Description
Book Synopsis18th-century natural historians created a peculiar but durable vision of nature, embodying the sexual and racial tensions of that era. Plants were found to reproduce sexually, and great apes were just becoming known. This text uncovers the ways in which assumptions about sex, and race have shaped scientific explanations of nature.
Trade Review"[Nature’s Body] is so wonderfully humorous and is done with such careful attention to detail, the reader cannot help but see the profound implications of the history of science for modern science. Indispensable for all anthropologists, historians, philosophers, and practitioners of science."
-- Emily Martin * author of The Woman in the Body *
"Schiebinger lays bare the cultural narratives that mix so easily with science. They are at the same time hilarious and eerie, silly and profoundly disturbing. Schiebinger is brilliant in showing how tales of gender and race are told in other guises." -- Thomas Laqueur, * author of Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud *
Table of ContentsThe private lives of plants
Why mammals are called mammals
The gendered ape
The anatomy of difference
Theories of gender and race
Who should do science?
