The Top Women Scientists Should Have Been Consulted Regarding Innovations in the ‘90s

While it’s no secret that business and science are still very much a “man’s” world, Michael Schrage (“Human Mind Will Be a Fresh Frontier for Study in ‘90s,” Dec. 28) contributes to perpetuating that imbalance by not including any female scientists who are “tops in their fields.” As every scientist knows, no hypotheses, assumptions or conclusions can possibly be taken seriously if based on data from less than half of a subject population. Mr. Schrage, if you are predicting a trend in a whole field of inquiry, you’d better be careful.

You state that “technology will further redefine the links between inorganic matter and life itself.” Those links, by definition, already exist. Technology applied with proper intent will uncover some of those links. The compartmentalized thinking of modern science, so greedy to amass disembodied facts, has been used to justify behavior of such narrow self-interest that our entire biological matrix has been threatened, perhaps beyond repair. Now, these “experts” of the scientific and business communities who have charted our perilous journey so far are suddenly eager to “resynthesize” (a positive sign, to be sure).

Guess what? For women in general, and women intellectuals in particular, integration and wholeness have been central themes for some time now. Your ignorance and bias are really quite appalling. Crawl out from under that rock and take a look out here. Ask around, do some reading and listening. There are so many brilliant female thinkers, and they have a lot to say about that most ancient and self-perpetuating innovation: the infinite, cyclical, synthesized, multidimensional process of connection which makes both inorganic matter and life possible . . . and related.

CYNTHIA AHLSTROM

Santa Barbara