year Grants |
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| Section | 一般 |
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| Research Field |
Gender
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| Research Institution | Nagoya Institute of Technology |
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Principal Investigator |
KAWASHIMA Keiko Nagoya Institute of Technology, Graduate School of Engineering, Associate Professor, 工学研究科, 助教授 (20262941)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2003 – 2006
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| Keywords | Gender / Enlightenment / Mme du Chatelet / Mme Lavoisier / Propagation of Newtonianism / Mme de Genlis / Laula Bassi / Fontenelle |
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| Research Abstract |
The central question of the enlightenment of sciences in eighteenth century tends two aims : 1) to spread the new scientific theories themselves; 2) to weaken the power of church by the spread of scientific thinking to the public. Of cause, there were various positions. Ones hoped merely to abolish "superstitions", not to destroy the Christianity, others wanted to abolish every religion in the enlightenment of sciences. However, it is a fact without doubt that these movements were crystallized as the Encyclopedia of Diderot and d'Alembert.
By the way, what can we consider to bring a viewpoint of gender into the question? When a sender of the enlightenment of sciences is a man and leaders are women, diagram becomes not so simple. In other words, we find the same contradiction in the case of rank. That is, as an author ignores true poverty rank while saying "the human beings," he does not regard female leaders in the same level as men's. A result, the scientific level of their work was limited to a low thing. It is reflection of gender bias of the days.
Then when a sender is a woman, what kind of difference appears? In this case, we should consider both her work and her true life. Because of gender norm, some women behaved so carefully in their work, so without knowing her life we can not understand her aim. In this study, we examined several scientific women. It is find that even if various are contents of their enlightenment (from deism to pious Christianity), every women lived her life against the gender norm of the days. In consequent, a woman participating positively to enlightenment of sciences was considered an existence against a gender
model regardless of their own thought.
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Research Products
(29 results)
