It has been argued that women don't show up in history books much because traditional history is the history of conquest and power, and women aren't much for conquest, and therefore don't have much power. Although oversimplified, this claim has significant persuasive weight. So...two questions:
1. Is this explanation about history related to why women don't show up in the history of rhetoric, or might there be other reasons?
2. How would history (and rhetoric) have to be told for women to show up?
Today, two quotes about science, thought and language:
At the heart of [scientific inquiry] is an essential balance between two seemingly contradictory attitudes - an openness to new ideas, no matter how bizarre or counterintuitive, and the most ruthlessly skeptical scrutiny of all ideas, old and new. This is how deep truths are winnowed from deep nonsense. The collective enterprise of creative thinking and skeptical thinking, working together, keeps the field on track.
Carl Sagan, from The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, 1996.
The entities postulated by science are not found, and they do not constitute an 'objective' stage for all cultures and all of history. They are shaped by special groups, cultures, civilizations; and they are shaped from a material which, depending on its treatment, provides us with gods, spirits, a nature that is a partner of humans rather than a laboratory for their experiments, or with quarks, fields, molecules, tectonic plates. Social monotony implies cosmic monotony - or 'objectivity,' as the latter is called today.
Paul Feyerabend, from "Against Method," 1988.