Lady Ranelagh: The Incomparable Life of Robert Boyle’s Sister
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Re: Lady Ranelagh: The Incomparable Life of Robert Boyle’s Sister
#2I’ve always wondered the true number of Einsteins, Ramanujans, Lovelaces, etc who were forced into a life of physical exploitation, turned into mechanical machines because of life’s and humanity’s brutality. Even in modern times... (not that forcing anyone, even non-geniuses into a life of manual servitude or exploitation is ever ok)
Re: Lady Ranelagh: The Incomparable Life of Robert Boyle’s Sister
#3I’ve always wondered the true number of Einsteins, Ramanujans, Lovelaces, etc who were forced into a life of physical exploitation, turned into mechanical machines because of life’s and humanity’s brutality. Even in modern times... (not that forcing anyone, even non-geniuses into a life of manual servitude or exploitation is ever ok)
>I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.
Stephen Jay Gould, "Wide hats and narrow minds" New Scientist 8 March 1979, p. 777. Reprinted in The Panda's Thumb, p. 151.
Re: Lady Ranelagh: The Incomparable Life of Robert Boyle’s Sister
#4nope
Re: Lady Ranelagh: The Incomparable Life of Robert Boyle’s Sister
#5I’ve always wondered the true number of Einsteins, Ramanujans, Lovelaces, etc who were forced into a life of physical exploitation, turned into mechanical machines because of life’s and humanity’s brutality. Even in modern times... (not that forcing anyone, even non-geniuses into a life of manual servitude or exploitation is ever ok)
Consider also that until the 20th century around half of the people born died before adulthood and around a quarter did so before the age of one [0]. Those geniuses didn't even get the chance to be the smartest uneducated subsistence farmer in the fiefdom, the most intelligent 15 year old to bleed out after childbirth, or the brainiest starving war refugee.
Re: Lady Ranelagh: The Incomparable Life of Robert Boyle’s Sister
#6I’ve always wondered the true number of Einsteins, Ramanujans, Lovelaces, etc who were forced into a life of physical exploitation, turned into mechanical machines because of life’s and humanity’s brutality. Even in modern times... (not that forcing anyone, even non-geniuses into a life of manual servitude or exploitation is ever ok)
Or, there's even the Mozarts who were just never put in front of a piano. Maybe they had parents who were really into sports and signed them up for every sport and they never got exposed.
Re: Lady Ranelagh: The Incomparable Life of Robert Boyle’s Sister
#7I’ve always wondered the true number of Einsteins, Ramanujans, Lovelaces, etc who were forced into a life of physical exploitation, turned into mechanical machines because of life’s and humanity’s brutality. Even in modern times... (not that forcing anyone, even non-geniuses into a life of manual servitude or exploitation is ever ok)
Or, there's even the Mozarts who were just never put in front of a piano. Maybe they had parents who were really into sports and signed them up for every sport and they never got exposed.
But the piano created Mozart. What I'm suggesting is that the limiting factor is the number of pianos and musical cultural environments, rather than the amount of potential musical geniuses.
Re: Lady Ranelagh: The Incomparable Life of Robert Boyle’s Sister
#8I’ve always wondered the true number of Einsteins, Ramanujans, Lovelaces, etc who were forced into a life of physical exploitation, turned into mechanical machines because of life’s and humanity’s brutality. Even in modern times... (not that forcing anyone, even non-geniuses into a life of manual servitude or exploitation is ever ok)
Consider also that until the 20th century around half of the people born died before adulthood and around a quarter did so before the age of one [0]. Those geniuses didn't even get the chance to be the smartest uneducated subsistence farmer in the fiefdom, the most intelligent 15 year old to bleed out after childbirth, or the brainiest starving war refugee. [0] https://ourworldindata.org/child-mortality-in-the-past
If you have the chance to research your genealogy, do so. You get to experience history (and see the actual implications of this statistic) for yourself, but also how resilient and resourceful your ancestors had to be.
Re: Lady Ranelagh: The Incomparable Life of Robert Boyle’s Sister
#9Arguments like this make me suspicious. Essentially, we've got no way of knowing how much Lady Ranelagh would have achieved if... so that leaves us free to speculate about how she was an unknown genius. There's an infinite supply of these figures for feminist academics to make hay with. Meanwhile, how many people can name an achievement of Robert Boyle, who actually was the greatest English scientist before Newton?
Maybe I'm wrong, and if I read the book I'd find convincing proof that she was a brilliant mind who could have made great discoveries. What's in the article doesn't seem much: she tested a cure for rickets, paid for her brother's lab, and wrote down somebody's experiment.
Re: Lady Ranelagh: The Incomparable Life of Robert Boyle’s Sister
#10Arguments like this make me suspicious. Essentially, we've got no way of knowing how much Lady Ranelagh would have achieved if... so that leaves us free to speculate about how she was an unknown genius. There's an infinite supply of these figures for feminist academics to make hay with. Meanwhile, how many people can name an achievement of Robert Boyle, who actually was the greatest English scientist before Newton? M…
as a man, how insecure does one have to be to take offense at a book that celebrates the achievement of a woman, and to question the accuracy of it without having actually read it?