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eli's picture

How can culture be held apart from science?

Here are some of the items that were interesting overlaps between the two readings:

Denying that physics is separate from culture.

Both of these readings bring up the point that physicists believe they are operating in a world that is a neigh Utopia, held apart from the rest of humanity as it pursues Truth. Both of these readings also argue that this is entirely false. Whether it be from the culture meaning a national culture (for example, Japanese culture as opposed to American culture), religion, or Western gender roles, science is not in its own little world. It might be true if Science were the only sphere in which the scientists operated in, but it isn't. Science can no more escape outside influences, be it history or modern culture, than any other discipline.

It is also interesting that as Traweek points out in her section about undergraduate students, this high standard that Science is held up to is not solely on the part of the scientists themselves. In fact, it is much outsiders creating this stereotype as it is insiders. Picturing Culture/Humanity as a large circle, and science as an inner circle in a venndiagram of sorts, isn't it odd that the larger circle denies its own interactions with the inner circle? I wonder if that's like trying to hold your liver outside of you and claim it's important but not influenced by what you drink.

Science reflects the division of women in the private life, and men in the public sphere.

On page 149, Werthiem points out the division of women into the private sphere and men into the public sphere. Reading this, it reminded me of the discussion Traweek has about how the wives of physicists did not tend to have careers of "equal" important to their husbands. Furthermore, the fact that in both the Japanese and American model that physicists needed to have wives. The role of the koshi in the Japanese model was even to find a suitable woman for their students.

Women thus serve as an important part of the scientist's identity, a way of validating that he's of sound emotional and mental state, but are not supposed to directly contribute to the improvement of science. Beyond waxing on about how sexist that is, it's also interesting to note that we automatically assume it is "wrong", it is "weaker" for women to take care of the household while the men are making scientific discoveries. I guess what I'm trying to do is bring up the idea of the third wave feminists. Thus we should not only consider the impact of a lack of women scientists, but also the impact of the women who provided emotional support for scientists. One could even think cynically that, without these wives on their arms, many of the physicists might not have gone as far as they did. After all, having a wife seemed to be a very valuable commodity on their resume.

But do indirect contributions make up for the fact that women are virtually omitted from the history of science and math? That they are represented as icons in textbooks that science acts upon, or that sciences are dominated by phallic vocabulary? What does Science have against women?

Japanese vs USA cultural models.

Just briefly, I wanted to mention that I found the leadership models of the American and Japanese physicists to be extremely interesting. Because this has been a rather lengthy response though, I'll liimit it to this point: what does the fact that the Japanese model is a traditional Japanese family, the ie, and the American model is a sports team have to impact women? 

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