Women: Metamorphosis of the Butterfly Effect

 (La Salle University, Costa Rica, 2006)

PH.D. DISSERTATION
by Maria Suárez Toro

The research is comprised of 26 chapters that are designed to make visible women´s paradigmatic contributions in the sciences, arts, politics, literature, etc.


It includes women from all regions of the world of various ages, ethnicities and walks of life, and in different historical moments. It highlights women's resistance to adopting the current hegemonic scientific paradigm, also known as the Newtonian Paradigm which “rules” science today.  Together with politics, this paradigm has been responsible for the atomization of knowledge and the de-legimization and "invisibilization" of oppressed people’s experiences and subjectivities in the construction of knowledge.


Focusing on women's knowledge, thoughts, desires, and feelings, the research highlights hidden, yet significant contributions in the current conflicts and power struggles between the old Newtonian Paradigm and proposals for emerging alternative paradigms in the world today. 


For example, the reasearch documents the case of Mileva Maric, the unknown first wife of Albert Einstein.  Mileva was an eminent mathematician and physicist who contributed to her husband’s mathematical work and, maybe likewise in physics, in the discoveries which won him the Nobel Prize in Science, although he never recognized her contributions.  Although some in the scientific  community resist recognizing Mileva's role, her recently published love letters to Albert and other books are obvious evidence of this contribution.


Another chapter of María's dissertation focuses on the scientific contributions of four “peripheral visionaries” – as named by Mary Catherine Bateson (Margaret Mead’s daughter) in referring to women in the sciences.  Despite being marginalized as women in institutionalized sciences, a number of them managed to question many of the modern scientific linear assertions  regarding the flow of life.  These women include Elisabet Sahtouris, Lyn Margulis, Evelyn Fox Keller and Barbara Mc Clintock. 


This doctoral work also features a chapter about the contributions of Olimpe de Gouges during the French Revolution.  She worked in the feminine movement to devise the "Statement of the Rights of the Woman", when she saw that women were not included in the principles of “equality” “liberty” and “fraternity” of the Revolution.  The price Olimpe paid for this bold action was death by guillotine and many of her companions spent the remainder of their lives in an insane asylum.  Olimpe denounces the exclusionary character of the ideals of the Age of Enlightenment, which was one of the philosophical bases of the Newtonian Paradigm.  As a result, this paradigm was not only mechanistic, but also androcentric. 


All of these women and many more, such as Rosa Parks in the U.S. South, Tatiana Trechenko of Chernobyl, and a Mayan Guatemalan woman, Francisca Alvarez, are all featured in this dissertation on the debates of science, arts, history, politics, literature and society.  These women affirm that they were never willing participants in a mechanistic paradigm that viewed both nature and women as objects of to be dominated and controlled. 


As documented in the dissertation, the recognition of women’s and others' contributions, can contribute to reshaping science and the bases of conflict between the hegemonic Newtonian mechanistic paradigm and the new holistic proposals that are seeking to transcend it.