Translating Science Popularisation in the Eighteenth Century: The Role of Women in the Transmission of Scientific Knowledge

Abstract

The subject of this article is women’s popularisation of scientific texts in the eighteenth century. Starting from an analysis of the remarkable surge in female writing in Britain in the second half of the eighteenth century, the article attempts to draw a partial or metonymical picture of this phenomenon by means of two case studies which take us beyond the borders of the British Isles. The former concerns Giuseppa Eleonora Barbapiccola’s Italian translation of Descartes’ Principles of Philosophy (1722). The latter illustrates Elizabeth Carter’s English translation of an Italian treatise on Newton’s optics, Algarotti’s Newtonianismo per le Dame (1737), which became in fact a handbook for women as a result of the translator’s intervention. Both examples illustrate the fundamental role of women in the dissemination of scientific knowledge.