This book is really divided into 3 parts: history of expression of space through paintings, history of physics, and Wertheim's views on cyberspace. The first two sections are top notch research articles, comprehensive, easy to follow, and very accurate. These two sections alone could have be made into a book. The last section, however, is quite subjective. It basically states that cyberspace will replace the Christian heaven, becoming New Jerusalem, where all will be good, and none shall die. It is where our bodily restraints shall be no more, and we can live with a new image, created through our likings. This is all well in theory, but there are too many problems with utopians created by man. There is also mention of downloading our souls into cyberspace, where we can live after our bodies die. Quite far fetched, and it presents problems as well. Nothing is wrong with new ideas being presented, but wishes for the impossible will never be granted. Living human beings belong to the physical world, and without a body one cannot really be called human...

I have always wanted to read a cultural history of space, something that would help me understand how humans have conceived and poeticized the nature of the dimensions that surround them. Wertheim's book gave me all I wanted, and more. Wertheim shows us that space is part of a story that we humans are always telling ourselves about where and who we are. Unlike most science writers, Wertheim navigates the dire straits between science and the cultural imagination with intelligence and grace....._The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace_ isnt just longago history. In the closing chapters, Wertheim uses her fascinating tale to help us understand the psychological and even spiritual motivations that draw so many people to the Internet and electronic communications. Wertheim's basic argument -- that modern science banished the phantasms of the "soul" from our surroundings, and that those powerful images and yearnings are now returning inside the synthetic "space" of electronic information -- both acknoweldges the metaphysical yearnings expressed by cyberspace and refuses to give in to naive cyberhype. She ends her tale with some strong moral arguments rooted in both the eternal realities of the human imagination and the pressing historical demands of our time.

Forget the title - the real story here is in the subtitle "A History of Space from Dante to the Internet". That's what attracted me, and it lives up to the promise. In less than 200 pages Wertheim gives us the story of space from the middle ages to today. The medieval space of the afterlife, Renaissance perspective space, Copernicus' discovery of astronomical space, Einstein's relativistic space, and todays theories of cyberspace -- Wertheim connects the dots as if she is solving a complex historical puzzle. Even if you don't give a damn about cyberspace this is an amazing book. After reading this you will never take the word "space" for granted again. As Wertheim shows, there is a never-ending morphing of this quintessiential concept.

In the book Pythagoras' Trousers - God, Physics, and the Gender Wars, Margaret Wertheim makes the case that, in its origins, physics was intimately connected with religion. As such, physicists accrued the aura of a priestly caste. In addition, she claims that this religious culture within physics has prevented women from entering the field.
Though Wertheim attempts to show that women belong in the arena of physics, she actually concludes that the only way women will be comfortable in physics will be to change the assumptions upon which it is based. In addition, her lack of adequate documentation and reliable sources (at one point she cites a survey from Glamour magazine) damages her argument so fully that I believe that this work proves that Wertheim is a poor writer, and tends to support the antithesis of her argument. By providing a poor work to show the need for women in the realm of physics, Wertheim has show that she does not belong in that arena. Therefore, by extension, no women belong in that arena. Hence, Wertheim serves only to damage her claim through the poor quality and weak argumentation of the work.
As a student of mathematics and philosophy, I find Wertheim to be ultimately an insipid writer.

Pythagoras' Trousers Margaret Wertheim

Wertheim attempts to show how Science, Religion, and Women have all been related over the course of humankind. Specifically she focuses on how the connection between mathematics, and later physics, and religion have combined ideals over the course of the last two and a half millennia which led to the downfall or lack of participation for women in the field of mathematics. She begins her book in about 500 BC with Pythagoras. Pythagoras studied mathematics with the Babylonians and began the theory that numbers were divine. Pythagoras then started a cult in the south of Italy that focused on the study of numbers. This was a male dominated cult that attempted to show that numbers stood for certain things. The number three represented men and the number two represented women. This led to or was caused by (I'm not sure) the idea that odd numbers were better than even numbers. The theory that men were better suited for scientific investigation was passed down to each following generation. Throughout her book Wertheim attempted to give the reader a history of mathematical science. She told about the work of many famous mathematicians including Newton, Copernicus, Galileo, and Einstein. In the case of most history books they only tell about what famous men did but she integrated information about what women scientists were doing during the same time periods. Some names mentioned included Bassi, Hypatia, Hildegard, and Noether. Over the course of the book she told of the relationship between religion (Christianity) and science. Mathematics, biology, chemistry, and physics became the religion of many scientists. Just as in religion men held all positions of power and were very reluctant to give them up. Even women who made incredible new findings in the sciences were never allowed into the upper societies of this scientific priesthood. To this day the number of women working in the sciences is much less than that of men. In her final chapter Werthheim attempts to incorporate this idea that mathematics followed the ideals of religion by not allowing women to participate. She also says that women would bring a much different and possibly better approach present day physics. This I disagree with. I think that women's involvement would be just the same as men's involvement. Some changes might occur if the number of women working in the field of physics were equal to that of men but I believe that would just be due to the larger number of people working in the field. The same changes would occur if the same number of people who entered the physics workforce were men. The number of areas being studied in any field is in direct relation to the total number of people working in the field.

A number of (male) chemistry and physics colleagues recommended this book to me before I read it. After I read it (one of my first books about gender and science) I had to agree with them that it was outstanding - a delightful and eye-opening book for scientists and science students who, like me, had never been exposed to more rigorous writings in gender studies. Wertheim's message is not one that the die-hard, non-feminist, scientist wants to hear. The looseness of the historical and philosophical writing gives feminism's detractors ample grounds, therefore, on which to denigrate it. But truth is truth - and this book rings true on all levels that I (a Full Professor of Physics) can probe. Now that I have read other books in the field of gender studies, I know that there are plenty of extremely tightly reasoned and readable books by e.g. Shapin, Noble and Sheibinger that one can follow up with. (These would convince the skeptical reader - if he will allow himself to be convinced - that Wertheim's conclusions are extremely well-founded!)