Sign-In
Cart
The Philosophical Transactions of Maria Van Leeuwenhoek, Antoni's Dochter (1668-1696): Including accounts of novel discoveries made in Delft that bear
Paperback
Historical FictionLiterary Fiction
ISBN13: 9780982693384
Publisher: Wising Up Pr
Published: Dec 1 2017
Pages: 416
Weight: 1.34
Height: 0.93 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
THE PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS OF MARIA VAN LEEUWENHOEK, ANTONI'S DOCHTER (1668-1696):
Including accounts of novel discoveries made in Delft that bear upon the oft vexing mysteries of sexual generation, particularly as they apply to the fate and purpose of women
In the 1670s in a small town in Holland, in a world constantly racked by fevers, plagues, wars, and an amazing rate of scientific discovery due to the development of the telescope and microscope, two astonishing and mutually contradictory discoveries are made: eggs in the ovaries of women, and animalcules in men's semen. For the learned men of the age, these eggs and animalcules quickly inspire new and competing theories about sexual generation, theories that reject the belief that life comes from putrefaction and insist instead that it comes preformed, life from life, from either an egg or an animalcule. But this is not the story of the learned gentlemen.
This is Maria van Leeuwenhoek's story and she tells us directly how her father Antoni, an unlearned but inspired amateur, a burger of Delft, discovers these animalcules, what happens to the two of them because of this--and how she, a daughter not a son, one with as much independence of mind as her father, must make her own sense of his discoveries and of the theories that flow from them because they directly concern her own fate and purpose as a woman. What experimental knowledge does she, as a woman, bring to these questions that men cannot? As a woman, as a daughter of marriageable age, where do her loyalty, her love, and her integrity lie? Who will carry her theories forward?
Also in
Literary Fiction
Elizabeth Spencer: Novels & Stories (Loa #344): The Voice at the Back Door / The Light in the Piazza / Knights and Dragons / Stories
Spencer, Elizabeth
Hardcover
James Fenimore Cooper: The Leatherstocking Tales Vol. 1 (Loa #26): The Pioneers / The Last of the Mohicans / The Prairie
Cooper, James Fenimore
Hardcover
The Underworld U.S.A. Trilogy, Volume I: American Tabloid, the Cold Six Thousand; Introduction by Thomas Mallon
Ellroy, James
Hardcover
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Other Stories (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)
Stevenson, Robert Louis
Paperback
Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams: Short Stories, Prose, and Diary Excerpts
Plath, Sylvia
Paperback
The Patrick Melrose Novels: Never Mind, Bad News, Some Hope, and Mother's Milk
St Aubyn, Edward
Paperback