Stories of Science

In reading Dan's post, I was struck by the memory of a text I encountered in an anthropology class as an undergrad, "The Egg and the Sperm: How Science Has Constructed a Romance Based on Stereotypical Male-Female Roles," by Emily Martin. In this 1991 article, Martin argues that the language used in science text-books to describe menstruation, ovulation, spermatogenesis, fertilization and other (micro)biological processes related to egg and sperm is heavily implicated in stereotypical beliefs about the roles of men and women in Western society. Martin asks,

How is it that positive images are denied to the bodies of women? A look at language-in this case, scientific language-provides the first clue. Take the egg and the sperm. It is remarkable how "femininely" the egg behaves and how "masculinely" the sperm. The egg is seen as large and passive. It does not move or journey, but passively "is transported," "is swept," or even "drifts" along the fallopian tube. In utter contrast, sperm are small, "streamlined," and invariably active. (489)

Certainly the image that Martin describes--the active sperm travelling toward the stationary egg, seeking it out, competing with its brethren in order to be the single conquerer who is able to pierce/penetrate the egg fits pretty much with how I learned about the biological process.

But as Martin goes on to describe the biological processes in different language, it becomes clear that both the egg and the sperm could be described in much more active terms. However, research biologists reporting their findings, and textbooks summarizing these findings as "facts" seem to replicate more than anything the role of the sperm as active agent, and egg as passive object. Importantly, she notes that even as scientists gathered new data, this "did not lead scientists to eliminate gender stereotypes in their descriptions of egg and sperm" but rather led to more convoluted language that still subjected egg and sperm to the social roles ascribed their female and male counterparts.

I think this is an interesting case of how feedback loops exist between culture, science (with all its objectivity), and discourse. Martin points out that the myth of the egg and the sperm as passive and active female and male, respectively, is so entrenched in our understandings of male/female courtship patterns and expected roles that the myth even persists beyond scientific discoveries that would challenge the myth at the very core.

Killingsworth and Palmer discuss scientific discourse (as in peer reviewed journals) as being very different from that which appears in science textbooks, and this distinction is one that Martin misses (or at least glosses over) in her study. But, Killingsworth and Palmer do also point out that sometimes, and especially in ecology, the use of laymen's terms or metaphors or images serves as a kind of shorthand that scientists understand, but which can cause gross misunderstandings or misconceptions in the general public. Perhaps an area ripe for research (and concern) would be the translation of "facts" from the scientific community into the "facts" that get taught in school. What are the roles of cultural myths and accepted stories in mitigating that transfer of knowledge?

This is the chasm that Carson was also attempting to bridge--her book is science lesson as much as it is scientific discussion, and she walks a very thin line trying to meet the needs of her various audiences.