Astronomical Ambition

Caroline Herschel's Autobiographies, ed. Michael Hoskin, Science History Publications, Cambridge, 2003; 147pp., £25; ISBN: 0-905193-06-7.

Michael Hoskin, The Herschel Partnership as viewed by Caroline, Science History Publications, Cambridge, 2003; 182pp., £25; ISBN: 0-905193-05-9.

For the past two decades, historians of science have sought to reclaim female researchers from a legacy of neglect. From Margaret Alic's stridently feminist history of women in science from antiquity to the late nineteenth century, Hypatia's Heritage (1986), to Patricia Fara's more balanced exploration of women, science and power in the Enlightenment, Pandora's Breeches (2004), critics have encouraged greater awareness of the crucial investigations of scientific women. Capitalizing upon the interest in such histories, the past couple of years have seen the publication of women's scientific writings, coupled with biographical and autobiographical accounts. The work of the nineteenth-century scientific practitioner and expositor Mary Somerville has recently been collected in an excellent volume edited by James A. Secord (2004), and a biography by Allan Chapman, which examined Somerville within her social and scientific context, appeared at the end of the same year. Caroline Herschel, Somerville's contemporary, has received less attention. The publication of her autobiographical writings and an account of her contribution to 'the Herschel partnership' by Michael Hoskin offer a chance to examine this most frustrating and fascinating of women in her own words, as well as to reassess her position within the history of the physical sciences.

While numerous critics (notably Barbara T. Gates and Ann B. Shteir) have explored women's participation in the development of botany and natural history, the contribution of women to the physical sciences still remains under-researched. This would appear – literally – natural. The study of flora and fauna proved especially enticing for eighteenth and nineteenth-century women because it was both an acceptable (to men and women alike) and a healthy leisure pursuit. Of course, women's apparent affinity with natural processes accorded them a perceived advantage in understanding the world around them. Beyond this, alongside the more usual artistic accomplishments a little scientific knowledge was considered desirable for women's admittance into eighteenth-century polite culture. The rise of print culture during this period encouraged a new genre of literature that promoted the proliferating scientific developments to the uninitiated. In addition to the many periodicals which contained mathematical problems there were educational manuals, often epistolary or dialogic in form, which presented the sciences in an accessible manner and encouraged understanding through individual experimentation in a domestic environment. Women were often both the target readers and the compilers of these volumes, which emphasized the connection rather than the disjunction between morality and the pursuit of science.

Indeed, some knowledge of the various forms of natural philosophy was deemed by many educators to be beneficial to female development. From Mary Astell and Bathsua Makin in the late seventeenth century to Maria Edgeworth and Priscilla Wakefield in the 1790s, scientific ability was considered compatible with domestic duties and the smooth running of an efficient household. Awareness of the rudiments of mathematics could encourage economy and knowledge of the laws of chemistry would improve the art of culinary accuracy. As Mary Astell noted in The Christian Religion (1705):

And since it is allow'd on all hands, that the Mens Business is without Doors, and theirs is an Active Life; Women who ought to be Retir'd, are for this reason design'd by Providence for Speculation: Providence, which allots every one an Employment, and never intended that any one shou'd give themselves up to Idleness and Unprofitable Amusements. And I make no question but great Improvements might be made in the Sciences, were not Women enviously excluded from this their proper business.¹

Not only was female participation in science suitable for the occupation of the sheltered sex, it came with a divine sanction.

The mechanics of the heavens also attracted surprising numbers of women, contributing to an astronomical craze in the eighteenth century. Partly, in...