Customer Reviews

Lifting the Veil: The Feminine Face of Science

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Lifting the Veil shows the feminine perspective in science, instead of the normal male view. This is extremely illuminating, and makes the reader think of new things -- an alternate reality for many male viewers. There is an important message here: when we do not include the feminine perspective, we miss seeing part of reality. The author mixes philosophy, science, and feminism in a very readable way, filled with anecdotes and conversations with both women scientists and men who are not afraid of their feminine sides.

This is a wonderful book that details the difference between how men and women approach science. It demonstrates those charactoristics that women can uniquely bring to science. As a mathematician I was impressed with Dr. Shepherd's rigorous scholarship and enjoyed her interviews with living women scientists. I'm a father of a teenage girl who plans a career in science, and I appreciate the author's efforts to highlight the special ways that women contribute to the scientific effort.

Although there are many excellent books and articles covering particular aspects of feminism and science, finding a comprehensive text is difficult. I was delighted to discover _Lifting the Veil_ a few years ago, and have been using it ever since as a text in a class I teach, "Feminist Perspectives in Science." It is written with great sensitivity, insight, clarity, and conviction. Shepherd advocates for greater gender balance in the ways science is conceived, practiced, and taught. Specifically she imagines a more inclusive science--inclusive not only of women and people of color, but also inclusive of certain qualities customarily associated with women and customarily undervalued in Western science. Each chapter features one of these qualities: feeling, receptivity, multiplicity, nurturing, cooperation, intuition, relatedness, and social responsibility. Her writing style is engaging and enjoyable to read. Endnotes, bibliography, and commentary within her text are exceptionally illuminating guides to the literature, and inspire and facilitate further reading. Especially important to me as a teacher is that my students like the book, and read it--even the most skeptical males.

Shepherd exposes male bias in science not in an accusatory way but simply by proposing a positive and appealing alternative-- "more creative, more productive, more relevant, and more humane"--noticing how a more "feminine," inclusive science is emerging already in a thousand different ways, and unveiling the places where it has all along been present but unseen. Her book seems to take into account, as if by design, most of the complaints about science voiced by my students. They find in this book a new face of science to which they can relate.

Linda Shepherd's book is a must for those seeking to understand why science has such a hard, "macho" edge and why it seems so divorced from wanting to look at the impact on society and the environment. Dr. Shepherd explores what it is that science and "scientists" lack--a compassionate face.

This book describes the changing trends in today's world of R&D as it strives to evolve itself. This book does not strive to bring science down to the reader, instead it seeks to illustrate the beauty and complexity of science and asks the reader to come up. Shepard illustrates her points with allusions to Jungianism and her own personal experiences as a scientist and as a woman (and proves they need not be separated). Shepard examines the effects on science being funded and conducted almost exclusively by men and the changes brought about by the inclusion of women into it at (almost) all levels. She discusses why many scientists are finding their way away from Baconian "rip from nature's breast what you will" philosophy to one more holistic, nurturing and sustaining. I would recommend this book to anyone who wishes to fall in love with science or understand why scientists act the way they do. Finally, Shepard shows us why the true scientist need not be the cold, unfeeling demagogue society tells us they should be. I would advocate strongly any young woman looking to go into the science read this. Not only would it give her a sense of her past, but a good guide for the present and possible future.

I won't mince words. This is not a book about science. Rather it is a book about what science, in the authors view, ought to be. The author is a confessed disciple of Carl Jung and frequently uses Jungian psychoanalysis in her work. Which wouldn't be a problem if modern psychology hadn't laughed the Jungians out of the classroom decades ago. She argues that the so-called "feminine" way of doing science enables a greater understanding of "psychic" phenomena which is this close to wandering off into the jungle of pseudo-science. Add to these the fact that the book is horribly outdated and based on gross misconceptions of quantum mechanics and chaos theory and you have a tremendously flawed piece of work masquerading as a serious critique of science and scientific method inter-spaced with rambling stories of personal experiences. She contends that the "masculine" approach to science which is cold, reductive, and unfeeling would benefit from the "feminine" qualities of emphasis on cooperation, harmony, and nurturing. However, if we take her view then we have a serious problem looking at the birth and triumph of modern medicine which has eradicated a huge degree of human suffering under the "masculine" paradigm? Could such results have been achieved without so-called "masculinity" in science which required reduction, control, experimentation, and very often, cruelty? How can she explain the successes of the space program and other huge collaborative research projects under the "masculine" model if that model disparages cooperation. She can't, nor does she try. She holds up the "feminine" intuition (which has been the popular explanation for scientific breakthroughs, Newton being an example) but neglects the years and years of work scientists like Newton put into making a flash of insight into a workable model of reality. That process, with it's logical analysis is "masculine" and therefore not valuable. There is no such thing as "masculine" or "feminine" ways of doing science. There is only good science and bad science. And this is very bad science indeed.