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Helen De Cruz Profile picture
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23 Dec, 4 tweets, 2 min read
I love the 17th c genre of early scientists, such as Vermeer's Astronomer) but only discovered this painting recently. A portrait of an unknown mathematician, with attributes of an astronomer and geometer by the female portrait artist Mary Beale (1633-1699) Image
Mary Beale was a business partner to Charles Beale, a cloth merchant (a rather intimate and relaxed portrait of him by her here, ca. 1680), and an important breadwinner to her family. The couple had a large circle of friends, including early scientists and painter Sir Peter Lely. Image
Mary Beale was highly productive, charging five pounds for a painting of a head and ten pounds for half of a body. She earned 200 GDP/year painting portraits, giving a percentage to charity.
More works here (her son, Isaac Barrow, unknown woman) ImageImageImage
@nescio13 @gwen_h_marshall (just stumbled upon this painter--probably super-well known but my undergrad art education seemed to deliberately exclude any women painters, even Kahlo--in my quest for pics for Blazing-world illustrations)

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More from @Helenreflects

Helen De Cruz Profile picture
25 Dec
Have been pondering the following: if people are vulnerable/susceptible to misinformation due to a polarized anti-science stance in their communities (which long predates Covid) would we call this a violation of their epistemic rights, and a form of epistemic injustice? 1/
I am inclined to see the lack of scientific literacy and polarized anti-scientific literacy in some communities here as a violation of people's epistemic rights, drawing on this book by Lani Watson (which is awesome)
routledge.com/The-Right-to-K… 2/
For Watson, an epistemic right is "a complex entitlement that provides justification for the performance and prohibition of actions and omissions concerning epistemic goods", such as true beliefs, being guarded from false beliefs, understanding etc. 3/
Read 26 tweets
Helen De Cruz Profile picture
25 Dec
December 2020 to December 2021 I went from zero published stories to several. Here's a thread to celebrate the stories. I know it's self-promotion but it was damn difficult to learn to write fiction at a decent enough level to be published. 1/
Soul sleep, in the magazine 96th of October (Dec 2020 issue, ca 2200 words), genre: fantasy. Written in full lockdown this story took as starting point the fear of being buried alive, mixed in some Kierkegaard despair 2/
96thofoctober.com/articles/soul-…
Cave of Adventure (fantasy, 3000) in After Dinner Conversation (not freely readable, sorry, PDC net) is basically a take on Nozick's experience machine in a fantasy setting, namely the artificial caves in Ghent's Citadel park I lived close to for years 3/
pdcnet.org/adc/content/ad…
Read 10 tweets
Helen De Cruz Profile picture
13 Nov
Since one has to strike while the iron is hot, here is my attempt to summarize the Critique of Pure Reason by Kant (1781) in a series of tweets.
(I am not a Kant scholar and so it's gonna be wrong but that's no problem since Kant scholars can just take what I did & improve) 1/??
(preamble: this is meant for my non-philosophy audience since most philosophers know all of this probably better than I do as I shamefully only read CPR when I was in my early thirties. Sorry. I read the excellent Guyer & Wood translation which combines A and B edition. 2/
Ok so Kant (1724 – 1804) lived most of his life in Königsberg, Prussia (now Kaliningrad in Russia).
He is known for the following key publications
Critique of Pure Reason (1781)
Critique of Practical Reason (1788)
Critique of Judgement (1790).
Now what does "critique" mean?
3/
Read 100 tweets
Helen De Cruz Profile picture
12 Nov
Started with the Graeber and Wengrow book (it's long and I have a zillion things to do so it will take a while to get through). Interesting. As a philosopher w background in anthropology and archaeology, I hope to write something of interest about this book.
Can I just start w a couple of quibbles? I understand the scope of this book is vast but Graeber and Wengrow's discussion about the Kula ring as purely ceremonial exchange (they adapt this from Malinowski, who wanted to make a point with this) is factually wrong.
Malinowski deliberately downplayed the trade that went on together with the Kula ring exchange of bracelets and necklaces to make a point--Oceania specialists have known this for a long time, so it was a bit disappointing to see that in the book. Anyway. Expect more quibbles.
Read 7 tweets
Helen De Cruz Profile picture
31 Oct
I am teaching Xunzi's discourse on music next week for my philosophy of mind class (all less commonly taught philosophical traditions), and pairing that with psychology of music, notably Xunzi's adage that "music is joy" 1/
Xunzi was a Warring States philosopher approx living in the 3rd C BCE. He argued for the importance of human artifice (偽) in achieving goodness, things like ritual, music, and poetry. He said 其善者偽也 (what's good in people is their artifice) 2/
Xunzi held that human nature is bad, because our innate tendencies will cause us to conflict with others, these include
• fondness for profit -> struggle
• hate and dislike -> cruelty
• desires of eyes and ears -> lasciviousness and chaos 3/
Read 20 tweets
Helen De Cruz Profile picture
4 Sep
🧵on Marie Anne Lavoisier, mother of modern chemistry. Her husband Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier was central to chemical revolution & discovery of role of oxygen in chemical processes.
Marie Anne's contribution is less well-known.
This painting of them recently was in the news 1/
The painting (by J-L David) was in the news for a peculiar reason.
Conservators found out the painting was edited: originally Marie Anne wore a hat! And there were no scientific instruments on the table. I'll come to reasons for these edits in a bit 2/
news.artnet.com/art-world/hidd…
What is less known is that Marie Anne was a chemist in her own right. She worked together with her husband in the lab, making meticulous notes of experiments. She even translated works in early chemistry for him from English (Antoine could not read English) 3/
Read 14 tweets

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