History Main / MotherNatureFatherScience

In many series, science and technology are portrayed as masculine. Men approach nature as a puzzle to be solved by logic and reason. Women, on the other hand, tend to be CloserToEarth and regard nature as a sacred mystery and be much more in tune with the spirit of the land, which the evil men [[TheUnfairSex just can't]] [[ScienceIsBad appreciate]].

Similarly, if a show has men and women both from an academic background, the man will typically have a degree in science, math, or engineering, while the woman will have one in arts, literature, or philosophy.

Even if both characters are scientists, expect the man to research physics or mathematics and the woman to research biology. This particular aspect is TruthInTelevision - men often outnumber women in university courses in engineering and the like, while women outnumber men in the biological sciences.

Outside of science, men in fiction are more rational and logical, but also condescending and [[ARealManIsAKiller evil-inclined]]. Women tend to be more emotional and kinder than men, but often [[HystericalWoman aggressively irrational]]. This may be why so many {{mad scientist}}s are male.

Similarly, in fantasy, men tend to use complex, very logical systems of [[MagicAndPowers magic]], while women tend towards a more mystical, spiritual approach. This kind of competitive magical interpretation can lead to a Magic vs. Magic conflict in HarmonyVersusDiscipline.

The idea of '''MotherNature''' itself is part of this trope, as no one says "Father Nature". This is most likely due to the fact that women can give birth, thus "creating life".

Compare RomanticismVersusEnlightenment, ClarkesLawForGirlsToys, MenBuyFromMarsWomenBuyFromVenus. See also TheChick, TheSmurfettePrinciple, StrawVulcan. Contrast WrenchWench and GadgeteerGenius (usually female, but not always).

* Played straight in ''{{Eberron}}''. In the Sovereign Host, Aureon is the god of Craftsmen and Lore, and is male. Arawai is the goddess of Life, and is female.

* Played straight in ''((Eberron))''. In the Sovereign Host, Aureon is the god of Craftsmen and Lore, and is male. Arawai is the goddess of Life, and is female.

** The Rani is meant to be a genius, and is usually shown doing evil science of some kind, but still falls within this trope in that her field seems to be biogenetics, as opposed to the engineering favoured by both the Doctor and the Master. Romana, who is canonically meant to be cleverer than the Doctor, may come closer to being a subversion, especially when she makes her own (superior) sonic screwdriver that the Doctor tries to steal.

*** Well, as of late her mother seems to straddling the line; at the very least, [=~Clarke's Third Law~=] applies. Also, as the {{Tomboy}} to Annie's [[TomboyAndGirlyGirl Girly Girl]], it's arguable how much Kat counts as a subversion.

* ''CaptainPlanet'' [[SubvertedTrope subverts]] this, to a degree. The Planeteers are led by Gaia, the spirit of the Earth. The main villains are almost all male, except for one--Dr. Babs Blight, a rare ''female'' MadScientist. The male villains tend to be in business, though Duke Nukem used to be a scientist as well.

* ''XenozoicTales'' features the very science-minded Hannah Dundee and the Earth [[strike:mother]] father Jack Tenrec. Subverted, a bit, in that both of them have leanings for the opposite side. Jack, despite his undying devotion to the natural order, loves working on cars and other machines. Hannah, more subtly, believes in the mystic underpinnings of the world, but she considers they will be scientifically explicable, once they are better understood. There's also the indication that she's been [[spoiler:chosen by the Grith]] for... wouldn't it be nice if the series had lasted long enough to tell us?

* Chakotay and Seven of Nine of ''StarTrekVoyager''.
** This is an inversion, though. Chakotay is a MagicalNativeAmerican who likes going on vision quests. Seven is an EmotionlessGirl who was raised by the Borg who refuses to go back to her human name. Her emotional growth is explored throughout the series. The romance actually happens in the final season.

** This is an inversion, though. Chakotay is a MagicalNativeAmerican who likes going on vision quests. Seven is an EmotionlessGirl who was [[RaisedByWolves raised by the Borg]] who refuses to go back to her human name. Her emotional growth is explored throughout the series. The romance actually happens in the final season.

[[AC:{{Tabletop RPG}}]]

** To be fair though she is also pretty irrational, [[WallBanger choosing to stay on earth instead of raising her son and then being angry that he doesn't act the way she would prefer.]]

** Somewhat subverted by the fact that the Rani is meant to be a genius, and is usually shown doing evil science of some kind. Possibly not so subverted by the fact that her field seems to be biogenetics, as opposed to the engineering favoured by both the Doctor and the Master, but still. Romana, who is canonically meant to be cleverer than the Doctor, may also come close, especially when she makes her own (superior) sonic screwdriver that the Doctor tries to steal.

The idea of '''Mother Nature''' itself is part of this trope, as no one says "Father Nature". This is most likely due to the fact that women can give birth, thus "creating life".

* In ''Mobile Suit Gundam'', protagonist Amuro Ray's father was an emotionally-distant Engineer who took his son into space. By contrast his mother stayed on Earth and was last seen working in a refugee camp.

* Subverted in ''PrincessMononoke'': Lady Eboshi provides food and shelter for the poor and sick, former prostitutes, and all other kinds of outcasts who don't have any other place to go. By running an industrial scale iron mine and expanding into advanced firearms development and production.

* Played fairly straight in ''Ponyo'': Ponyo's mother is a sea goddess, and her father a scientist.

* In ''Spider-Man 2'', Doctor Octavius (later Octopus) and his wife Rosalie are both college professors, but whereas Otto specializes in nuclear physics, Rosalie teaches literature.
* In the novel Enduring Love, Clarissia is "mother nature" to Joe's "father science".

* ''{{Discworld}}'' is very complex and goes back and forth about this. ''Equal Rites'' brought these ideas to the fore. See Discussion.
** Wizards are urban and associate with the Unseen University, thus are some variety of academia parody. They are often silly old duffers or giant nerds, but this does give the luster of hard science to their magic, and were more powerful once in Disc politics. The leading wizard, Ridcully, is pretty pompous but macho too (and ironically was thought to be CloserToEarth, but was actually and EgomaniacHunter). In earlier stories they tended to assassinate each other a lot. [[AManIsNotAVirgin They're also celibate]] because of the possibility of Sourcerors.
** Witch stories focus around the [[TheHecateSisters trio]] of Nanny Ogg, Magrat, and Granny Weatherwax. Granny is a cynical, hardbitten, practical one who thinks wizards waste time with their 'jommetry' and 'supreme arch-whatever' just to look important. Nanny Ogg uses {{ObfuscatingStupidity}} and is a touch louche. Magrat is romantic and a little New Age and drippy. Overall, they're rural, more folk-magic, but closer to everyday concerns and problems than the wizards.
*** A few Witch characters have been seen to use wizard magic, which is a variety of RuleMagic and so there is really no reason why not. No wizard has been seen to use Borrowing or any other of the Witch specialties, but on the other hand there has never really been any suggestion that they couldn't if they wanted to. Granny once fought a magical duel with the then-current Archchancelor, and they fought to a standstill.
* ''Frankenstein'' constantly refers to nature as female, and [[CharacterTitle the title character]] says he wants to "penetrate the secrets of nature". Subtle, MaryShelley.

* Diane Duane's YoungWizards series follows this. Nita's magic relates to nature and natural things. Kit's (the boy) tends to do better with cars and technology and so on. (Then again, in one novel Nita's sister [[spoiler:inverts the whole damn thing by being a huge computer whiz..]])

* Roundly averted (or inverted?) in ''TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy'', wherein the most prominent female character, Trillian, is a competent astrophysicist.
* Big time aversion: coldly logical (and somewhat misanthropic) robopsychologist Susan Calvin of IsaacAsimov's ''I, Robot''.

* In the ''DoctorWho'' spin-off novel ''Lungbarrow'', which explains the mythology of Gallifrey; the three scientists (Rassilon, Omega and the Other) are male and good. The Pythia (bad) is a witch and a woman.
** Also, Ian taught science while Barbara taught History, IIRC.

** The [[{{Recap/DoctorWhoS10E5TheGreenDeath}}]] we get an interesting play on it. We get Mother Nature (the hippie commune) and Father Science (Global Chemicals) BUT the commune is made up of research scientists trying, among other things, to breed high protein fungus to act as a meat replacement.
* In ''Dona Barbara'', the title character (a wealthy landlady) represents the brutish nature while Santos Luzardo (a lawyer from the big city) is the civilization
* ThirdRockFromTheSun: Dick is a physicist and his love interest and co-worker Mary is an anthropologist. On the other hand, Dick is a {{Cloudcuckoolander}} alien while Mary is a cynical GrumpyBear.

* {{Stargate SG-1}} inverts this trope. Daniel Jackson is a linguist, archaologist and anthropologist whereas Samantha Carter is a genius astrophysicist. She's also amazing at maths and engineering.
* Deliberately subverted in {{The X-Files}}. Mulder is the believer in aliens while holding a degree in psychology. Scully is the strict scientist who can't fathom why Mulder would want to entertain notions that defy the laws of physics and scientific rule. She herself is a pathologist and holds and undergraduate degree in physics. And in general, Mulder is the one who is unafraid to show his feelings while Scully is rather closed off.
* This troper always saw the fourth season of ''BuffyTheVampireSlayer'' as following this theme, with the Slayers' magic vs. the Initiative's research in dealing with demonic forces.
** The first season episode ''I Robot, You Jane'' has a sort of inversion of this. Giles is books and eye of newt, Jenny is computers and techomagic.

* In ''SidMeiersAlphaCentauri'', the hippie environmentalist faction is led by Deirdre Skye, a woman, and the scientific technological faction is led by Prokhor Zakharov, a man. ''Alien Crossfire'' then inverts this by introducing Aki Zeta-5, an EmotionlessGirl leader of an entire faction of [[TheSpock Spocks]], and Cha'Dawn, a young man who is supposedly TheMessiah, head of the Cult Of Planet.
** The expansion also played it straight with he two alien factions, one, the Caretakers, being led by a female sworn to preserve the planet and the other, the Usurpers, led by a male and hellbent on exploiting it's power for their own gain.
*** It's also worth pointing out that the expert hackers (Data Angels) and the ultra-militaristic faction (Spartans) are lead by women, while the humanitarian Peacekeepers are lead by a man.

* ''{{FinalFantasyVII}}'' has Dr. Hojo who tends to initially dismiss supernatural theories about The Promised Land, and tends to see everything and everyone in terms of facts or varibles. He is contrasted by Dr. Lucrecia Cresent who dedicated her career to ancient, magical occurrences within the planet. Significant in that [[spoiler: Sephiroth is their child; the combination of polemical forces to essentially create the game's version of the anti-Christ. Though the addition of a Third Wheel known as Jenova, an EldritchAbomination that eats a Planet's Lifestream also probably had something to do with it]].
* A sort of example could be found in {{Okami}} where the Goddess Amaterasu is the Sun God and is in charge of restoring nature while her archnemesis is Yami, God of Darkness and [[ScienceIsBad creator of Technology]].

** No mention of GunnerkriggCourt would be complete without noticing that Kat, and her mother, both fall on the side of science.
*** Well, as of late her mother seems to straddling the line; at the very least, ClarkesThirdLaw applies. Also, as the {{Tomboy}} to Annie's [[TomboyAndGirlyGirl Girly Girl]], it's arguable how much Kat counts as a subversion.

* Calamities of Nature makes fun of this stereotype about men in women in this comic about the [[http://calamitiesofnature.com/archive/?c=287 many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics]].

* In one episode of TheSimpsons, Bart and Lisa's school was split into Boy's and Girl's sections. The Boys learnt everything pretty much the same way, but the Girls reverted to some absolutely bizarre new-age teaching methods.

* TheSecretSaturdays lives this trope. Doc Saturday is a scientist through and through, while his wife Drew is more a believer in the paranormal. Faced with any problem Doc will always seek a logical solution while Drew will explore more mystical alternatives. They're still HappilyMarried though so that's cool.

* Everything Dan Brown has ever written. His hero is always an expert in some area of humanities, while the heroine is an expert in some mathematical field.
* The Ents and Entwives in {{The Lord Of The Rings}} . Treebeard explains that while the Ents delighted in nature and the wilds, and would roam for long periods communing with plants and animals. Whereas:

* In ''{{Stargate SG-1}}'', Sam(antha) is the smart, logical scientist woman, and Daniel is the intuitive, emotional anthropologist
* AgentMulder and AgentScully of ''TheXFiles'' are classic inversions.
* Booth and Brennan in ''{{Bones}}''. A complete inversion. Brennan disapproves of anything that isn't discovered through logical analysis (usually while poking around a corpse), and dislikes psychology , calling it a "soft science." Booth, on the other hand, is perfectly willing to go out on a limb without facts to support him, and crafts plausible scenarios, the potential for personal bias be damned. Booth isn't on the side of Nature, but he's a far cry from the logic of the squints.

* Partial example: TheHero and Leading Lady of 50s BMovie ''This Island Earth''. While both are stated to be brilliant nuclear physicists far ahead in their field, the script feels compelled to note that her progress trails "slightly behind" his.
** That's good old-timey sexism

* Averted in ''The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy'', movie version, where the supercomputer "Big Thought" has a female voice.

Even if both characters are scientists, expect the man to research physics or mathematics and the woman to research biology. This particular aspect is TruthInTelevision - men almost invariably outnumber women in university courses in math, science and engineering, while women outnumber men in the biological sciences.

* Subverted in ''{{Freefall}}'': The closest we get to a NatureHero is the [[AmbgiousGender "male"]] StupidGood RidiculouslyHumanRobot; OTOH, Team Science has the female [[BigBadassWolf red wolf]] engineer. Who [[http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff1200/fv01162.htm shows signs]] of [[ScienceMadness SRMD]].