Internet friend Tim O’Neill commented on a HuffPo article on Hypatia. You can guess the tone of the story if you look at the title (“The First Female Astronomer“) and if you know how buzzy the leftoid beehive HuffPo is.
“Synesius of Cyrene …. asks for her advice on the design of scientific instruments, such as a hydroscope (used to determine density of fluids) and an astrolabe”
Ummm, no he just asks her if she could have these instruments made for him, presumably because it is more likely there would be craftsmen capable of making such specialised items in a learning centre like Alexandria where they would be unlikely to be found in far off Cyrenacia, where he was bishop. He has to explain to her what a hydroscope is, so he’s clearly not asking her for advice about it. Of course, that doesn’t fit the narrative people like to believe about Hypatia.
“there is little doubt that people who felt threatened by the level of knowledge and encouragement for learning that Hypatia had inspired committed the murder.”
There is actually absolutely nothing in the contemporary sources to suggest any such thing. On the contrary, Socrates Scholasticus moves from praising her learning and highlighting the wide *respect* she gained for it to saying “yet even she fell a victim to the political jealousy which at that time prevailed”. The sources put her murder in the context of the notoriously violent civic politics of Alexandria and, more specifically, of a series of tit-for-tat killings in a political struggle between Orestes and Cyril.
Of course, sticking to the actual evidence kind of spoils things and mean that her story can’t be turned into a neat little fable about wicked philistines hating ancient learning.
Tim, an atheist, has great blog here about the misconceptions of church history.