Noble (History of Science and Technology/York Univ., Toronto; Forces of Production, 1984, etc.) challenges the commonly held assumption that modern science developed in opposition to an authoritarian Church, claiming instead that the celibate, male- dominated Catholic tradition provided both support and inspiration for the scientific tradition that would virtually supplant it—a provocative thesis backed by a painstakingly detailed history. Christianity originated as a potentially egalitarian religion, Noble says—but almost from the beginning, he explains, women were forced to struggle against political and cultural forces aimed at pushing them out of the spiritual mainstream and into the home. Though occasional early heretical movements supporting spiritual unity between the sexes—as well as the undeniable power of a wealthy, female, medieval elite—exerted some counterforce to the Church's generally anti-female development, the 12th century saw the virtual end of fully empowered female spiritual counselors and a great emphasis on male clerical celibacy. It was this male- dominated, misogynistic Church, then, that established the European colleges from which modern science sprang—colleges in which the pursuit of knowledge was considered a sacred act, scholars were treated as a kind of monk, celibacy was encouraged, and women were categorically excluded. These origins have led to today's curiously anomalous scientific priesthood in which, Noble says, women continue to be discriminated against, dismissed, and even supplanted as a species (through the development of artificial insemination, robot technology, and other forms of artificial creation)—an unnatural legacy in need of profound revision. Both Noble and Joseph Schwartz (The Creative Moment, reviewed below) describe the world of modern science as an insulated, priestly, and discriminatory culture—but their explanations of how and why it got that way (and particularly their antithetical depictions of Galileo and Newton) remain strikingly and intriguingly opposed.
Pub Date: May 16, 1992
ISBN: 0-394-55650-X
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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