The Gendered Atom: Reflections on the Sexual Psychology of Science

In this book, one of the best I have ever read, Roszak helps us see how we shape our own lives, our relationships, and our collective future, and how science was formed and how it shapes our lives in its image ... and he does all this in an easy-to-read, non-technical way. Indeed, his approach is unique. He has taught Frankenstein to college kids for 30 years, as a metaphor that predicted and described the shadow side of where we stand today. He uses that gothic horror story of a mad scientist to show how it presciently described modern science ... and from there he shows the next steps we and science can and must take, to go beyond Frankenstein's modern counterpart, Dr. Strangelove, by integrating the feminine relationship aspects of reality with science's vaunted worldview of utter objectivity and isolated particles. All this, he sets into incredibly accessible form, weaving it into the story of the trip he and his wife took to Switzerland to see where Mary Shelley, summering with Percy and Lord Byron, wrote Frankenstein ... and weaving in simple explanations of the strange discoveries and worldviews of modern physics by the (coincidence? ) that exactly there, where Frankenstein conceived his monster, now stands CERN, the European center for subatomic research. Add together Frankenstein, the feminist critique of modern science, four centuries of history (Roszak is a History professor), and a personal travel tale, and, alchemically, he creates a stunning clarification of our past and present and a clear map of our possible future.