Occasionally I have a conversation about college in Spain and science careers and offer my vision, now a little more perspective and from a perspective slightly different from previous years. Many people are surprised to hear that biology, environmental science, biochemistry and chemistry are racing with a high percentage of women while in physics and engineering is very low. Math, I believe, is in a happy and Aristotelian balance. In the wonderful
novel "Solar" by Ian McEwan, read:
"It was true, women Were underrepresented in physics and Had always been. [...] He Believes There were no longer any institutional barriers or prejudices. There were other branches of science where women were well represented, and some where they predominated. […] Although there were many gifted women physicists, it was at least conceivable that they would always remain in a minority, albeit a substantial one, in this particular field. There might always be more men than women who wanted to work in physics. There was a consensus in congnitive psychology, based on a wide range of experimental work, that in statistical terms the brains of men and women were significantly different. This was emphatically not a question of gender superiority, nor was it a matter of social conditioning, though of course it played a reinforcing role. These were widely observed innate differences in cognitive ability. In studies and metastudies, women were shown to have, on average, greater language skills, better visual memory, clearer emotional judgement, and superior mathematical calculation. Men scored higher in mathematical problem-solving and abstract reasoning and in visual-spatial awareness. Men and women had different priorities in life, different attitudes to risk, to status, to hierarchies. Above all -and this was the really striking difference, amounting to roughly one standard deviation, and the one to have been studied repeatedly- from early in life, girls tended to be more interested in people, boys more in things and abstract rules. And this difference showed in the fields os science they tended to choose: more Women in the life sciences and social sciences, more men in engineering and physics. "
Solar , Ian McEwan, 2010.
And, as always, after this passage to show M . (Qui genus humanum wit surplus) made me think very interesting, and philosophical at the same time, as a philosopher who is here for memory transfer jomentéis: Physics was written primarily by men and therefore has tools and approaches developed by men, but what would have happened if it was the physics developed by women? Would they have taken the principles of conservation other formulation? Would approaches, approaches, different assumptions, with other language-de same conclusion yet differently-?
We can not know. Does it? If many scientists get together and let the branches of science evolve by themselves (which would be from a modern point of view unthinkable) without man and his vision, how many generations or progress would be needed to perceive slight differences? The experiment is impossible, but now there are many women doing chemistry, maybe there conclusions can be drawn. Even if the final language is a mathematician may come to the same place, no doubt, that the same way (here M., and philosopher who is, has been very clever and has given a new twist to the reflection, that fails to make a leaping denial formal mathematical language but wondering if this approach is upon to explain natural philosophy).
This post is small but it was also noted in my mental notebook as "riding a faculty panel discussion on this issue."
not fail to read this vignette XKCD.
And finally a great event that made me start laughing when I saw the movie in the cinema:
"Catherine: It Does not fit me.
[about the dress]
Hal: Sure it does.
Catherine: You Can not Prove It.
Hal: I can disprove the Opposite. "
(Proof, 2005) Screen-play by David Auburn.
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