Women's Influence on Classical Civilization

Eireann Marshall,Fiona Mchardy

• Editore: Routledge
• Anno: 2004
• ISBN:
  9781134391899
• Edizione: 1
• Argomento: Historia
• Categoria: Historia antigua

Written by an international range of renowned academics, this volume explores how women in antiquity influenced aspects of culture normally though of as male.

Looking at politics, economics, science, law and the arts, the contributors examine examples from around the ancient world asking how far traditional definitions of culture describe male spheres of activity, and examining to what extent these spheres were actually created and perpetuated by women.

Women's Influence of Classical Civilization provides students with a valuable wider perspective on the roles and influence of women in the societies of the Greek and Roman worlds.

1
THE LOGISTICS OF GENDER FROM CLASSICAL PHILOSOPHY

Gráinne McLaughlin

In this chapter I argue that, in the context of an examination of women’s influence on culture in antiquity, it is impossible not to ‘look outside the box’ and consider not just their contribution to the world of ancient Greece and Rome but also the influence of Graeco-Roman ideas about women and their role on later Western European culture. After all, study of the ancient world is simultaneously a meditation on our own; and as we shall see, given the esteem in which the perceived wisdom of the Greeks and Romans was held in the Middle Ages and thereafter, the classical philosophical legacy is particularly prominent. In the ancient world a key dichotomy was that between nomos (man-made law or custom: masculine noun) and physis (nature: feminine noun), a dichotomy which has persisted to the present day and which can be shown to be, literally and metaphorically, a gendered dichotomy. In what follows I look at a particular aspect of this dichotomy, namely the equivalence of the male rather than the female with reason and the ability to do mathematics and science.¹ The discussion includes a survey of the biographical treatment of women involved in the development of mathematics and science, particularly physics. This survey highlights a parallelism in the biographical treatment of women philosophers from antiquity and later female figures in science and mathematics: to a significant degree both ancient female philosophers and later female scientists were often either prevented from participating fully in their chosen fields or else accommodated only through their association with a distinguished male relative or family associate. The reasons for the social acceptability of the exclusion of women from philosophico-scientific endeavour from antiquity to the modern era are of course complex and beyond the scope of a single contribution to a volume such as this. However, it is worth emphasizing that what was believed to be the wisdom of the ancients was a powerful force in philosophical and scientific communities down through the centuries. The misogyny of ancient Greek philosophy was transmitted as part of the cultural heritage of European society.² The fact that ancient philosophy included mathematics and what would now be regarded as the natural sciences meant that later mathematicians and physicists who privileged ancient philosophy as source material for their own work saw the enduring misogyny of their own society bolstered and validated in the writings of the ancients, as will be seen in the discussion of passages from Plato and Aristotle below. The impetus for this chapter is primarily the research of the physicist Margaret Wertheim (1997), who has emphasized the enduring influence of, in particular, Pythagoreanism on the agenda and subject matter of modern high-energy physicists. Following on from Wertheim, I focus on the influence of purported Pythagorean elements on the thinking of key scientific figures. Because of the intractable misogyny of this philosophical and scientific tradition, we must at the outset note that the recovery and assessment of ancient and later women’s contribution to it is no easy task;³ and also that, given this environment, the achievement of the women who did manage to engage in philosophical and scientific discourse is, therefore, all the more remarkable.

I begin with some general comments on the approach adopted. Like Wertheim (1997: xvii), I have treated astronomy as a branch of physics, rather than as a separate discipline; and I do not distinguish systematically physics from maths–physics or mathematics. However, I differ from Wertheim in the following respect. She, arguably correctly, stresses the religious aspect of physics and traces this back to classical times (Wertheim 1997: xi–xvi; Keller 1985: 6–7). She also attributes the relative exclusion of women from science, in part, to their corresponding exclusion from the priesthood in Western societies. Rather than supplementing her work on the pervasive and enduring religious aspect of physics, I complement her thesis by examining the influence of ancient Greek perceptions of gender on modern science and mathematics. Furthermore, whereas Wertheim views the male–female dichotomy in terms of the history of religion and science, I believe there are interesting parallels which can be drawn with classical Greek views on the male–female dichotomy articulated as part of the philosophical discourse on nomos and physis.⁴

Pythagoreanism

These views are reflected in some of the same Greek philosophical texts on science and metaphysics which directly and significantly influenced the development of modern science and mathematics. I concentrate on two elements of the so-called Pythagorean tradition which, for the purposes of this chapter, need to be taken together: specifically the dictum or sound-bite ‘All is Numbers’ and the Pythagorean Table of Opposites.⁵ I show that the importance of the sound-bite ‘All is Numbers’ as a statement of the goal of Western physics and mathematics is difficult to overestimate. This can be seen from the influence ascribed to Pythagoreanism in standard works on the history of mathematics. For example, as Kline says of the intellectual revival of ancient Greek culture in the Renaissance:⁶

Almost as a corollary to the revival of Greek knowledge and values came the revival of interest in mathematics. From the works of Plato especially, which had become known in the fifteenth century, the Europeans learned that nature is mathematically designed and that this design is harmonious, aesthetically pleasing, and the inner truth… Platonic and Pythagorean works also emphasized number as the essence of reality, a doctrine that had already received some attention from the deviating Scholastics of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The revival of Platonism clarified and crystallized the ideas and methods with which these men had been struggling. The Pythagorean–Platonic emphasis on quantitative relations as the essence of reality gradually became dominant. Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Descartes, Hugyens, and Newton were in this respect essentially Pythagoreans and by their work established the principle that the goal of scientific activity should be quantitative mathematical laws.

(Kline 1972: 218–19)

It should be noted, of course, that any Pythagorean influence ascribed to key figures such as those mentioned above must be defined carefully: Pythagoras (b. c.570 BC), Pythagoreanism, and traditional perceptions about Pythagoreanism, must be distinguished. Pythagoras and his personal contribution to the philosophy of mathematics are elusive creatures.⁷ There is also no concise definition of Pythagoreanism, which has been shown to contain elements of ancient and diverse origins. Burkert, for example, has noted that certain numerical correspondences which were regarded as Pythagorean as early as Aristotle, in fact pre-date Pythagoras and may also be, like the famous Theorem, of oriental origin (Burkert 1972: 476; Laroche 1995 and cf. Lloyd 1991: 27–48). In addition, Lloyd (1987: 275–8) has observed that the attribution to Pythagoreanism of the dictum ‘All is Numbers’, in the sense that the universe is composed of, and is explicable in terms of, numbers, is an inference from what Aristotle says about Pythagoreans in the fifth chapter of the first book of the Metaphysics, as opposed to a direct statement of attribution. Zhmud (1989) has gone much further and argued that a survey of ancient sources does not support the widely held belief that ‘All is Numbers’ was a key tenet of Pythagoreanism. Similarly, O’Meara (1989: 5) has emphasized the danger of confusing the Pythagoreanizing Neoplatonism of the opening centuries of the Christian era with ancient Pythagoreanism.

However, while these are of course legitimate areas of interest and concern for modern scholars, they must not be allowed to overshadow the following basic point. For the purpose of my argument, what is significant is the medieval and humanist perception of Pythagoreanism. The fact that this was based on such indirect and diverse sources as, for example, Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Ovid, Plutarch, Iamblichus, Proclus, Macrobius and Simplicius, sources which were themselves subject to the vagaries of translation and transmission,⁸ is undeniable but not directly relevant. The ideological influence of the dictum ‘All is Numbers’ is illustrated by the quotation from Kline above. This dictum was consistently regarded by tradition as a central belief in Pythagoreanism. I believe that ideological influence has also been exerted by the misogyny of the so-called Pythagorean Table of Opposites. The Table in effect has provided generations of scientists and philosophers with a pseudo-scientific rationale for their exclusion of women from mathematical, scientific, and philosophical discourse. I believe this to be so partly because a key source for the dictum and Table throughout history has been Aristotle’s Metaphysics, where they appear in close proximity to one another (1.5.985b–986a).⁹ The significance and influence of the proximity has not received comment but in my opinion this proximity has served to valorize and compound the misogyny of the Table.

Before I highlight the Pythagorean elements in the thought of key figures in the development of Western mathematics and physics, it will be helpful to emphasize the perceived Platonic–Pythagorean inheritance. I will then quote the relevant section of Aristotle’s Metaphysics and explicate its transmission to medieval and renaissance scholars. In so doing I will emphasize that the misogyny in Plato and Aristotle’s own works interacts with Platonic mathematical Pythagoreanism and Aristotle’s authority as a metaphysicist and critic of his precursors. The Pythagorean Table of Opposites has, therefore, exerted a powerful influence because of both its physical position in Aristotle’s work and Plato’s apparent espousal of Pythagoreanism: the two most important figures in ancient Greek philosophy were accordingly perceived by subsequent generations to espouse its tenets.

Plato: Timaeus

Plato has conventionally been regarded as a physicist’s or mathematician’s philosopher and continues to be so (Brisson and Meyerstein 1995). Similarities between the Platonic theory of forms and harmony of the spheres and, indeed, concepts relating to the soul, and Pythagoreanism have been noted since antiquity.¹⁰ From the fifteenth century onwards, when translations of his dialogues preserved in the Islamic world became much more widely available, Plato started to eclipse Aristotle. However, it is noteworthy that one of the few Greek works known throughout antiquity and the Middle Ages, and therefore in less need of rediscovery in the Renaissance, was the Timaeus (Lindberg 1992: 148–9). It is one of the works where Plato’s Pythagoreanism has appeared most obvious to scholars, as can be seen from Crombie’s comment that: ‘Plato himself, in his Pythagorean allegory, the Timaeus, conceived of substance as mathematical form which gave order to the disorderly movements of chaos’ (Crombie 1953: 4).

This is significant for our purposes, since this dialogue has been of particular interest to scientists throughout history; and, as Annas (1996: 11) has noted, it is somewhat strident in its misogyny: the man who did his best in this life, first time around, gets to live a blessed life in his native star, second time around; whereas the man who did not lead a good life would be reborn a woman (Plato Tim. 42b: see also 42e, 90e–91a and 563b7–9; cf. Bluestone 1987: 13). Like Chapter Five of Book One of the Metaphysics, therefore, science and the female are not presented as concordant concepts¹¹ in the Platonic text arguably of most interest to scientists and mathematicians.

Aristotle: Metaphysics

…the so-called Pythagoreans… thought that the principles of mathematical entities were the principles of all entities… Since, then, all other things seemed to be assimilable to numbers in their nature, and the numbers were primary of the whole of nature, [986a] they assumed that the elements of the numbers were the elements of things as a whole, and they thought that the whole heaven was a harmony and a number… Well, even these thinkers seem to hold that number is a principle both as matter for the things that are and as affections and dispositions, and that the elements of number are the odd and the even, and that of these the one is limited and the other unlimited, and that one is from both these (since it is both even and odd), and that number comes from the one, and that, as we have said, the whole heaven is numbers. Now other members of this same group say that the principles in the sense of elements are ten:

See Table

(Aristotle, Metaphysics 986a; trans. Lawson-Tancred 1998: 19–20)

As Lovibond has observed of the Table:

… the fact that the Table of Opposites is composed of a ‘good’ and a ‘bad’ column confirms the point that despite its mathematical orientation, this [Pythagorean] philosophy was permeated by moral concerns and made no claim to be ‘value-free’.

(Lovibond 1994: 89)

It has been assumed that the text known as the Metaphysics was given its title by Andronicus of Rhodes (fl. 30 BC), when he put together his edition of Aristotle’s works (Ross 1924: xxxii). Having been taught in Greek schools, its content was preserved in the Greek world in subsequent periods by scholars such as Alexander of Aphrodisias (fl. AD 198), who wrote a commentary on the first four books of the Metaphysics (Dooley 1989: 62–76), and the sixth-century neo-Platonist Simplicius (Sorabji 1990: 29–30, 275–304, 475–80). Two of the three important medieval translations of the Metaphysics into Latin¹² contain the part of Book One which concerns us: the Metaphysica vetus and a translation from the Greek dated 1260–70 by William of Moerbeke, who also worked on Proclus and commented on parts of Plato’s Timaeus.¹³ As Ross notes (1924: clxiii–clxiv), Moerbeke’s translation can be seen for our purposes either to follow the vetus or to be more literal.¹⁴ The vetus was in common currency in England and France by 1235, as is indicated by the fact that there are nearly a hundred copies of it extant from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries which are based on manuscripts which pre-date 1235. Although certain works of Aristotle, including the Metaphysics, were for some time proscribed, records show that by 1250, if not before, the Metaphysics was being taught in European universities, including Oxford (Callus 1944; cf. Haskins 1924).¹⁵ The key figures discussed below, specifically Robert Grosseteste, Nicolas of Cusa, Johannes Kepler and Isaac Newton, therefore had access to it in the form of Latin translations.

Pythagorean elements in the thought of key figures in the history of physics and mathematics

I will now consider the extent to which our scientific and mathematical culture is a male construct, through a selective examination of key figures in the conventional canon.¹⁶ In approaching such a canon the following questions may be asked, among others: what have been the selection criteria involved; who decides who joins such an exclusive ‘club’; and how have the judges been selected?¹⁷ As Berubé has noted: ‘Canons are at once the location, the index, and the record of the struggle for cultural representation; like any other hegemonic formation, they must be continually reproduced anew and are continually contested’ (Berubé 1992: 4–5).

Waithe (1987: i–xxi) has emphasized the significance of this statement for women philosophers, given their enduring marginalization. For our purposes it will be instructive to see how often the male scientific tradition, bolstered as it has been by a Pythagorean agenda and mentality, and the perceived validation of their misogyny by Plato and Aristotle, has excluded women from its conventional canon and marginalized any contributions they did make. In so doing, it is not my intention to assert that the influence of the misogyny of the classical philosophical tradition was the sole cause of the hostility of the subsequent scientific community to the alien influence of the feminine: Roger Bacon, for example, was strident in his distaste of the feminine, as he was in his severe criticism of Plato, Aristotle, Hippocrates and Galen, whose own misogyny he complemented (Keller 1985: 33–42).

One of the ‘founding-fathers’ of Oxford University, Robert Grosseteste (b. 1168) was a towering intellect in the thirteenth century (McEvoy 1982, 2000). He played a significant role in the expansion of Aristotelian learning at Oxford (Callus 1944: 22) and was familiar with Aristotle’s Metaphysics (Crombie 1953: 35 and 91 n.1). He wrote a comparative critique of the Timaeus and Aristotle’s views of the constituent elements in the heavens (Crombie 1994: 330–5). He is described by Wertheim (1997: 48) as a Pythagorean Christian, who saw God in the image of himself, i.e. as a mathematician who ‘disposes...

Indice dei contenuti

• COVER PAGE
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• ILLUSTRATIONS
• CONTRIBUTORS
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• ABBREVIATIONS
• INTRODUCTION
• 1: THE LOGISTICS OF GENDER FROM CLASSICAL PHILOSOPHY
• 2: MATRIOT GAMES? CORNELIA, MOTHER OF THE GRACCHI, AND THE FORGING OF FAMILY-ORIENTED POLITICAL VALUES
• 3: POLITICS OF INCLUSION/EXCLUSION IN ATTIC TRAGEDY
• 4: EXEMPLARY HOUSEWIFE OR LUXURIOUS SLUT?: CULTURAL REPRESENTATIONS OF WOMEN IN THE ROMAN ECONOMY
• 5: MATRONLY PATRONS IN THE EARLY ROMAN EMPIRE: THE CASE OF SALVIA POSTUMA
• 6: WOMEN’S INFLUENCE ON REVENGE IN ANCIENT GREECE
• 7: A WOMAN’S INFLUENCE ON A ROMAN TEXT: MARCIA AND SENECA
• 8: WOMEN AND THE TRANSMISSION OF LIBYAN CULTURE
• 9: GALLA PLACIDIA: CONDUIT OF CULTURE?
• 10: GENDER AND CULTURAL IDENTITY IN ROMAN EGYPT
• BIBLIOGRAPHY