Cognitive Therapy for Social Phobia: The Human Face of Cognitive Science

Both the terms 'science' and 'cognitive' can have a hard face. They are not terms which immediately make one think compassionately and in depth about the existential struggles of human beings. Keller (1985) accuses science of being a particularly masculine enterprise and shows how masculine metaphors played a dominant role in the shaping of the principles of science in seventeenth century Britain: Henry Oldenberg, Secretary of the Royal Society, announced ... that the intention of that society was 'to raise a Masculine Philosophy ... whereby the Mind of Man may be ennobled with Solid Truths' (Keller 1985: 52).