A topic in Learners' conceptions and thinking
You glorify Nature and meditate on her:
Xunzi (a.k.a. Hsün Tzu), c. 310–c. 220 B.C.E.
Why not domesticate her and regulate her?
You obey Nature and sing her praises:
Why not control her course and use it?
Personification is the name given to the figure of speech when a non-person is referred to as if a person.
A well-know example would be nature (i.e., 'Mother Nature') being referred to as a 'she' (see the examples below).
Whilst this would generally be considered inappropriate in scientific writing today, it was once common – for example to refer to the Sun as a 'he', even in scientific accounts.
Personification is related to anthropomorphism where non-human entities are discussed as if they have human feelings and motives. Such language can be used figuratively, but anthropomorphic accounts (e.g., "the atom wants to…") can come to be used in place of scientific accounts as if they are genuine explanations.
Read about Learners' anthropomorphic thinking
Read about Anthropomorphism in public science discourse
Personal pronouns * and gendered titles
The examples below include
| Females – ♀ | Males – ♂ |
| Nature | Saturn |
| The Earth | Iron |
| The Moon | the cube |
| the octahedron | |
| Reason/Philosophy | |
| Astrology | |
| Phrenology | |
| RRS Sir David Attenborough |
Nature: ♀ – her, herself, she
"…nature exhibits herself more clearly under the trials and vexations of art than when left to herself"
"Nature cannot be conquered but by obeying her"
Francis Bacon
"And so in the case of this planet [Mercury] nature has sported a wonderful variety, but one which she has confirmed by a perpetual, certain, and unchanging order."
Nicolaus Copernicus
"Half a century ago … it was proclaimed that nature loves simplicity; she has since too often given us the lie…"
"It seems that our conquest is the dearer to us the more effort it has cost us, or that we are the surer of having wrested her true secret from nature the more jealously she has hidden it from us."
Henri Poincaré
"…we say that the world as described by scientists is the result of a complex exchange between Nature as She Is In and For Herself – and this lady we shall never know – and inquisitive research teams including, possibly, the whole subculture that supports them."
Paul Feyerabend
"…nature as described by scientists is not Nature In and For Herself, it is the result of an interaction, or an exchange, between two rather unequal partners, tiny men and women on the one side and Majestic Being on the other."
"An immense impulse was now given to science, and it seemed as if the genius of mankind, long pent up, had at length rushed eagerly upon Nature, and commenced, with one accord, the great work of turning up her hitherto unbroken soil, and exposing the treasures so long concealed… It seemed, too, as if Nature herself seconded the impulse; and, while she supplied new and extraordinary aids to those senses which were henceforth to be exercise in her investigation,–while the telescope and the microscope laid open the infinite in both directions–as if to call attention to her wonders, and signalise the epoch, she displayed the rarest, the most splendid and mysterious, of all astronomical phenomena, the appearance and subsequent total extinction of a new and brilliant fixed star twice within the life time of Galileo himself."
"Before we can enter into any thing which deserves to be called a general and systematic view of nature, it is necessary that we should possess an enumeration, if not complete, at least of considerable extent, of her materials and combinations…"
"…those wonderful structures which Nature builds up by her refined and invisible architecture…"
"Now, the mechanism of nature is for the most part either on too large or too small a scale to be immediately cognizable by our senses; and her agents in like manner elude direct observation, and become known to us only by their effects."
"To electricity the views of the physical enquirer now turn from almost every quarter, as to one of those universal powers which Nature seems to employ in her most important and secret operations."
John F. W. Herschel
"Monistic, holistic, and relativistic views of reality appeal to philosophers and some scientists, but they are badly handicapped in appealing to the "common sense" of the Western average man [sic] – not because nature herself refutes them (if she did, philosophers could have discovered this much), but because they must be talked about in what amounts to a new language."
Benjamin Lee Whorf
They were making late hay, somewhere out of town; and though the fragrance had a long way to come…it was wafted faintly into Princess's Place, whispering of Nature and her wholesome air…
It might be worthwhile, sometimes, to inquire what Nature is, and how men work to change her, and whether, in the enforced distortions so produced, it is not natural to be unnatural. Coop any son or daughter of our mighty mother within narrow range, and bind the prisoner to one idea, and foster it by servile worship of it on the part of the few timid or designing people standing round, and what is Nature to the willing captive who has never risen up upon the wings of a free mind–drooping and useless soon–to see her in her comprehensive truth!
Charles Dickens (in his novel 'Dombey and Son')
"…the one repels or turns away from the other: for so were nature perverted, and the form of the stone perturbed, a form that strictly keeps the laws which it imposed upon bodies: hence, when all is not rightly ordered according to nature, comes the flight of one from the other's perverse position and from the discord, for nature does not allow of an unjust and inequitable peace, or compromise: but wages war and exerts force to make bodies acquiesce well and justly."
William Gilbert (explaining why magnets repel when their similar poles are pushed together)
"…I am constantly employed in observing the works of nature, and tracing the manner in which she directs the order and arrangement of the world."
Michael Faraday
"For Faraday nature possessed not just personal but distinctly feminine qualities. Thus we find him castigating the (male) scientists for 'substituting the whisperings of his own fancy for the revelations of the goddess."
Geoffrey Cantor writing about Michael Faraday
p.220
"The works of nature are prodigious, and whoever does not penetrate her reasons imagines these prodigies impossible and does not believe them."
Geoseffo Petrucci
"…if nature were a composer, she would be one of the greatest copyright violators in history – everything from parts of DNA to entire genes and proteins, is a modified copy of something else."
…
"Mother Nature is like a lazy builder who crafts a bewildering variety of concoctions by repurposing, copying, modifying, and redeploying ancient recipes and ingredients."
Prof. Neil Shubin
"It seems, then, that nature has pointed out a mixed kind of life as most suitable to human race, and secretly admonished them to allow none of these biasses to draw too much, so as to incapacitate them for other occupations and entertainments. 'Indulge your passions for science', says she, 'but let your science be human, and such as may have a direct reference to action and society. Abstruse thought and profound researches I prohibit, and will severely punish, by the pensive melancholy which they introduce, by the endless uncertainty in which they involve you, and by the cold reception which your pretended discoveries shall meet with, when communicated. Be a philosopher, but, amidst all your philosophy, be still a man'."
"It must certainly be allowed, that nature has kept us at a great distance from all her secrets, and has afforded us only the knowledge of a few superficial qualities of objects; while she conceals from us those powers and principles, on which the influence of these objects entirely depends."
"As nature has taught us the use of our limbs, without giving us the knowledge of the muscles and nerves, by which they are actuated; so has she implanted in us an instinct, which carries forward the thought in a correspondent course to that which she has established among external objects; though we are ignorant of those powers and forces, on which this regular course and succession of objects totally depends."
"It is thence we become acquainted with the different characters, which nature has impressed upon the sexes, and which she preserves with constancy and regularity."
"But admitting a spiritual substance to be dispersed throughout the universe, like the etherial fire of the Stoics, and to be the only inherent subject of thought; we have reason to conclude from analogy, that nature uses it after the same manner she does the other substance, matter. She employs it as a kind of paste or clay; modifies it into a variety of forms and existences; dissolves after a time each modification; and from its substance erects a new form."
David Hume
"[For reason addresses itself to nature] to be taught by her, certainly, but not as a pupil who accepts anything the teacher chooses to say, but rather as a judge invested with the power to require the witness to answer the questions put to him"
…
Immnual Kant (quoted by Ernst Cassirer)
"…all such comparisons presupposes this: that in respect to her empirical laws nature has observed a certain economy that to our judgement appear fitting…as if nature were something favourable to our judgement in the conformity of her particular laws…"
[Discussing Kant's ideas] "We find that nature 'favours' the effort of our faculty of judgement to discover a systematic order among her separate forms, and, so to speak, meets it half way. The question is how one could hope by comparison of perceptions to attain to empirical concepts of that which is common to different natural forms, if nature (as it is possible to think), because of her very different empirical laws, had imposed such a great dissimilarity on them that comparison would be entirely or in large part futile, so far as bringing out any harmony and hierarchy of species and genera is concerned."
"…Geothe had been convinced that nature's secret could never be wrung from her 'with levers and screws'."
Ernst Cassirer
"It is a matter of faith that nature – as she is perceptible to our five senses – takes the character of such a well-formulated puzzle."
Albert Einstein
"…Nature imparts no doctrines: she merely exhibits changes in her phenomena. We may so employ these changes that they appear as answers to our questions."
Jacob von Uexküll
"Could there be a difference in electrical susceptibility between 'men who have been mutilated by Art [i.e., castrated to maintain their singing voice] and those towards whom Nature has shown herself to be a hard-hearted mother'?"
Joseph-Aignan Sigaud de Lafond (1781) quoted and translated by Patricia Fara
"Nature is so diverse that she can provide exceptions to any but the rigorous rule."
Alan Holden (Lillian McDermott Medal winner, 1986)
"Nature is a blind but a supremely effective engineer. Through the agency of undirected mutation she continually adjusts the structure and the mechanisms of the living things on earth."
Andrew Scott, Vital Principles. The molecular mechanisms of life
'Our grand governess, nature, mocks our petty hostilities."
Jacobus Kapteyn in a public letter referring to the exclusion of German science from the International Research Council formed after world war 1
"Country estates might not have appeared artificial, but in reality a great deal of hard work and money went into constraining nature and making her behave as desired."
Patricia Fara, Erasmus Darwin: Sex, science and serendipity
- Nature does not erect a continent of land among the clouds to show her power (James Hutton)
- nature does not have a burning mountain for an end in her intention (James Hutton)
- nature herself determines values measured (Neils Bohr)
- nature herself has imposed a limit on causal descriptions of phenomena (Neils Bohr)
- nature: men should get to grips with her (Francis Bacon)
- open the book of Nature and read in her records (James Hutton)
The earth: ♀- her, herself
"…the noble substance of that great magnet, our common mother (the earth)…"
William Gilbert
"For although the terrestrial globe, owing to the varied humours and natures of the soil arising from the continual succession of growth and decay, is in the lapse of time efflorescing through all its ambit deeper into its surface, and is girt about with a varied and perishable covering, as it were with a veil; yet out of her womb arises in many places an offspring nigher to the more perfect body and makes its way to the light of day."
William Gilbert
"…the loadstone has the property and power of directing itself North and South (the Earth herself consenting and contributing force thereto) according to the conformation of nature…"
William Gilbert
"Earth in her maternal wisdom has spawned us to use our wits to protect all living things from the Curse of the Dinosaurs."
Nigel Calder: The Comet is Coming! The feverish legacy of Mr Halley
The moon: ♀ – her, herself, she
"…the circular movement of the moon interrupts us now and does so of necessity because through her in particular, who shares in both night and day, the positions of the stars are apprehended and examined; then, because she alone of all the planets refers her revolutions however irregular directly to the centre of the earth and is most closely akin the the earth. And on that account, in so far as she is considered in herself, she does not indicate anything about the mobility of the earth…"
Nicolaus Copernicus (Tr. Charles Glenn Wallis)
"Accordingly, just as the kinship of their bodies makes the loadstone attract loadstone or iron; so also in the case of the moon it is not unbelievable that she should be moved by the terrestrial body which is akin, although neither in that case nor in this case is there any contact between the bodies."
Johannes Kepler (Tr. Charles Glenn Wallis)
Saturn: ♂ – his
"Has Saturn, perhaps, devoured his own children?"
Galileo Galilei
Phrenology: ♀ – she, her
Phrenology, or craniology, was a theory that personal character traits were reflected in the contours of a person's skill: and was widely considered a serious and important science in the nineteenth century.
"Phrenology fairly ran away with us in our youth; but she carried us over ground so rugged and into mists so thick that as we grew stronger we grew desirous of emancipation, and at last burst away out of her labyrinthine recesses…We still believe she has merit"
Christian Teacher periodical, 1836 1
Microbes: ♂ – him
"The popular interest in the little parasite Dr Koch has introduced to the world will deepen in proportion as medical science demonstrates its power to annihilate him or rob him of his fatal power"
The New York Times, May 7th, 1882
(For a reader not used to germs being personified in this way, the quote reads as if medical science will seek to annihilate or debilitate Robert Koch!)
Iron: ♂
"For in the oldest mines of iron, the most famous in Asia, the loadstone was often dug out with its uterine brother, iron."
William Gilbert
the cube
the octahedron
The atom
Пусть будет атом рабочим, а не солдатом
"Let the atom be a worker, not a soldier!"
A slogan used on a Soviet state (public information / propaganda!) poster
Reason / Philosophy – ♀ – she, herself, her
"These are mysteries, which mere natural and unassisted reason is very unfit to handle; and whatever system she embraces, she must find herself involved in inextricable difficulties, and even contradictions, at every step she takes with regard to such subjects. To reconcile the indifference and contingency of human actions with prescience, or to defend absolute decrees, and yet free the Deity from being the author of sin, has been found hitherto to exceed all the power of philosophy. Happy, if she be thence sensible of her temerity, when she pries into these sublime mysteries; and leaving a scene so full of obscurities and perplexities, return, with subtle modesty, to her true and proper province, the examination of common life; where she will find difficulties enow to employ her enquiries, without launching into so boundless an ocean of doubt, uncertainty, and contradiction!"
"Reason here seems to be thrown into a kind of amazement and suspense, which, without the suggestions of any sceptic, gives her a diffidence of herself, and of the ground on which she treads. She sees a full light, which illuminates certain places; but that light borders upon the most profound darkness. And between these she is so dazzled and confounded, that she scarcely can pronounce with certainty and assurance concerning any one object….Yet still reason must remain restless, and unquiet, even with regard to that scepticism, to which she is driven by these seeming absurdities and contradictions."
David Hume
Mathematics
According to an interview study with Turkish mathematics educators,
"Mathematics can be defined as 'an elegant woman, the queen of the sciences, or even a sharing mother' for teachers, as well as a 'cold and serious man'. While mathematics can be associated with a woman with a woman's role in organizing social life, helping, fertile or productive, it can also be described with metaphors of a tough, unquestionable man who does not deal with trinkets."
Özdemir Baki & Karakuş Umar, 2022, p.9
Astrology
"Theophilus of Edessa (695-789), known in Arabic as Thiyufil ibn Thuma, was a Nestorian Christian who was court astrology and military advisor of Caliph al-Mahdi (r. 775-85). He called astrology the 'mistress of all the sciences', because of the importance of astrological history under the 'Abbasids and the commissioning of horoscopes by the caliphs."
Freely, 2011
Research vessels
RSS Sir David Attenborough – ♀
"Different builds of ice-strengthened vessels have their own way of tacking the sea ice, but the SDA [Sir David Attenborough] is designed for her bow to go up over the sea ice, and then she pushes with her weight downwards to crush it."
Dr Nadine Johnston (British Antarctic Survey)
* A note on convention assignment of gender to nouns
The linguist Benjamin Lee Whorf noted that someone unfamiliar with a language such as English would have no basis for knowing how nouns are conventionally assigned gender in the language:
"Nor would knowledge of any 'natural' properties tell our observer that the names of biological classes themselves (e.g., animal, bird, fish, etc.) are 'it'; that smaller animals are usually 'it'; larger animals often 'he'; dogs, eagles and turkeys usually 'he'; cats and wrens usually 'she'; body parts and the whole botanical world 'it'; countries and states as fictive persons (but not as localities) 'she'; cities, societies, and societies as corporations as fictive person 'it'; the human body 'it'; a ghost 'it'; nature 'she'; watercraft with sail or power and named small craft 'she'; unnamed rowboats, canoes, rafts, 'it', etc."
Whorf, B. L. (1945/2012). Grammatical categories. In J. B. Caroll, S. C. Levinson, & P. Lee (Eds.), Language, Thought, and Reality (2nd ed., pp. 113-130). The MIT Press.
Sources cited:
- Freely, J. (2011). Light from the East. How the science of medieval Islam helped to shape the Western World. I. B. Tauris & Co Ltd.]
- Özdemir Baki, G., & Karakuş Umar, E. (2022). Interpreting the sex of mathematics through gender roles. Educational Academic Research, 47, 1-10.
Notes:
1 As cited by Roger Cooter (1984) in The Cultural Meaning of Popular Science. Phrenology and the organization of consent in nineteenth-century Britain.
