The vocational imperative

Science is taught to many different people, at many different levels. The exact reasons why particular items of scientific knowledge are taught in particular ways to particular groups of students cannot always be determined, except by reference to traditional practice. For teachers and for pupils, science education serves a variety of purposes that are seldom clearly defined.

But one of the main reasons for including the natural sciences in secondary and tertiary education is that they are a necessary preparation for certain aspects of modern life. Many people need to know certain elements of science to practise their professions; many jobs cannot be satisfactorily performed without some degree of scientific knowledge. Not all science education is strictly vocational. Many school pupils and university students take courses in scientific subjects because they happen to be interested in them, or very good at them – that is for the same reason as they take ‘useless’ subjects such as history or classics. But the provision of the means for acquiring and transmitting scientific knowledge – schools, technical colleges, universities, teachers, lecturers, laboratories, research institutes and so on – would not be supported to the tune of so many thousands of millions of pounds if this were not an essential feature of contemporary civilization. The science that is needed by an advanced industrial society cannot be learnt by watching mother, sitting next to Nelly, watching ‘Tomorrow's World’ or ‘Horizon’ on the TV, reading the newspapers, poring over ‘teach yourself’ books in the evenings, or even by apprenticeship to a practical craft.

The underlying consensus

The last two chapters have been rather abstract. There has been practically no reference to empirical facts, and the line of argument always seemed to stop short of the really interesting questions. What is the point of outlining a purely schematic model of the R & D system?

The very possibility of there being general agreement on such a representation of the social context of science is fundamental for the future of STS education. It is this unacknowledged consensus on the underlying structure of the subject that can bring coherence to the curriculum. This particular model is not necessarily the best possible, but it was worth describing in outline, not because it is sharply disputed, but because there is so little realization of how much, in fact, is implicitly held in common by those involved in the STS movement.

This underlying structure is somewhat more complicated than scientist philosophers or sociologists used to believe. But it cannot be made simpler without grave distortion. To make sense of ‘academic’ science, for example, one must take seriously all three aspects – the psychology of research and invention, the sociology of the scientific community, and the philosophical criteria for objective knowledge. The immense resources needed nowadays for scientific apparatus cannot be ignored. In a wider social context, science is seen to be inseparable from technology, making up an R & D system whose internal management and public policies have profound effects on science itself and in society as a whole.

Unifying STS education

‘Valid’ science is taught as if it were unconnected with the world about it. In reality, it is linked in many ways to society, especially through its technological applications. The basic need in science education is to teach about Science, Technology, and Society, and the various ways in which they interact with one another. At this stage in the discussion let us not argue about whether this is a convenient name for a heterogeneous collection of subjects for teaching and research, or whether it should be regarded as a distinct academic discipline (see chapter 9). All that we can say is that there exists a significant movement for STS education whose main objective is to reform, or improve, or complement conventional science teaching in this general direction.

But what, in fact, does this subject consist of? For many of the advocates of STS education it seems sufficient to point out all the fallacies in the scientific attitude, and to correct them by reference to alternative points of view. Thus, for example, scientific positivism is to be opposed by philosophical arguments such as those of Karl Popper, or the notion of the objectivity of the scientific expert is to be examined critically in the light of historical evidence about technological decisionmaking. Each manifestation of scientism is to be combatted separately, on its own particular front.

Since the movement for STS education is little more than a loose alliance covering a wide spectrum of opinion, this piecemeal approach to the subject is conveniently non-controversial. Each teacher can feel free to draw up his own personal catalogue of horrors and errors, and to expound his own brand of alternative wisdom.

The cycle of innovation

The educational system in Britain – perhaps it is the same everywhere – has a characteristic penetration time of about twenty years. This seems to be about the time it takes for an educational innovation to get properly established. When it is first mooted, by one or two unconventional thinkers, it is dismissed out of hand by the official authorities, who point out how unnecessary, damaging or absurd it would be to, say, raise the school-leaving age, make all secondary education comprehensive, teach children to use electronic calculators, or whatever else new is suggested. It then takes at least a decade of seemingly fruitless debate, shoestring trials, heart-breaking set-backs, inconclusive investigations and other disappointments before the enthusiasts prove their point in principle.

This, in my opinion, is the present state of the movement for STS education. It has been going now for something like ten years, and the pundits of science education are at last beginning to concede that there is a good case for some sort of reform of this kind. Indeed, as is the way with pundits, they can most of them now argue the case for it as if they had never thought otherwise, quite ignoring their previous scornful opposition.

But this is only half way through the cycle of innovation. The debate must now shift from questions of principle to questions of practice – where are the resources, the teachers, the textbooks, to do what we all agree (don't we?) ought to be done?

A diversity of ways

The principal defect of conventional science education is that it gives a very one-sided impression of science and technology. The fundamental objective of STS education is to correct this impression by teaching about science in its social context. By this means it is hoped to broaden the background of students of science and technology, and to prepare them better for their lives as professional workers and as responsible citizens.

But science and technology have many different social aspects and dimensions. The STS theme can be approached in many different ways, according as one emphasizes one or other of these aspects. This is apparent in the great diversity of the curricula that have been proposed and/or taught by various teachers, at various educational levels, in various institutions. To the newcomer to the subject, this diversity is confusing and intimidating. There seems to be no accepted way of going about it, no established curriculum for the teacher to fall back on when inspiration fails.

For the self-confident educational innovator, this diversity is welcome. There is a wealth of opportunity in such a theme, rich in topics and in educational styles. The STS theme has something for everybody, from pedantry to fantasy, from austere abstraction to opulent reality, from aloof analysis to committed concern. It draws on philosophical, sociological, psychological and historical disciplines, as well as all the sciences and technologies. It can be concentrated on cognitive questions, on political issues, on technical capabilities, or on moral judgements.

Hierarchies of representation and rigour

Science derives its practical power and authority from the rigour of its arguments and the hardness of its facts. Science education must transmit these qualities. It is not enough to be more or less acquainted with a scientific idea; to understand its meaning, or to use it correctly, one must grasp it firmly and wield it boldly. Everyone knows that science is ‘hard’ to learn; the metaphor should remind us that it also needs to be hard and sharp at the edge where it is to shape our thoughts and the world about us.

This hardness and sharpness are not superficial. The encyclopaedias and data compilations are, of course, full of ‘hard facts’, like the chemical formula for aspirin, or the spectrum of the light from Betelgeuse or the number of hairs on the abdomen of a particular variety of fruit fly. These are of no more importance, in themselves, than such historical hard facts as the date of the execution of Anne Boleyn or the Russian order of battle at Borodino. The peculiar strength of scientific knowledge is that a great many of the known facts have been organized into deeply structured patterns, from which many unknown events can be confidently inferred. History, too, has its regularities, from which much can be learnt, but there is nothing in the humanities to match the distinct categories, unavoidable necessities and reliable predictions of a well-established scientific discipline.

6.1.1 Why do certain aspects of the notion of woman not change, while others undergo modification during the Renaissance? What are the main differences in the notion of woman which take place during this period? Is there a Renaissance ‘feminist’ movement (that is, a movement to improve the notional status of woman vis-à-vis man), and in what does it consist? The answers offered to these questions are necessarily tentative, as they relate to a study of fragmentary evidence culled from texts widely separated in date and place of publication. They are also offered in the awareness that the notion of woman has a wider context than that which has been considered here, and that it is affected by changes to the notion of ‘human being’ and ‘male’ which merit further investigation.

6.1.2 The main causes for stasis in the notion of woman which emerge from this study are, in different contexts, the desire to foster and preserve the scholastic synthesis, and the influence on thought of the institution of matrimony. The first of these causes is apparent in the interdisciplinary and recuperative features of theological, medical, moral and legal texts, and in the transmission of information between disciplines in the form of commonplaces. For a synthesis to be effective, it must embrace the whole encyclopaedia of knowledge, and must account for all known evidence, using a method adaptable to each individual discipline.

The names of Renaissance writers are given where possible in their vernacular form, except in cases where the Latin form is better known or used in library catalogues (e.g. Cornelius a Lapide, Justus Lipsius). For less well-known figures, the dates of birth and death, where known, have been given, and the date of the earliest recorded edition of their works which I could find. The major authorities consulted for this information have been Zedler's Universallexikon, Hirsch's Biographisches Lexikon der hervorragenden Ärzte, Cosenza's Biographical and bibliographical dictionary of the Italian humanists, R.J. Durling's Catalogue of sixteenth-century printed books in the National Library of Medicine, The Oxford dictionary of the Christian Church, ed. Cross and Livingstone, and C. H. Lohr's alphabetical list of Renaissance Latin Aristotle commentaries (Studies in the Renaissance, XXI (1974), 228–89; Renaissance Quarterly, XXVIII (1975). 689–741; XXIX (1976), 714–45; XXX (1977). 681–741). The first two authorities mentioned here are not wholly reliable, and the dates have been included more to indicate the approximate period of composition and publication of a text than in the belief that they are well established. I have occasionally used standard abbreviations (e.g. PL = Patrologiae cursus completus, series latino, ed. J. P. Migne, Paris, 1844–1904; PG = Patrologiae cursus completus, series graeca, ed. Migne, Paris, 1857–1904). In the case of long quotations, the original text is given in the appendix; the original text of short quotations is given in the endnotes.

2.1.1 It is convenient to examine Renaissance attitudes to woman in theology and mystical writing principally in the light of scholasticism. There are several reasons for doing this: the problems considered and the methods of biblical analysis remain essentially the same for scholastics and Renaissance theologians alike; the influence of the Fathers is strong in both Catholic and reformed writing; furthermore, the scholastics' practice of drawing comparisons with Roman Law, Aristotelian medicine and ethics is continued in the Renaissance. There is no need for the purposes of this study to distinguish between systematic theology (strongly influenced, even in the case of Lutherans, by Aquinas) and biblical commentary, practised widely by theologians of all persuasions. It might be said that post-Tridentine Catholic commentators were more traditional in approach, whereas reformers were more insistent on the ‘claritas Scripturae’, and more concerned with achieving commonsense explanations of obscurities and plain exegesis for the widest possible public, but this is true only in the most general terms. A small difference between Catholic and reformed writers may be discerned by the latters' exclusion from the canon of apocryphal (deuterocanonical) books, especially Ecclesiasticus, which contains much material about women; but this difference is not sufficient to create a deep division of approach. For both Catholic and reformed theologians, the habit of total recuperation of the text (that is, the desire to make every statement fit into a coherent scheme) remains the same.

4.1.1 Any discussion of ethics and its related disciplines in the Renaissance is made difficult by the profusion of relevant texts, and the critical questions to which they give rise. Is there a European tradition of commentary-writing? Is this, if it exists at all, continuous from Aquinas to the seventeenth century? Is it possible to detect the influence of social, political and economic forces in commentaries – in other words, do the Reformation, the variety of forms of government in Europe, contemporary examples of female rule and economic activity by women affect the exegesis? Do Renaissance scholars attempt to see woman as described by Aristotle in historical or sociological terms? To what degree are commentaries affected by new textual discoveries, textual emendation and the study of the Greek as well as the Latin text? What is the relationship between contemporary political and moral philosophy (Machiavelli, Bodin, Montaigne, Vives) and the commentaries of Aristotle's works? To what degree does the content of the commentary vary according to the intended readership and pedagogical demands? It may not be possible in the confines of this investigation to provide satisfactory answers to all, if any, of these questions, but they should be borne in mind, as they form the critical basis of this enquiry.

4.1.2 The practice of producing expositions, commentaries and scholia as adjuncts to the ethical, political and ‘economic’ texts of Aristotle is medieval in origin; indeed, Aquinas's commentaries are still known and quoted with respect in the seventeenth century.

1.1.1 A comprehensive modern history of woman in Renaissance Europe has yet to be written. No doubt, when it appears it will show the evolution of woman's place in society and relate this to suitable models – demographic, anthropological, economic, sociological. Such a study will draw on data from a wide variety of sources, and make use of the information and conclusions of numerous monographs and theses. The present study aspires only to survey a narrow band of the spectrum which such a comprehensive history would need to cover; it does not set out to answer questions about society or demography, but is limited to the sphere of scholarship and scholarly texts. It is intended as a modest contribution not only to the study of attitudes towards woman in the Renaissance, but also to that of its intellectual infrastructure. It attempts to offer tentative answers to the questions: what is the notion of woman to be found in Renaissance texts, and how does it evolve? What is the relationship between the notion of woman and that of sex difference, and how is sex difference related in turn to other differences? Two presuppositions underlie these questions. The first is that there is less change in the notion of woman throughout the Renaissance than intellectual ferment and empirical enquiry of various kinds might lead one to expect. The second is that, at the end of the Renaissance, there is a greater discrepancy between social realities and the current notion of woman than at the beginning.

5.1.1 The primary focus of this investigation is on commentaries connected with academic disiplines; of these law is among the most wide ranging. No attempt is made here to survey systematically this vast field of study; such an undertaking is far beyond the limited scope of this enquiry. Nor will there be any systematic attempt to relate the theoretical status of woman to that which she actually enjoyed. Much work remains to be done in this area, although there exists a useful collection of essays, published under the auspices of the Société Jean Bodin in 1959 and 1962. It is hoped nonetheless that the inter disciplinary nature of the notion of woman and its ramifications in law will emerge from the very brief survey undertaken here.

5.1.2 Nearly all faculties of law on the continent of Europe in the later Middle Ages and Renaissance concern themselves with Civil and Canon Law. The great medieval Italian school is strongly influential from the fourteenth century onwards; it is associated with the names of Accursius, Bartolus and Baldus. Its method – the ‘mos italicus’ – led less to philological accuracy or historical truth than to an unhistorical interrelationship of all manner of law, and to a use of the interpretative methods of contemporary theology. This method was succeeded – although not eradicated – by the ‘mos gallicus’, which has its origins in Italy in the work of Lorenzo Valla (c. 1406–57), but is developed in France by Guillaume Budé (1468–1540), Andrea Alciato (1492–1550) and their pupils.

3.1.1 The subject of woman as seen by physiologists, anatomists and physicians is complex and multifaceted, because of its contiguity (and coincidence) with spermatology, hysterology, the science of the humours and theories of physical change. It is also very closely related to embryology, which exercises a deep influence on medical discussions about woman, and even determines to some degree the series of problems considered by medieval and Renaissance writers. In the excellent accounts of ancient embryology by Erna Lesky and H. B. Adelmann, this fact is pointed out, and the principal questions are listed: what is the origin of semen? do both sexes produce it? which part of the body develops first in the foetus? what determines sex and resemblance of children to parents? These questions give rise to a set of loci classici which are discussed by Renaissance doctors.

3.1.2 Renaissance medicine is distinct from the medieval discipline not only because of the work of humanists who produce the great editions, indices and commentaries of Aristotle, Hippocrates and Galen in the first half of the sixteenth century, but also because of the growth of experimental anatomy. The work of Andreas Vesalius, Gabriele Falloppio and Realdo Colombo is paralleled in the clinical sphere by the producers of consilia (case histories) and great writers on physiology, among them Jean Fernel. Although most doctors refer to ancient sects (the ‘practici’ who follow Averroes, the ‘peripatetici’, the ‘Galenici’, the ‘methodici’, the ‘empirici’), the vast majority of them are, according to Adelmann, ‘thoroughgoing Galenists at heart’, but influenced to different degrees by Aristotle, Avicenna and Hippocrates.

THEOLOGY

Chap. 2n.11

Aquinas, Summa, 1a 92,1: ‘videtur quod mulier non debuit produci in prima rerum productione. Dicit enim Philosophus quod femina est mas occasionatus. Sed nihil occasionatum et deficiens debuit esse in prima rerum institutione; ergo in illa prima rerum institutione mulier producenda non fuit…Per respectum ad naturam particuliarem femina est aliquid deficiens et occasionatum. Quia virtus activa quae est in semine maris intendit producere sibi simile, perfectum secundum masculinum sexum; sed quod femina generetur, hoc est propter virtutis activae debilitatem, vel propter aliquam materiae indispositionem, vel etiam propter aliquam transmutationem ab extrinseco, puta a ventis australibus, qui sunt humidi ut dicitur in libro De generatione animalium [IV.2 [766b 33]].

Sed per comparationem ad naturam universalem femina non est aliquid occasionatum, sed est de intentione naturae, ad opus generationis ordinata. Intentio autem naturae universalis dependet ex Deo, qui est universalis auctor naturae. Et ideo instituendo naturam non solum marem sed etiam feminam produxit.'

Chap. 2n.12

Cajetan, Commentarii in quinque Mosaicos libros, Paris, 1539, p. 25: ‘id quod philosophi tradiderunt de productione mulieris quae est vir laesus, hoc Moses sub metaphora tradidit. Multum tamen interest inter considerationem philosophorum et Mosi: quoniam illi productionem mulieris relative ad sexum consideraverunt, Moses vero productionem mulieris non solum ad sexum sed ad universam vitam moralem tradidit. Et propterea metaphora usus est constante ex multis partibus…Et ut metaphorice somnus [Ade] intelligeretur, describitur Adam dormisse, et tamen non describitur ipsum experge factum fuisse seu evigilasse.