Religious intollerance is often blamed for “the burning times” … but could scientific intollerance be just as culpuble?
For my counselling course I was reading an interesting article by Heather Gridley, senior lecturer of Social Sciences and Psychology at Victoria University. In the article, “Psychology, Spirituality, Religion and Culture – Harvesting the Gifts of All Our Ancestors”, she made the following remarks in relation to the scientific revolution:
Nature was of course assumed to be feminine and passive, awaiting the gaze and penetration of the male scientist-adventurer. Europe’s first universities were now well established, but the Malleus Maleficarum (hammer of the witches), the manual of the Inquisition on the Middle Ages, had ensured that women took no part in the cultural and scientific Renaissance, except as artist’ models – any women who dared to ‘cure’ without having studied (from which they were banned) was declared to be a witch, and so the healing knowledges of midwives and others fell outside “the academy” of the emerging male profession.
I have heard such suggestions before, that professional rivalry was a contributing factor to the witch burnings, but the full implications of that had not hit home before. Without minimizing the responsibility of the Christian community, it would seem the scientific community needs to do some repenting of its own.
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