Abstract

Once upon a time there were three women: they were known as ‘the woman in black’, ‘the grey-haired woman with the well-developed sense of humor’ and ‘the rather quiet woman with the capacity to shock’. These women, who had known each other for quite some time, were all physicists. They were also friends. As physicists, the woman in black, the grey-haired woman with the well-developed sense of humour and the rather quiet woman with the capacity to shock had learned, and now shared, ‘a specific vocabulary, grammar and rhetoric’. They knew what could count as a scientific observation, ‘what standards of accuracy in determining observations [were] possible, how the words of common language [were] restricted and refined for use in [their particular] scientific discipline’. They knew how to tell the ‘truth’. Rational knowledge and empirical evidence were no strangers to these women who were well versed in what could count as an argument. Consequently, it was said by some that these women constituted a microcosmic rational community.