<img src="http://larvatusprodeo.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/lovelace.jpg" align=left It’s Ada Lovelace Day – a day dedicated to blogging about women in science and technology.
Women’s contributions often go unacknowledged, their innovations seldom mentioned, their faces rarely recognised. We want you to tell the world about these unsung heroines.
This is not really my field, but the woman herself is quite fascinating – and Catriona has some great links about her life and work at Circulating Library. Continuing the local linking theme, The Memes of Production looks at the representation of female scientists in Isaac Asimov’s fiction, concluding that there’s definitely a need for this sort of celebration!
ta, Kim.
Pleasure, Ambi!
Oh yes, Our Lady Of The Calculations. Delightfully and provocatively limned as an broodingly inspirational and flawed éminence grise in the book that nailed steampunk as a genre, written by the two blokes who did the same for cyberpunk.
And attended in the analog pantheon by Saint Grace of the Bugs and Saint Delia of the Sounds.
A case in point, Joy Belsky. Ironically, some of her most significant contributions to savanna ecology are given scant & oblique reference on this memorial webpage.
She was definitely something (what a fecked up family environment!). How frustrating it must be to be born decades ahead of your time without the enabling technology to realise your vision. That goes for Babbage too.
The saddest thing of all about Ada is the programming language that was named after her. It’s like your first name becoming a synonym for cancer.
And speaking of Delia Derbyshire, even though an Australian came up with the score, it was Delia who made and worked the tech to make it sound like this.
Yep, a bloke foeom FNQ and and a slyly charismatic English bluestocking between them came up with one of the most memorable pieces of music in recorded history. Unless yer a Time Lord. In which case you’ve heard all it before.
But you gotta admit that even though the orginal version is now at least 45 years old, it retains a real spooky transcendental charm.
Ada would have tripped the Light Fantastic to it.
An interesting book on this topic is Margaret Wertheim’s “Pythagoras’ Trousers” which suggests [on the back page blurb] ” …that the priestly culture of physics has served throughout the ages as a powerful barrier to the entry of women and that the physicists’ world picture has evolved from a deeply ‘masculine’ perspective.”
There is more of course.
And let us not forget Hedy Lamarr’s vital contribution to frequency hopping and the whole spread spectrum communications tech thang.
The saddest thing of all about Ada is the programming language that was named after her. It’s like your first name becoming a synonym for cancer.
The saddest thing is that ADA is still used as a teaching language in some computer science courses. The horror, the horror.
Hannah’s Dad: interesting.
While I’m not a physicist, my academic discipline (computer science, sort of) is similarly male-dominated, and has its roots in mathematics, physics, and electrical engineering.
Based on my own observations, I’d endorse the first part, but the second part about physicists’ world picture raises the hairs on the back of my neck without further clarification.
What is meant by physicists’ “world picture” in this context?
Incidentally, the IT classes I teach are as male-dominated as ever, despite the valiant efforts of some academics running mentoring schemes and whatnot to try and encourage women into information technology subjects and courses.
While this may sound like a bit of a copout, I reckon it’s far too late by the time students reach tertiary education to try and change the perceptions that discourage girls and women from studying and working in IT. It’s my observation that those who do stick at it tend to be highly technically skilled.
In the area of software testing (my research area) the fundamental bedrock tecnnique taught to every undergraduate is soemthing called coverage testing. My own reading for my PhD thesis turned up something interesting – its co-inventor was a woman (whose name escapes me for the moment). Later, some of the landmark academic papers in the area have been written by women like Elaine Weyuker and Phillis Frankl.
We have two female developers out of eight in our development team and the test team is 2-3 in favour – relatively good I think.
Boss of all things technical, IT and audio, at my work is a lass.
Yes, Hedy Lamarr.
A spectacularly beautiful film star, although in all truth a fairly ordinary actress who was the co-inventor of this amazing stuff.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedy_Lamarr
Her most famous quote is, “Anyone can can look glamorous. All you have to do is stand still and look stupid”.
I liked Ada (never met the person, the programming language). It had all sorts of funky run time checking features to stop you making a complete tit of yourself which was important for defence applications (disclosure – I worked for Honeywell-Bull for a time, the language was developed there and most of the nerds were beaten around the head with a little of it).
As a teaching language, it’s infinitely preferable to C since trying to teach undergrads what a pointer does is an exercise in futility for the Visual Basic generation.
So, quit with the Ada bashing. It’s a pity Stroustrup saw it but didn’t really understand it. Get off my lawn etc.
Thanks Kim – and all above for an enlightening roundup of women in science.
Mrs steveh is an engineer by training and really did face an uphill battle all the way from high-school (Catholic schools did not encourage young ladies to study metal work or engineering science in the day), however uni was apparently much more encouraging with several critical academics making a positive difference.
Out of my customer base – biological sciences are female dominated and traditional physics is still male dominated (pure anecdotal observation). Heavy engineering still has a very blokey culture where females are definitley discouraged and/or ignored.
As for the sciences in general – as Robert says, many of the barriers seem to be from earlier on.
Robert – Hannah’s dad has a point if you look one-two generations back of lecturers – having a Physics degree you can always tell a retired Physics lecturer because when a female of the species walks into a lab they get very strange look on their faces. Some of the accompanying comments could almost come from a 1950′s steelworks
At any rate that attitude seems to be non-existant in the “modern” Physics labs I deal with. The only issue really seems to be attracting more people in general into the sciences but that’s a rant for another day
Final note:
http://cwp.library.ucla.edu/Phase2/Blodgett,_Katharine_Burr@844123456.html
Anyone in the field knows what a Langmuir-Blodgett film is.
Thanks Kim, I’ll raise a glass to Ada this arvo, after I’ve mopped the floors. I’ll also raise my glass to Emilie du Chatelet while I am at it.
I stumbled upon a bio of Emilie du Chatelet (there are a bunch of accents and other wotnots missing from that name) outstanding mathematician of pre revolutionary France, took a Richelieu and the Voltaire for lovers, translated Newton and attempted a synthesis of Newton and Leibnitz. One of the bios I read suggested that her last lover, a poet, deliberately got her pregnant as payment for some slight and she died in childbirth.
One of the best physicists that Australia has ever produced and one of the first people in the world to consider the possibility of radio astronomy, and thereby responsible for what is now a fundamental part of the modern lexicon of science, this brilliant woman was often the only female in her classes at the University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia.
Ruby Payne Scott.
Fiona Hall’s mum! Interesting Caroline, thanks.
Hi all – previous posting has disappeared (not quite sure why?).
Good post Caroline – she was the inspiration for one of my friends to take up Physics in the first place (friend of a friend sort of thing). Can you imagine having someone that good as a maths/science teacher?!
We’re at the Java Generation these days. UWA does still teach and require C as well for some majors/courses.
Before anyone gets too excited about Ada you should read this salon article. There is more, if you look past all the paeans to her – mostly written by teenage girls, or feminist studies departments at universities.
She was obviously smart, but to call her the worlds first programmer etc. is a bit rich. If you take an objective view ( rather than a feminist view ) I think this quote is more apt:
Of course most of the objective stuff about Ada was written by white anglo saxon males so it can’t be true.
Robert @ 10
As well it might. I had a go at “female ways of seeing” in regards to science over at Surfdumb a long time ago and was attacked for belittling “the sisters”. This whole idea that in science something isn’t objectively true, but depends on your gender, is sick.
At a rough estimate (based upon imperfect, 15 year old memory), about a third of my BEng (Mech) course were women. One of them was the only member of our year to graduate with a First (this was in the UK).
As far as I know, they’ve all done pretty well for themselves.
Just an observation and not offered as evidence of anything much.
“Of course most of the objective stuff about Ada was written by white anglo saxon males so it can’t be true.”
Of course, if a white Ango-Saxon make writes it, it must be objective.
“This whole idea that in science something isn’t objectively true, but depends on your gender, is sick.”
Which just goes to show how little you understand about that which, apparently, sickens you.
Yobbo and Craig Mc, ADA was used as a teaching language at Adelaide Uni when I finally finished my degree, and it’s a damn good one. I actually really like it – it’s not as verbose as COBOL, and has the additional advantage that if you get a clean compile, your software is guaranteed to do something sensible (unlike, say, C++ or FORTRAN).
*male* sorry!
About twenty five years ago, a male from the Maths dept wandered into our (largely) female Humanities dept and for some reason thought he would entertain us with the following:
a female physics student (HSC) had recently lodged a complaint with the relevant body. She had put up her hand to ask a question in class and her (male) physics teacher had said something along the lines of “What’s the use me spending time explaining it to you, you’re a female.”
The complaint was dismissed because the body concerned was made up of physics teachers, who all agreed that the statement was fair comment.
There is some ambivalence at times in feminist criticism of science between institutional and conceptual critique. I think the two kinds of critique can be distinguished to a degree, and usefully so. Obviously the institutional is the most persuasive for most, because there is a well-documented history of institutional exclusion, devaluation etc, but I think it follows that there is some basis for conceptual critique to at least be considered. I would emphasise, also, that feminist thinking on science, even at its most contentious, is far from reducible to D Baggins’ characterisation.
That’s horrible mehitabel, I’d guess that attitude is held by less than 5% of teachers and lecturers now. University Physics Depts became desperate for students and were happy to take girls; Engineering Depts emncouraged girls to enrol, as did the (former name) Institute of Engineers Australia.
It’s a common observation that Science intakes from Year 12 masy be roughly 50:50 (male/female), and become lopsided only at the point where the “life sciences” separate from the “physical/mathematical sciences”.
Biology, biochemistry, microbiology, environmental science MUCH more favoured by women*.
Physics, physical chemistry, advanced maths, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, aeronautics etc more favoured by men, but substantial numbers of women succeeding in many of those courses.
Attitudes held by professionals and fuddy-duddy lecturers notwithstanding, “gender streaming” by parental or school expectations seems weaker now.
Thank Emmy we’re not in the 1960s when girls were restricted to secretarial/nursing/teaching courses. Emmy Noether’s contributions HAVE been widely recognised:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmy_Noether
* who can say why? I don’t think it matters too much, as long as choices are available.
klaus k: fair enough, but I would have to say that such “conceptual critiques” of science (at least as far as I understand them) have most to say about the social-sciency end of science (psychology and so on) and very little to say about physics.
That its practitioners were undoubtedly sexist arseholes doesn’t invalidate the extraordinary predictive powers of the models physicists have built over the past few centuries.
Yes the Dildo Bagginses still walk among us, also the younger “I’d hit that hurh-hurh-snork” demographic. See this recent post from Science blogs.
I’m inclined to agree, Robert, although I haven’t read much on critiques of physics from feminist perspectives. I am aware of some fairly compelling arguments about anthropomorphic and gendered metaphors in the life sciences, but those particular arguments couldn’t be easily extended to physics or maths.
Some of the much-maligned continental feminist stuff (cue Adrien on Irigaray in 3…2…1…) is actually most problematic on science, I think, not because of its feminism, but rather because of its inheritance of a broadly Heideggerian misapprehension of what science is and how it operates. Le Doeuff or Stengers are just as committed to feminism without sharing that conception of science.
There should be more c and more lisp at universities so we can intimidate the Visual Basic and Java generations into seeking their natural levels – 28 day courses advertised in TV Week.
However it is an objective fact that only 4 women have become Nobel laureates in the hard sciences – and none since 1964. So much for women being ‘restricted to secretarial/nursing/teaching courses’ up to the 1960′s. No woman has ever won a Fields Medal (maths) either.
You can blame it all on the Patriarchy if it makes you feel better but something else is clearly going on. Evidence ( anecdotal or real ) of female success in maths, science and engineering is all well and good but is beside the point. There is a huge difference between coming top of the class at high school or uni ( and going on to have a successful career ) and actually seriously pushing the envelope in these subjects.
So please don’t blame the messenger.
Since some here seem to think I’m a misogynist, I should point out that virtually no males ‘push the envelope’ either. The very top end ( like the bottom end ) will probably always be dominated by males due to differences in IQ extremes.
Be explicit, Baggins: what is the ‘something else’? Is it sexual difference perhaps? In which case, it seems you do agree with Irigaray: hard science is sexed.
I don’t know much about Ada Lovelace, D Baggins and I don’t have an opinion as to whether she was a great scientist or not, although she seems a fascinating character. But I do know an epic fail in logic when I see one.
It’s so obvious that you think if something is written by a feminist then it must be false (all the paeans to Lovelace) and if it’s written by a white anglo saxon male, there’s a good chance it’s true (that objective stuff). Logic? No. Misogyny? Yes.
I read The Salon article. I don’t know what you think it proves. Filmmaker embroiders on historical truth to make a compelling yarn. Who’d have thought it?
Wow. Not sure if I should be more offended, as a physician and geneticist, by being accused of being part of a soft science or the rampant biological determinism on display.
IQ is reasonable test for intellectual disability, it is a lousy test for brilliance. Be very careful with the right hand end of that particular Bell curve.
Baggins, mon cher, I count five Nobels for women in Physiology and Medicine in the last 20 years. The most recent, 2008, was for discovery of HIV. Something of at least passing significance and moderate difficulty. Also, given the lag time of the Nobel committee, usually in the order of two decades, one might expect that to continue to improve.
Oh, and mathematics is not a science. It is one of elements used to perform science but it is not a science.
The good old rock ‘hard sciences’, lol. But srsly, what a wan, gimpy comment that is. headdesk etc
Fine @ 24
A perfect example of what I’m saying. Sheesh. The info is there for anyone to study. On the slimmest of evidence Ada Lovelace is elevated to:
rather than an excellent documenter of Babbages work.
Next you’ll be telling me Einsteins wife really did discover relativity.
Believe it or not, that was a recurring selling point for Ada 83 in the early 90s – it was so much better than Cobol and Fortran.
Yeah, Model Ts were so much better than Penny Farthings too, but so what? It was a dinosaur at launch, had dreadful design conflicts, and threw all the important stuff into chapter 13′s “we don’t know, you figure it out” cop-out. Gah, I’ve started again. Must. Control. Fist. Of. Death.
Except, D Baggins, you’ve yet to present any evidence to support your thesis. As I said, I’m not a cheerleader for Lovelace at all. But your position looks very shaky to me. And please note Dr. S’s comments about Nobel Prizes at #40. You wouldn’t happen to be cherry picking your facts, would you?
D Baggins,
I was referring to societal/parental pressures and opportunities in Australia in the 1950s, 1960s; you’re right to point out that not ALL girls followed those paths. Obviously many Australian women studied and worked in sciences and medicine earlier. Female participation in some sciences and in many parts of engineering etc has risen only very slowly since the 1970s, is my guess.
Dr S is quite right to point also to the lag time of Nobel Prize committees. [The non-female genius Albert E got his for work on photoelectric effect I think, not for Special Relativity (or his later General Relativity); and was awarded many long years after his annus mirabilis of 1905.]
Of those Aussie undergrads who choose to study in a BSc, there is still a clear gender divide when they choose a major. Big deal. The more scientists the merrier, say I: good luck to all those undergrads & postgrads.
For one thing, D Baggins, Dr S. is spot-on about IQ testing.
Dr S: you’re right that mathematics isn’t a science; however, the reporting of it is usually even worse than that of the experimental sciences.
I’d also note that the practice of medicine isn’t science either, it’s the application of science (and knowledge gained by other means) to the process of healing people.
Babbage said something in 1846 memoir(?) that Lovelace worked out a number of algebraic problems but Babbage had offered to supply a solution to the Bernoulli numbers to “save her the trouble.” He must have at some stage sent such a working out because he also claims that she sent it back with a bug fix. So she should be crowned the First QA.
She was first to publish at any rate and that counts.
Amibgulous @ 30, good on you for mentioning Emmy Noether. Her work has led to huge advances in abstract algebra and algebraic topology. I personally think it’s one of the most beautiful and elegant branches of pure mathematics, and there are many useful applications for it (particularly in cryptography).
Margaret Wertheim’s “Pythagoras’ Trousers”
I have a copy of that right here. It’s a good read albeit gets a bit repetitive towards the end (she has a few good points and the overall thesis is solid, but she has too many “and the same thing happened in the 18th century as we see by this detailed exposition with examples” chapters. Maybe I’m just not that much into history. Oh, and the history-of-science side of the book is also worth while. If someone wants it enough to pay for postage I’m in Melbun… moz.net.nz
Can I recommend that those not already entrenched in unctuous bigotry like D Baggins read “Women of Ideas – and what men have done to them” by Dale Spender.
Thanks Kim, for the great post.
- just to be clear, that would be everyone on this thread (ie who’s not entrenched) other than D Baggins. no insult intended otherwise!
Robert – Absolutely, medical practice is more than applied biology. It is not an experimental discipline.
I also was not attempting to denigrate mathematics, it is more that the mindset where “hard” science becomes an inviolable bastion of truth occasionally needs undercutting and a gentle reminder of the un-scientific nature of maths is a good start.
Not all knowledge is empirical knowledge and not only empirical knowledge is good.
What is meant by physicists’ “world picture” in this context?
Broadly, the way they approach the science and the way they see it working and fitting into society. It affects what they look at and how they do things more than the truth or otherwise of what they discover. For instance, there’s sod all interest by physicists in the deep oceans, but a lot in extrasolar material. Which is odd, really, since physicists have visited the deep ocean repeatedly but none of them have left the solar system. Few of them have *returned* from the deep ocean, but the point remains. I’m not saying that that is because the ocean is feminine, just that it’s bizarre how their interests flow.
Now, what also happens with “the male approach” is a tendency to head-butting rather than conciliation, and a privileging of hierarchy over group recognition. This leads to things like the Nobel Prize being awarded to individuals for team discoveries and battles royal when new truths are discovered. Often revolutions do not get started until the those who hold to previous theories die. Not metaphorically, literally you just wait until they age out and die. Mr “god does not play dice”, for example, did not accept some consequences of quantum mechanics for all that he was instrumental in developing the field.
The more serious consequences are when frankly silly ideas last way past their time because famous people adhere to them in the face of all evidence to the contrary. The cliche example is that science and scientists are not responsible for even the immediately foreseeable consequences of their work. The first “split the atom” experiments, and against with the first uncontrolled fission reaction were both carried out in the face of strong protests by people who were not convinced that the cascades would stop. Obviously they did, but finding out by experiment is not ethically justifiable.
Sorry, let me turn that sentence into English for you all:
The first “split the atom” experiments and the first uncontrolled fission reaction were both carried out in the face of strong protests by people who were not convinced that the cascades would stop. Obviously they did, but finding out by experiment is not ethically justifiable.
I wasn’t trying to suggest it was. Drive, determination, single mindedness and stamina also play a big part. My point is that even slight differences in the shape of this distribution between males/females will – at the extremes – make a big difference to the balance. Hence in fields where these are important such as winning Nobel Prizes, inventing stuff and so on, males are likely to dominate.
I am sorry, but I really don’t think it is *just* social conditioning that causes this. If that makes me an ‘unctuous bigot’, well that’s fine by me.
Actually, according to my Concise Oxford a bigot is
I reckon that make many of you the real bigots.
It just gets better and better.
A pleasure, Polly Morgan.
Hi moz,
Mr “god does not play dice” was not alone in questioning quantum mechanics. Just ‘cos a scientist is brilliant in one area doesn’t mean she has to be clever in all…
…. and what’s wrong with not accepting QM anyway? Physics thrives on debate, questioning, scepticism: neither males nor females excel in this. Good on Albert for his questioning.
Nice anecdote about the possibility of annihilation by nuclear cascade: apparently some person was told to check (before they exploded the first H-bomb) that it just wasn’t possible that the fusion reactions of hydrogen (in the bomb) could cascade out into the water in the atmosphere and oceans and turn the Earth into a brief mini-star.
I can’t imagine the technical/moral pressures on him, and those who had to cross-check his calculations. The story is in “Brighter than a Thousand Suns” by Robert Jungk, I think. A story of the greatest moral import.
Moz: I take your general point, but I must say I’m not terribly impressed by that ocean example.
From a physicist’s point of view, the physical conditions in the deep oceans are not all that different to those at room temperature, and relatively easy to replicate in the lab.
By contrast, replicating what goes on in, say, a pulsar, or even a relatively normal star like the Sun, is much, much, much more difficult.
The bestowal of Nobel Laureates being an objective, impersonal, gender-free process and the earning of them a quantifiable one, naturally.
Hi ho, Mr Baggins
Science is not a creed. It is both a methodology and a corpus of findings. It claims neither omniscience nor perfection. It’s dazzling and incomplete. Its applications are quite numerous. Everyone is welcome to join.
On science, I don’t believe I’m a “bigot”. You’re welcome to your opinion.
I must admit, I love a good irony;
“I am sorry, but I really don’t think it is *just* social conditioning that causes this.”
A wonderfully loaded, untestable and value ridden statement on those who can do science. D Baggins, you are more than welcome to “think” what you choose but while all the social barriers exist this contention is untestable. To believe it despite the bias ridden nature of the evidence that supports it is to deny empiricism in your opinions.
Which amuses me, given the subject of conversation.
Oh, and if you think heading a lab and getting a prize is about primarily brilliance and not ladder climbing, social dominance, bloody mindedness and privilege with a small leavening of brilliance then I, in those immortal words, have a bridge to sell you…
Mr Baggins, even your reliance on the concept of ‘social conditioning’ suggests a fairly limited understanding of the kinds of arguments being presented here. Behaviourism is indeed not very useful for understanding complex, institutionalised forces like modern science. This may be a classic case of too few shared assumptions: the encounter simply isn’t taking place.
The Chief Scientist for Australia is Prof. Penny Sackett and the CEO of CSIRO is Dr Megan Clark.
Just sayin’.
Robert, it’s just an example of something that physicists have decided is not very interesting. The reasons why they aren’t interested is worth looking at IMO.
And as for ease of replication in the lab being a criteria, I don’t see the connection. Currently we really struggle to even approximately map the deep ocean, let alone get a detailed view of what’s happening down there. As far as anything below that, it’s pretty much a blank. So claiming that we can reproduce the conditions isn’t really the point… it’s like saying the hydrogen fusion implosion experiments duplicate the environment inside stars and we should therefore move on from telescopes… it’s both false and irrelevant.
Methinks Mr Baggins is greenslime on drugs that make him appear vaguely human.
Thanks Zarquon
I see Dr Clark started as a mine geologist. Now there’s a HARD science.
Stubs toe against rock…. Goes looking for a favourite spot between a rock and a hard place (CSIRO’s quite hard).
Dr S wrote: “if you think heading a lab and getting a prize is about primarily brilliance and not ladder climbing, social dominance, bloody mindedness and privilege…”
Well, some Prix Nobel are given to Lab-Heads but by no means all, I’d say. Just sayin’ . Not claiming those other attributes are NEVER relevant, BTW.
(e.g. those clowns who gave themselves ulcers: socially dominant lab heads? I don’t think so. Bloody risk-taking idiots – ask their families….)
If this is the case, (as most who have witnessed this infection would know), the best treatment for this infection is to ignore it, since it thrives on attention and as you can see, will say the most ridiculous things in order to provoke it.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading about Ada Lovelace. I am always moved by people who achieve great insight despite their situation. Contemplate what might have transpired as a result of her thorough grasp of the potential of the computation machine had she not died so tragically young.
I’m not sensing it.
Not enough overt slurs on women, too much trying or at least pretending to be reasonable and care about the reponses.
Certainly do, Mr Baggins. And these qualities are all so much easier to develop and maintain (a) when you’re not dealing either with your little children or with the massive social and/or personal pressure on you to produce some, and (b) provided you can face down the howls of execration and insult about how unfeminine these qualities make you.
For blokes, of course, it’s so much the better if you can use your drive, determination, singlemindedness and stamina to push your way past that pesky female competition by fair means or foul, as was de rigeur in my own workplace as recently as the 1980s and 1990s (and that was as ‘soft’, by your standards, as workplaces come; I’d be a little careful with ‘hard’ as a term of approbation if I were you, BTW. ‘Stamina’, too, if it comes to that.).
HAAAAAAAAhahahahahahaha.
Unbefuckinglievable. Kim puts up a celebratory, informative post honouring a semi-unsung heroine and marking a day dedicated to the achievements and activities of women in science and technology, and as early as Comment #22 some hobbit turns up denying and whining and undermining. What is it, exactly, that people like this are frightened of?
And a big hello to my de facto goddaughter the 4th year double-degree student of Science and Aerospace Engineering, the one with all the HDs. Rock that robot, poppet.
I preferred this thread when it was an off-topic discussion of programming languages. Can someone tell me what that says about me?
And gilmae — in my own fantasy world of cs/se education, programming starts with MIPS assembler and scheme, throws in some C and Haskell, does a lot in Python and avoids Java.
Well said Pavlov’s Cat.
You may be right FDB, or at least they’d need to be very powerful drugs.
Craig Mc, I’ll concede that some earlier implementations of ADA weren’t ideal, but it is an excellent teaching langauge. For a start, it enforces good practice. (While it’s possible to write spaghetti ADA, it’s a struggle.)
wow, exciting thread.
Don’t know about physics, but gendered thinking is alive and well in chemistry. Quick example off the top of my head – the continued reference to chemical reactions as ‘attacks’. Particularly the seemingly contradictory ‘electrophilic attack’. I had a female lecturer in organic chemistry who would talk about electrophiles and nucleophiles ‘sidling up to each other and getting cosy’. All anthropomorphic of course, atoms neither attack nor get cosy, but I know which image I prefer.
I think it’s probably impossible to avoid using ‘misleading’ metaphors, but they do certainly have effects that need to be considered.
Shorter Klaus K: “I know little maths or science, having done since Year 10 (or maybe Year 11). I sense the greatest concentration of sheer intellectual ability and energy takes place, and so spend my time snipping from the sidelines. Nevertheless, I do feel my Year 10 studies equip me to contribute to finding shortcomings in the scholarship achieved by those who continued past Year 10 for quite some time”.
Fucking hell, adrian. Would you please stop doing that?
If you make three comments about Cut ‘n’ Paste on a thread, it summons him.
For those interested in a bit more detail about Margaret Wetheim’s book her is a review chosen more or less at random after a bit of googling.
For my part I’d rather not go into much detail about it cos it’s quite a few years since I read it and I’ve only got the main impressions left in the memory banks.
I recall thinking it was overall pretty good, a necessary work, could have been even stronger in its essential thesis, a little more conservative than I expected and I remember there were one or two comments I was a bit suss about. Not any connected to her main thesis tho’.
Definitely worth a read.
http://www.yesmagazine.org/article.asp?ID=940
Thanks for that, HD.
Frankly, I’m extremely dubious (to be polite) of drawing analogies between physics and religion, if it’s been summarized accurately in that review.
Marie Curie, winner of two Nobel Prizes, both for ‘hard sciences’, could not get herself elected to the French Academy of Sciences.
Don’t know why…wouldn’t have anything to do that the other candidate was a respectable elderly French scientist who, though well up in his field, had not achieved anything nearly as remarkable as she had.
Oh, he was male, of course.
AND she spent most of her life having to point out to people that it was her work…they tended to assume it was Pierre’s.
Yes Liam, but it’s marginally useful to have the real thing briefly present itself for comparison purposes. A teachable moment.
That ‘snipping’ from the sidelines has got to hurt.
mehitabel: la belle Marie, ou Maria Sklodowska (Polish I think). There was for some decades a unit of radiation ‘the curie’ in physics.
If I’m not mistaken, this (the only physcal unit named after a lady) was abolished, and replaced by one named after a, erm, chap: during the United Nations International Year for Women!!
Unbebloodylievable. Possibly some French science chappies had a hand in that lamentable turn of events.
Miss Directed of Tunbridge Wells, klaus wrote:
“I think it’s probably impossible to avoid using ‘misleading’ metaphors, but they do certainly have effects that need to be considered.”
I think klaus is raising important and deep points, though perhaps OT. Much public explication of science, and some teaching of science employs metaphor and analogy as an aid to comprehension.
But there’s a deeper realm (isn’t there?) where the working scientific researcher may use analogies or metaphors in the creative, constructive work of forming an hypothesis, or designing an experimental test, or constructing a mental model.
Albert Einstein’s thought experiments (gedankenexperimenten)weren’t the first use of dreamy abstractions, even in the adamantine hard science of physics.
Thanks, klaus.
Yes, Ambi, I agree: science does, indeed, have an imaginary. Or rather that should be: sciences have imaginaries. That’s part of what allows them to function as knowledge, to be disseminated and understood.
I suppose DoTW thinks that his comment scored some points, although on whose scoreboard I don’t know. Anybody who understands what I’ve been saying can see how far off the mark he is in choosing that particular line.
Just to add both to the off-topic language discussion and the on-topic shout outs for rocking lady programmers and computer science type people, I give you
Adele Goldberg
Because she is very clever and worth listening to if you ever get a chance to hear her speak and because Smalltalk is the best teaching language, ever. Do it! Inspect it!
Boy do I miss workspaces when working in C#.
And let’s not forget Barbara Liskov, the most recent winner of the Turing Award.
Jacques, I think I love you.
I do, however, know exactly what it is I am so afraid of: meaningful whitespace.
lovely Rita