ABSTRACT
The seventeenth century saw changes in philosophical and scientific thinking, which many key contemporary figures termed ‘modern’, even revolutionary. 1 None of the new ideas or discoveries was immediately accepted by all. Every one was contested and, indeed, forged within a maelstrom of conflicting theories and ideologies that were an interrelated part of the stormy political, religious and social upheavals of this turbulent century. ‘Science’ was still hardly distinguished from philosophy and as such was integral to the intellectual revolution of thought being played out at this time and affecting educational ideas. The period may now be remembered for the concepts of objectivity and pure reason which flowed from Bacon and Descartes but it was also the time of the greatest number of persecutions of witchcraft in European history and when many dabbled in occult practices and/or were seduced by millenarian ideals. Within all this were interwoven gendered ideas which were not necessarily any more liberating for women, despite the counteraction elsewhere of time-honoured assumptions by new supposedly scientifically based beliefs. Until recently, women were written out of seventeenth-century scientific history, but contemporary gender research has thrown new light on this.
