As a senior biology major in a gender and science studies class, I have decided to look back and reflect on my past four years as a female science major at Bryn Mawr College.  The primary focus of this class is on the field of physics. Physics has not been as successful as biology in attracting women to the field and in placing women in top level positions.  In 1997, 47% of PhDs in biology were awarded to women while only 22% of PhDs in the physical sciences (Thom 67). However, liberal arts colleges and women’s colleges in particular are noted for turning out large numbers of women scientists and Bryn Mawr fits nicely into these categories with biology consistently being one of the most popular majors.  I would like to discuss which parts of my undergraduate experience were the most rewarding and which were the most discouraging because these experiences are relevant to the discussion of how our society creates female scientists. Throughout grade school, high school, and in the first year of undergraduate work, changes need to be made that will attract more of both men and women to the sciences.  However, in the last years of undergraduate work when women are about to enter into the work force, more should be done to encourage them to stay in science despite certain disheartening social factors. 

Each of us has encountered a “loud” shirt or “warm” colors, however, for most individuals these terms are metaphors and not actual physical experiences. Those living with the neurological condition synesthesia, in fact, do encounter this blending of senses on a regular basis. Senses like hearing and vision, or touch and taste become combined in the synesthete’s brain rather than remaining separate as in the majority of the population. The study of synesthesia dates as far back as 1880 with the work of Francis Galton in the journal Nature. However, due to the stigma that synesthesia is the product of the imagination, memories from childhood, or drug experiences, little interest was expressed in the subject until recently.1 The condition is very subjective in nature, causing most of the data obtained to be qualitative rather than quantitative. This fact makes it difficult to have any conclusive physical evidence about synesthesia. Scientists do not have a clear answer as to what causes synesthesia or even as to what is occurring within the brain of a synesthete. Although many theories have been purposed, the many complexities of this fascinating condition are likely to keep researchers puzzled for years to come.

Dear BMC Physics Department;            An interesting opportunity has arisen for me to communicate with you collectively about my experiences as a woman in physics, and particularly about the differences I can see between my experiences in this department and the statistical and anecdotal information available about the current, nation-wide experiences of women in physics.  Let me begin by saying that on almost every point I have had the chance to read about and discuss in my Gender and Science class this spring, I find that my tenure in physics has differed from the more unfortunate norm – overall, I have had a wonderful time doing physics with you.  But, as always, there are areas where I would admit room for improvement, and it is on these things that I would like to focus, and perhaps to offer some advice.              First let me explain what prompted me to write this letter.  For my class, we read a book by Sheila Tobias called They’re Not Dumb, They’re Different, Stalking the Second Tier.  The book is essentially a collection of reports, findings and suggestions based on her research into why science (specifically large intro physics and chemistry classes) lose so many potential students, and why so many of those lost are females and minorities.  Tobias recruited several intelligent non-scientists (mostly graduate students in other disciplines) to seriously audit introductory physics and chemistry courses and keep track of their progress, observations and impressions.              What came out of this research was fascinating to me because it was constantly clear to me where these students’ experiences intersected with mine and where they differed enormously.  It occurred to me even as I read that this could be a useful framework through which I could evaluate my experiences with our physics department here and perhaps provide some feedback for you.  I suppose that since I am using this reading as a framework, I should give a very brief explanation of why.            When Tobias speaks of “second-tier” students, she means those who are every bit as intelligent, intellectual and capable as their potential physicist peers, but who have chosen not to do science, for whatever reason.  Her goal was to explore some of those reasons.  This was so potent for me because, even though a lot of my experiences paralleled those which led these and other students not to choose the hard sciences, I did, and continue to do so, despite the fact that I may or may not be as intelligent, intellectual or capable as these people.            So what, according to Tobias, creates the leak in the introductory level classes?  She mentions such things as the perceived “culture of competition,” the concept of “weeding out” students, the lack of an overarching narrative conveyed to the students, and the structure of problem sets and exams.  I would like to speak to these things in terms of the BMC Physics Department and present one perspective on the good, the bad and the ugly (but fixable).            We have read a great deal about this “culture of competition.”  Needless to say this is somewhat diminished all over Bryn Mawr’s campus because of the strong injunction among the students against talking about one’s grades, but in physics there is still a sense of competition in slightly more abstract terms.  I know who, in my classes, can do the homework without help and who cannot (I am, you all know, in that second group), and I know who is left weeping after every exam and who is not.              While I understand that this could easily make some students uncomfortable, as it did to me my freshman year, I realize that this understanding of my classmates has been enormously helpful to me academically.  I know whom to ask for help – an invaluable knowledge in physics.  I have never felt like I am in competition with my peers in our department – indeed, for me the culture of competition is much sharper in my humanities and social science classes, especially in terms of papers (which have never been my strongest point).I feel like there is almost never any boasting within our department, and that seems to me unusual within the larger context of physics.  In fact, the only people I hear touting themselves in a physics department are the more obnoxious Haverford boys.  Maybe that is a big part of the difference – the presence of male students and the culture they bring into the classroom may be what fosters this feeling of painful or unnecessary competition.  Here I think the Bryn Mawr professors, while clearly not ignorant of the situation, could perhaps find ways to be more proactive about discouraging that kind of competition.  I could go on at length on the problems brought into the classroom by HaverBoys, but to be more specific I will say that I would like to see more immediate quashing of things like derisive remarks after a woman asks a question, and perhaps a more anonymous method of turning in homework so we do not have to see each other’s problem sets and exams as they are handed in.It was also interesting to read about the process of weeding out, which I have heard about but never thought I had experienced.  Upon further reflection, I decided that this process at most institution is supposed to divide the students into those who are “naturally capable” of physics and those who are not, but that at Bryn Mawr we try to keep those who are naturally willing to do physics, rather than those who may be very talented but who have little interest in or tenacity for the subject.This, I think, is why I have survived so long.  I am dead-set determined to do physics, despite my problems in mathematics and enormously varied other interests.  I also think I got to skip that step because the first physics class I took at Bryn Mawr was 104, rather than 103 in the first semester.  I took Psychology 102 (a mistake!) and realized that physics really was my academic love.  Therefore I started “ahead” of the weeding out, already on the major track.  On the other hand, I feel that at Bryn Mawr our weeding out is not done so much by the structure of the classes or the nature of the science itself, but by the specific professors.  It would be interesting, I think, to track the students by first-professors and see what percentage of each professor’s own freshmen stay in physics.  I am fairly convinced that some of our professors are much better at recruiting and keeping students than others, and while I understand that it is each teacher’s perogative to prioritize his or her class in his or her own way – is it more important to keep many different students or to keep only the best?  Is the goal to teach as much physics as possible or to train them in as much math as necessary? – I would like to suggest a departmental hard look at those introductory classes.  I would also very much like to know what your priorities really are, so that I (and other students) are not coming into a class expecting one thing and never understanding why we are not getting it.  This leads nicely into my next observation from Tobias; many of her subjects reported feeling lost because they could perceive no overarching narrative or path or connectedness in the class.  This is where, I must confess, I got a little angry at the classes those students were taking.  I have almost always felt, in my BMC physics classes, that I understood why we were learning what we were learning, and when, and how, and how everything fit together, and where we were going.  This is helped by the narrative that some of our professors provide at the start of the semester and update as necessary; however, mostly I think my understanding comes from in-class discussion of both the history of the physics we cover and the mentioning of things-to-come, either in class or in the future.  I have generally always felt that the physics I was doing was in some sense real, a genuine method of looking at the world, if not complete and comprehensive at least partially so, attempting to be without pretending to be.  To be quite honest, I have found more narrative in most of my physics classes than in a couple of my non-science courses.

For First Time, Chimps Seen Making Weapons for Hunting

By Rick Weiss
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, February 23, 2007; A01, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/22/AR2007022201007_pf.html

Feb 16, 2007

We begin with the postulate of the “crack”1 in thinking about science. Each individual brings a different interpretation to a range of observations. In the world of cracks, each new perspective is valuable because it provides an alternative to the current theories, and allows for the growth of being “less wrong.” Individual subjectivity is necessary in this process, unlike traditional science where objectivity is lauded. Despite conventions of avoiding first person pronouns and attempting to remove the individual element, subjectivity is becoming more accepted in the scientific community. For example, the use of personal pronouns2 is being accepted as useful in helping people understand science not as the discipline of textbooks, but an organic body of knowledge. This enables us to expand the range of understanding which we have over our environment.

Submitted by: Katharine Baratz 

In the summer of 1925, William Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow went head-to-head over high school teacher John Scopes’s controversial decision to teach evolution in his Tennessee classroom. According to the Butler Act of 1926, it was at that time illegal to teach, in any Tennessee classroom, “any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals,” [1]. At the conclusion of what became one of the most famous trials in the 20th century, Scopes was found guilty after a mere nine-minute jury deliberation and ordered to pay a fine of 100 dollars.

 As the theory of evolution was being developed, scientists had to work a lot of things out in order to generate a “story” that was plausible and convincing. This called for especially rigorous attention to detail, since they were competing with the theory of creationism which said that variation of living things over time is not a result of interactions with their environment, but rather is a reflection of the Divine Plan; a plan that is fixed, and that foresees and governs every change we see in the living world.  Some of the various problems that scientists had to work out to make a credible case for evolution included: How could they find proof for a process that had taken place over thousands of years, and for which the evidence was extremely scattered?  What were the basic units of change; were they whole species, individual organisms, or individual genes?  Finally, the biggest question they had to attempt to answer was: Why does evolution happen?  Why don’t living things just stay the same?

Tamarinda Barry Figueroa

 Stories of Evolution & Visa Versa

Professor Anne Dalke

02/16/06

Katherine Redford
English 223
February 16, 2007

How does Mathematics fit into the description of Science as a process of “Less Wrong”?

 If we look at the three disciplines of academia, mathematics undoubtedly falls into the category of science.  It has been praised as the language of science, lending itself to biology, chemistry and physics.  Mathematics has a solid foundation, tested by different civilizations since the beginning of time.  Every reason that I have been given to explain why science is only a process of getting it less wrong, do not stand up when it comes to math.  Because of this, it is impossible to say that there is no right answer in science because mathematics has been tested and retested, and the story has never changed.  Math is a science and if math has a correct answer, than evolution must also have a correct answer.  However, there exists a great difference between the stories of mathematics and evolution.  Because humans are a part of evolution, a “character” in the plot, it is impossible to achieve objectivity.  While math provides evidence that a true answer exists, our role in evolution prevents us from understanding it fully.
  Mathematics finds its roots growing independently from one another in multiple ancient cultures.  In ancient Asian civilizations the rise of mathematics was brought about “as a practical science to assist in agriculture, engineering, and business pursuits,” (“Mathematics Development”).  But the concept of the number, on which all of mathematics is based, reaches so far back into human existence that there is no record; “the birth of the idea of number is so hidden behind the veils of countless age… our remote ancestors must have felt the need to enumerate their livestock, tally objects for barter, or mark the passage of days” (Burton 1).  Civilization after civilization independently found new ways to express the same concept, the number system.  The earliest evidence suggests that notches or tallies were used in a one to one ratio, and the way these numbers were expressed ranged from hieroglyphics to cuneiform to a system in China with only nine symbols (Burton 1-29).  
 So far in lecture we have been told that human subjectivity prevents us from ever getting the story completely correct.  We look at evolution, and everyone interprets the story differently, but this is not true in mathematics.  So many civilizations developed math independently of each other, and all of them reached the same conclusion.  There exists evidence of the use of the Pythagorean Theorem in ancient Egypt, long before Pythagoras came around.  All of my observations point to the idea that mathematics is fact, and should be taken as such.  The “less wrong” theory just doesn’t hold up here.
 Hermann Hankel is quoted as saying, “In most sciences one generation tears down what another has built and what one has established another undoes.  In Mathematics alone each generation builds a new story to an old structure”.  Mathematics is unique in many ways, especially in the way that it relates to other sciences; “mathematics… is also penetrating into areas of knowledge one-sidedly, for their benefit” (Bochner 5).  Mathematics as a subject of study holds up entirely on its own, we don’t need chemistry to define it, biology to reinforce it, it exists without help.  What does this say about the other sciences?  In science, there has to be a right answer; mathematics is proof of this.
 There is one variable that differs between biology and mathematics, that is, that we are a part of biology, the science of life.  Our observations are limited by the fact that we are a part of the process.  We evolved from earlier species, and we can predict that we will evolve into more species.  In mathematics, we are not a part of the science, we can apply the science to our lives, use it to build buildings, explain the laws of physics, but what is happening to us now, does not affect changes in mathematics, and the deeper understanding of the science. 
 Our desire to understand biology is clouded with the natural human desire to understand what is going to happen.  Often in class we discussed whether or not we believed the story of evolution to be comforting.  Some argued that the thought of having no control over what happens to future generations to be a frightening concept.  Others believed that the fact that the concept of uncontrollable fate soothed them.  Regardless of our position on this question one fact remained, as humans, an animal species constantly evolving; we are personally invested in the story.
 This is where the concept of the crack comes in to play; this is not a feature of science, but rather a feature of our being both the studier and the studied.  It is impossible for humans to be objective when studying themselves.  The way in which we perceive what is happening is dependent upon all the concepts described in class.  Our personal beliefs and what we hope to get out of our observations may skew what we choose to observe, and the conclusions we reach from them. 
 All of the reasons that humans cannot successfully study biology are not flaws of the science itself.   We know that in science there is a truth; in mathematics we have successfully achieved truth through our study.  Mathematics is a science of which we are not a part; when we study science, we are studying something separate from our own existence.  However, when we attempt to study biology, we fail miserably.  From the beginning our theories were varied, and our conclusions sporadic.  This is because we are attempting to observe something that we are an integral part of, being both the studier and the studied.  However, this does not mean that a truth does not exist, simply that we our involvement in the story prevents us from discovering it.  Our personal temperament and beliefs cloud the science before us and the truth evades us.