Western Civilization

were so good that you “would hardly believe they were

done by a woman at all.”

In the seventeenth century, women joined this

debate by arguing against these male images of women.

They argued that women also had rational minds and

could grow from education. Further, since most women

were pious, chaste, and temperate, there was no need

for male authority over them. These female defenders

of women emphasized education as the key to women’s

ability to move into the world. How, then, did the Sci-

entific Revolution affect this debate over the nature of

women? As this was an era of intellectual revolution in

which traditional authorities were being overthrown,

we might expect significant change in men’s views of

women. But by and large, instead of becoming an

instrument for liberation, science was used to find new

support for the old, stereotypical views about a wom-

an’s “true place” in the scheme of things.

An important project in the new anatomy of the six-

teenth and seventeenth centuries was the attempt to

illustrate the human body and skeleton. For Vesalius,

the physical differences between males and females

were limited to external bodily form (the outlines of

the body) and the sexual organs. Vesalius saw no differ-

ences in male and female skeletons and portrayed them

as being the same. It was not until the eighteenth cen-

tury, in fact, that a new anatomy finally prevailed.

Drawings of female skeletons between 1730 and 1790

varied, but females tended to have a larger pelvic area,

and in some instances, female skulls were portrayed as

smaller than those of males. Eighteenth-century stud-

ies on the anatomy and physiology of sexual differences

provided “scientific evidence” to reaffirm the tradi-

tional inferiority of women. The larger pelvic area

“proved” that women were meant to be child-bearers,

and men’s larger skulls “demonstrated” the superiority

of the male mind. Male-dominated science had been

used to “prove” male social dominance.

Overall, the Scientific Revolution reaffirmed tradi-

tional ideas about women. Male scientists used the new

science to spread the view that women were inferior by

nature, subordinate to men, and suited by nature to

play a domestic role as nurturing mothers. The wide-

spread distribution of books—written primarily by men,

of course—ensured the continuation of these ideas.

Jean de La Bruye`re (ZHAHNH du lah broo-YARE), the

seventeenth-century French moralist, was typical when

he remarked that an educated woman was like a collec-

tor’s item “which one shows to the curious, but which

has no use at all, any more than a carousel horse.”^6

Toward a New Earth: Descartes,

Rationalism, and a New View of

Humankind

Q FOCUSQUESTION: Why is Descartes considered the

“founder of modern rationalism”?

The fundamentally new conception of the universe con-

tained in the cosmological revolution of the sixteenth

and seventeenth centuries inevitably had an impact on

the Western view of humankind. Nowhere is this more

evident than in the work of the Frenchman ReneDes-

cartes (ruh-NAY day-KART) (1596–1650), an extremely

important figure in Western history. Descartes began by

reflecting the doubt and uncertainty that seemed perva-

sive in the confusion of the seventeenth century and

ended with a philosophy that dominated Western

thought until the twentieth century.

Rene Descartes.Rene Descartes was one of the primary

figures in the Scientific Revolution. Claiming to use reason as

his sole guide to truth, Descartes posited a sharp distinction

between mind and matter. He is shown here in a portrait by

Frans Hals, one of the painters of the Dutch golden age who

was famous for his portraits, especially that of Descartes.

Louvre (Thierry Le Mage), Paris//

ª

RMN-Grand Palais/Art Resource, NY

Toward a New Earth: Descartes, Rationalism, and a New View of Humankind 397

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