The research addresses three issues: 1) What was the place of science within medieval culture? 2) How did scientific knowledge circulate and change in various medieval milieus? 3) What were the implications of gender for medieval people's access and relationships to science? It will examine a wide variety of materials to determine the extent and nature of "scientific literacy" from the ninth to the fifteenth centuries. It will ask both what people knew and what they used their knowledge for. Science was not regarded as the highest form of understanding and had little practical utility, but non-scientists incorporated scientific concepts into many aspects of their culture. The project will explain how and why science was valued. The project investigates lay familiarity with science in relation to the ways it was acquired. It seeks to establish its academic and non-academic sources, and to understand the media though which it was communicated. In an era of limited technology and literacy, ideas may have traveled through sermons, pictures, and conversations, as well as texts. Women had limited access to books in the Middle Ages and could not attend universities, yet many expressed or were exposed to a range of scientific ideas. The research will evaluate the extent to which social and cultural gender differences affected people's ways of knowing and using scientific terms and notions. Intellectual Merit The inquiry will illuminate 1) the specific dynamics of medieval science. It will also intersect with general questions about 2) medieval culture and 3) gender and science. 1) The History of Science in the Middle Ages has focused on the content of scientific ideas and the sites and circumstances of their production. This study will shed light on the life and functions of scientific knowledge beyond specialized circles. It will offer a new, broader perspective on the status of science in relation to other bodies of knowledge, such as theology. 2) Scientific literacy integrated concepts and terms into the fabric of medieval culture-- from poetry to painting. By explicating how people saw their meaning and value in relation to the activities and concerns of everyday life, the research contributes to Medieval Studies. It will uncover networks of communications and of discourse communities. 3) The research will enhance the study of science in relation to women and gender, both in the Middle Ages and in broader historical perspective. It will illustrate the implications of gender beyond laboratories and learned journals, in the ways men and women appropriate and deploy systematic knowledge of the natural world. Broader Impacts. The project will participate in re-conceptualizing scientific literacy--beyond a measure of what people learn in school--to include the more improvised and adapted knowledge that the public acquires and applies in a variety of settings. Since participation in and comfort with science continues to be affected by gender, the research will provide a comparative perspective, as well as some encouraging stories about women and science.
