Arguments 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?
Thoughtful critique is welcome of course. It's cheap flamewar rhetoric that we don't want here. If you feel that another comment is a shallow dismissal, a substantive reply showing how that is the case can be quite helpful.