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Whose Science? Whose Knowledge?: Thinking from Women's Lives
Whose Science, Whose Knowledge? represents a transition from gender to power considerations in Harding's continuous efforts to raise questions about the theory and practice of science. ― Shulamit Reinharz ― Gender & Society Harding's is a richly informed, radical voice that boldly confronts issues of crucial importance to the future of many academic disciplines. Her book will amply reward readers looking to achieve a more fruitful understanding of the relations between feminism, science, and social life. Sandra Harding here develops further the themes first addressed in her widely influential book, The Science Question in Feminism , and conducts a compelling analysis of feminist theories on the philosophical problem of how we know what we know. Following a strong narrative line, Harding sets out her arguments in highly readable prose. In Part 1, she discusses issues that will interest anyone concerned with the social bases of scientific knowledge. In Part 2, she modifies some of her views and then pursues the many issues raised by the feminist position which holds that women's social experience provides a unique vantage point for discovering masculine bias and and questioning conventional claims about nature and social life. In Part 3, Harding looks at the insights that people of color, male feminists, lesbians, and others can bring to these controversies, and concludes by outlining a feminist approach to science in which these insights are central. "Women and men cannot understand or explain the world we live in or the real choices we have," she writes, "as long as the sciences describe and explain the world primarily from the perspectives of the lives of the dominant groups."
336 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1991
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
May 11, 2018
I found this very useful. I'd love to read more recent things on feminist epistemologies, but this seemed good in that it critically.at many possible feminist perspectives and showed that we have not found a perfect answer or consensus but then argued for feminist standpoint theory very persuasively.
This needs building on considering the amount of time it has been (or there may be more recent stuff but I am still looking for it). I'd recommend this though.
This needs building on considering the amount of time it has been (or there may be more recent stuff but I am still looking for it). I'd recommend this though.
July 28, 2023
Crazy good book, dense at times, but chock full of great ideas. Here's a few impactful excerpts of this book. Comments in **.
Chapter 2. Feminism Confronts the Sciences
*Beyond equity in the sciences* "I characterized the journey from issues about women in science to criticisms of theories of scientific knowledge as a shift from the "woman question in science" to the "science question in feminism." In its concern with equity issues, the woman question begins by asking, "What do women want from science?" It conceptualizes women as a special interest group—like, for instance, farmers or oil producers in their relationship to the government—who ask that their special needs and interests be fairly recognized in the institution of science. [...] The science question asks, "How can we use for emancipatory ends those sciences that are apparently so intimately involved in Western, bourgeois, and masculine projects?" And women appear not as a special interest group pleading for a hearing for their own interests alone but as thinkers expressing concerns about science and society [...]."
Chapter 3. The Women's Movement Benefits Science
*Yes, more women in science, even if science is not feminist (yet)* "[...] if science-as-usual is the problem, then it appears that feminism should not encourage more women to become scientists and thus part of this problem. But it is distressing that an apparent consequence of the success of feminist criticisms of this field would be to alienate women from entering it—especially when women were for so long vigorously excluded from it by patriarchal culture and when many women have waged such heroic campaigns to enter and remain there. [...] How bizarre if it is an outcome of the purportedly most radical feminist science criticisms that women should give up trying to understand the natural world. Can we try to create more feminist sciences without any women scientists? Moreover, we live in a scientific culture; to be scientifically illiterate is simply to be illiterate—a condition of far too many women and men already. It is regressive tendencies in science-as-usual that foster such illiteracy, as feminist critics have pointed out. But if women do not become scientists, would not that fact further discourage girls and women from becoming scientifically literate and from gaining the kinds of control of our own lives that such literacy makes possible? Should feminism join science-as-usual in fostering scientific illiteracy among women? What could be progressive about that?"
*Science is far from neutral* "almost all natural science research these days is driven by technology. Scientists may not be motivated by visions of new technologies of control or for profit, but funders of scientific research are. Feminist critics who challenge not bad science but science-as-usual are challenging the fit of science past and present—with the gender, race, and class projects of its surrounding culture."
*Evincing unjust practices has not been enough* "Did we all really "persuade ourselves" of the truth of the partial and distorted sexist vision of the world? [...] Women's movements have been removing covers and blinders from eyes in the West at least since Christine de Pisan wrote The City of Ladies in the fifteenth century, yet we still live in a world ruled by powerful old naked patriarchal emperors."
*Just improving current science may not be enough* "The critics of bad science appear to be caught between two loyalties. On the one hand, they try to respect the dogma that one can explain "good science" without referring to its social causes. On the other hand, they think that the women's movement is a social cause of better science and that an understanding of why it is should inform scientific practice at least to the extent that scientists should welcome the women's movement and listen to what it says in order to increase the growth of knowledge."
*Science is a product of social changes, therefore it should embrace feminism* "modern science itself was created through a movement of social liberation. The new physics advanced precisely because it both expressed the ethos of an emerging class (materialism, antielitism, progress) and also provided the means for expressing that ethos in technologies that could materially advance that class. Its very "method"—experimental observation—required the performance of both head and hand labor by one and the same person, by new kinds of persons who did not exist in the feudal aristocracy. This is a robust analysis of the positive role that feminist politics plays in the growth of scientific knowledge. Feminist struggle is a fundamental part of gaining knowledge, including knowledge about and through science. [...] Are not women sociologists and other women scientists just such new kinds of persons, created through the politics of a social liberation movement?"
Chapter 4. Why "Physics" Is a Bad Model for Physics
*Science is a also a product of its age* "The social relations of the period, which both made possible and were in turn supported by the machines on which Newton's mechanistic laws were modeled, functioned as were—part of the evidence for Newtonian physics. Giving up the belief that science is really or fundamentally only a collection of mathematical statements is necessary if we are to begin to explain the history and practices of science."
*Political consequences of (even benign) technology* "The use of the telescope moved authority about the heavens from the medieval church to anyone who could look through a telescope. The introduc- tion of complex diagnostic technologies in medical research moves authority about the condition of our bodies from us to medical spe- cialists; in practice, it even tends to move this authority from physicians to lab technicians. These are not trivial involvements of science in political interests and values."
*YASS* "A maximally objective understanding of science's location in the contemporary international social order is the goal here. "
*Paraphrasing: Put discussions of morals and politics at the heart of science* "Only "sciences for the people" (in Galileo's phrase), not for elites, can be justifiably supported in a society committed to democracy. There are plenty of useful projects for such sciences, but they do not include research that provides resources for militarism or for ecological disaster, or continues to move resources away from the underprivileged and toward the already overprivileged."
Chapter 5. Feminist Epistemology
*Science tends to be elitist unless we make it not so* "[...] knowledge-seeking requires democratic, participatory politics. Otherwise, only the gender, race, sexuality, and class elites who now predominate in institutions of knowledge-seeking will have the chance to decide how to start asking their research questions, and we are entitled to suspicion about the historic location from which those questions will in fact be asked."
*Standpoint theories explain scientific revolutions* "Scientific method itself was created by a "new kind of person" in the early modern era. Feudalism's economic order separated hand and head labor so severely that neither serfs nor aristocrats could get the necessary combination of a trained intellect and willingness to get one's hands dirty that are necessary for experimental method. One can also point to pre-Newtonian science's involvement in political struggles against the aristocracy. Or one can focus on the "fit" of Ptolemaic astronomy's conceptual scheme with the hierarchical social structure of the Catholic Church and feudal society while, in contrast, the Copernican astronomy mirrored the more democratic social order that was emerging. Or one can note the way the problematics of the new physics were "for" the rise of the new merchant classes: it was not that Newton set out to "conspire" with these classes; rather, his new physics solved problems that had to be solved if transportation, mining, and warfare were to be more efficient."
Chapter 6. "Strong Objectivity"
*The (fruitless) debate about neutrality of "objectivity"* "Because there are clear commitments within feminism to tell less partial and distorted stories about women, men, nature, and social relations, some critics have assumed that feminism must be committed to value-neutral objectivity. Like other feminists, however, the standpoint theorists have also criticized conventional sciences for their arrogance in assuming that they could tell one true story about a world that is out there, ready-made for their reporting, without listening to women's accounts or being aware that accounts of nature and social relations have been constructed within men's control of gender relations. "
*Is science objective enough?* "[Standpoint theories] call for the acknowledgment that all human beliefs—including our best scientific beliefs—are socially situated, but they also require a critical evaluation to determine which social situations tend to generate the most objective knowledge claims. They require [...] a scientific account of the relationships between historically located belief and maximally objective belief. "
*Data and its interpretation in astronomy* "Many of the observations collected by medieval European astronomers are preserved in the data used by astronomers today. But what "facts" these data refer to, what further research they point to, what theoretical statements they support and how such theories are to be applied, what such data signify in terms of human social relations and relations to nature—all these parts of the sciences can differ wildly, as the contrast between medieval and contemporary astronomy illustrates."
*"New empiricism"* "[...] the sciences' power to manipulate the world is considered the mark of their success."
*Cultural constructs* "[...] there are no "women" or "men" in the world—there is no "gender"—but only women, men, and gender constructed through particular historical struggles over just which races, classes, sexualities, cultures, religious groups, and so forth, will have access to resources and power. "
*Maximal objectivism* "To enact or operationalize the directive of strong objectivity is to value the Other's perspective and to pass over in thought into the social condition that creates it. [...] Strong objectivity requires that we investigate the relation between subject and object rather than deny the existence of, or seek unilateral control over, this relation. "
Chapter 7. Feminist Epistemology in and after the Enlightenment
*Paraphrasing: "Successor sciences" should be linked to maximizing objectivity on the imperfect social order within which science exists today.*
*Truth is socially situated* "[Standpoint theories insist] on the recognition that not just false claims but also true (or less false) ones are socially situated. It insists on causal symmetry in explanations of how to arrive at "good" beliefs. Thus it places the observer and her "institutions of observation" in the same critical plane as the subject matters to be observed"
Chapter 8. Toward the Science Question in Global Feminisms
*Avoid falling into the individualist trap when acknowledging Others' work* "A search for Great African American Women in the sciences would suffer from the fact that it tried to establish the individuality of a few women at the expense of the masses whose efforts made those achievements possible. Such an approach would advance Eurocentric preoccupations with individualism and meritocracy at the expense of understanding and supporting the collective and community-focused ways in which science and technology have in fact been practiced in our own and other cultures. "
*What is the impact of Others' contributions beyond "pure research"?* "Another challenge is to resist the temptation to assess the contributions of African American women to science and technology only from the perspective of what European American elite men or women count as scientifically and technologically interesting and valuable. Hine's studies of black women physicians' educational and social work to benefit their communities' activities and of black women's later focus on nursing rather than doctoring highlight the importance of kinds of scientific activities that are devalued in dominant white, Western men's science circles. "
Chapter 9. Common Histories, Common Destinies. Science in the First and Third Worlds
*"Western" science has never been an island* "There were continual minglings and interchanges between the Mediterranean, African, and Middle Eastern cultures from antiquity through the modern era. Western scholars, intentionally or not, justify the West's inflated self-image and its devaluation of the achievements of Third World cultures through their constant refusal to acknowledge these connections. "
*Third World labor made First World science possible* "[...] making possible someone else's achievements [can be] an unintended consequence. [...] It seems reasonable to hold that people of African and other Third World descent deserve a good part of the credit for making possible with their labor and lives, regardless of whether they so intended, scientific and tech- nological innovations in the North Atlantic societies. "
*Science is not neutral* "The character and meanings of "real science" are not beyond politics; they are resources over which contesting groups try to gain control."
Chapter 11. Reinventing Ourselves as Other. More New Agents of History and Knowledge
*A path toward "successor sciences"* "Standpoint theories show how to move from including others' lives and thoughts in research and scholarly projects to starting from their lives to ask research questions, develop theoretical concepts, design research, collect data, and interpret findings."
*Allyship is a delicate matter* "I find it paradoxical—and, frankly, suspicious—that most of the European-American feminists I know who admire, learn from, and use the understandings of feminists of color appear to overestimate their own ability to engage in antiracist thought but to underestimate men's ability to engage in feminist thought. They seem to believe that European American feminists are perfectly capable of generating antiracist analyses "
*Thinking from Others' lives (not just our own)* "Having women's experiences—being a woman—clearly is not sufficient to generate feminist knowledge; all women have women's experiences, but only at certain historical moments do any of us ever produce feminist knowledge. Our experience lies to us, and the experiences of the dominant gender, class, race, and sexuality produce more airtight."
Chapter 12. Conclusion
*Beyond "feminine" science* "Other critics of feminism—and a few feminists—have conflated feminist science and something they refer to as feminine science. It is true that feminism reevaluates "the feminine"; all the feminist thinkers who have pondered the possibility of feminist science have rejected tendencies in the dominant culture to devalue and ignore the distinctive insights and skills that women can bring to social life, including to science. So a reevaluation of the activities assigned to women, of the skills and talents developed in performing those activities, and of what can be learned by starting thought from women's lives is an important aspect of feminist thought in every disciplinary area. "
*What feminist science could be* "Feminist science would not be elite and authoritarian and, therefore, it would have to be accessible-physically and intellectually-to anyone interested. It would be humble and acknowledge that each new "truth" is partial; that is, incomplete as well as culture-bound. Recognizing that different people have different experiences, cultures, and identifications (therefore, different perspectives, values, goals, and viewpoints), feminist science would aim for cultural diversity among its participants, so that through our diverse approaches we would light different facets of the realities we attempt to understand. Such diversity would help to ensure sensitivity of the scientific community to the range of consequences of its work and thus its responsibility for the goals of science and the applications and by-products of its research. [Bleier]"
*What feminism+science can be today* "At this historical moment, what we are developing is not a feminist science, but a feminist critique of existing science. It follows from what has been said about the relationship of science to society that we can expect a sexist society to develop a sexist science; equally, we can expect a feminist society to develop a feminist science. [... we should not] take our inability to imagine a fully developed feminist science as evidence that a feminist science is itself impossible. [Fee]"
*Beyond Eurocentrism* "[Saying] that "real science" is only what the modern West has done or chooses to call science, falsely assumes that it makes no sense to imagine effective sciences with very different theories of nature, different approaches to gaining empirical knowledge, and different agendas from those of modern Western science."
*Science can be (metaphorically and literally) weaponized* "[...] science contains both progressive and regressive tendencies, and it leaves itself open to manipulation by regressive social forces to the extent that its institutions do not acknowledge and grapple with [its] contradictory internal features."
*Can physics be feminist?* "There are feminist criticisms of various aspects of physics and chemistry, analyses of the role of the natural sciences in promoting androcentrism, and the beginnings of less sexist social relations in the labs. But research in these fields is organized on an international level, and thus is less susceptible to the kind of feminist influences that have been effective in more locally organized social research projects."
*MAXIMAL OBJECTIVISM* "[...] experience in many respects hides the realities of our lives: experience "lies." It is necessary to avoid the "view from nowhere" stance of conventional Western epistemology while refusing to embrace the exaltation of the spontaneous consciousness of our experiences—the experiential foundationalism—that has too often appeared to be the only alternative. One reasonable position is to say that the experiences of more powerful groups lie more often, more deeply, and more tenaciously than the experiences of the less powerful, though the latter must also be scientifically, causally explained. "
Chapter 2. Feminism Confronts the Sciences
*Beyond equity in the sciences* "I characterized the journey from issues about women in science to criticisms of theories of scientific knowledge as a shift from the "woman question in science" to the "science question in feminism." In its concern with equity issues, the woman question begins by asking, "What do women want from science?" It conceptualizes women as a special interest group—like, for instance, farmers or oil producers in their relationship to the government—who ask that their special needs and interests be fairly recognized in the institution of science. [...] The science question asks, "How can we use for emancipatory ends those sciences that are apparently so intimately involved in Western, bourgeois, and masculine projects?" And women appear not as a special interest group pleading for a hearing for their own interests alone but as thinkers expressing concerns about science and society [...]."
Chapter 3. The Women's Movement Benefits Science
*Yes, more women in science, even if science is not feminist (yet)* "[...] if science-as-usual is the problem, then it appears that feminism should not encourage more women to become scientists and thus part of this problem. But it is distressing that an apparent consequence of the success of feminist criticisms of this field would be to alienate women from entering it—especially when women were for so long vigorously excluded from it by patriarchal culture and when many women have waged such heroic campaigns to enter and remain there. [...] How bizarre if it is an outcome of the purportedly most radical feminist science criticisms that women should give up trying to understand the natural world. Can we try to create more feminist sciences without any women scientists? Moreover, we live in a scientific culture; to be scientifically illiterate is simply to be illiterate—a condition of far too many women and men already. It is regressive tendencies in science-as-usual that foster such illiteracy, as feminist critics have pointed out. But if women do not become scientists, would not that fact further discourage girls and women from becoming scientifically literate and from gaining the kinds of control of our own lives that such literacy makes possible? Should feminism join science-as-usual in fostering scientific illiteracy among women? What could be progressive about that?"
*Science is far from neutral* "almost all natural science research these days is driven by technology. Scientists may not be motivated by visions of new technologies of control or for profit, but funders of scientific research are. Feminist critics who challenge not bad science but science-as-usual are challenging the fit of science past and present—with the gender, race, and class projects of its surrounding culture."
*Evincing unjust practices has not been enough* "Did we all really "persuade ourselves" of the truth of the partial and distorted sexist vision of the world? [...] Women's movements have been removing covers and blinders from eyes in the West at least since Christine de Pisan wrote The City of Ladies in the fifteenth century, yet we still live in a world ruled by powerful old naked patriarchal emperors."
*Just improving current science may not be enough* "The critics of bad science appear to be caught between two loyalties. On the one hand, they try to respect the dogma that one can explain "good science" without referring to its social causes. On the other hand, they think that the women's movement is a social cause of better science and that an understanding of why it is should inform scientific practice at least to the extent that scientists should welcome the women's movement and listen to what it says in order to increase the growth of knowledge."
*Science is a product of social changes, therefore it should embrace feminism* "modern science itself was created through a movement of social liberation. The new physics advanced precisely because it both expressed the ethos of an emerging class (materialism, antielitism, progress) and also provided the means for expressing that ethos in technologies that could materially advance that class. Its very "method"—experimental observation—required the performance of both head and hand labor by one and the same person, by new kinds of persons who did not exist in the feudal aristocracy. This is a robust analysis of the positive role that feminist politics plays in the growth of scientific knowledge. Feminist struggle is a fundamental part of gaining knowledge, including knowledge about and through science. [...] Are not women sociologists and other women scientists just such new kinds of persons, created through the politics of a social liberation movement?"
Chapter 4. Why "Physics" Is a Bad Model for Physics
*Science is a also a product of its age* "The social relations of the period, which both made possible and were in turn supported by the machines on which Newton's mechanistic laws were modeled, functioned as were—part of the evidence for Newtonian physics. Giving up the belief that science is really or fundamentally only a collection of mathematical statements is necessary if we are to begin to explain the history and practices of science."
*Political consequences of (even benign) technology* "The use of the telescope moved authority about the heavens from the medieval church to anyone who could look through a telescope. The introduc- tion of complex diagnostic technologies in medical research moves authority about the condition of our bodies from us to medical spe- cialists; in practice, it even tends to move this authority from physicians to lab technicians. These are not trivial involvements of science in political interests and values."
*YASS* "A maximally objective understanding of science's location in the contemporary international social order is the goal here. "
*Paraphrasing: Put discussions of morals and politics at the heart of science* "Only "sciences for the people" (in Galileo's phrase), not for elites, can be justifiably supported in a society committed to democracy. There are plenty of useful projects for such sciences, but they do not include research that provides resources for militarism or for ecological disaster, or continues to move resources away from the underprivileged and toward the already overprivileged."
Chapter 5. Feminist Epistemology
*Science tends to be elitist unless we make it not so* "[...] knowledge-seeking requires democratic, participatory politics. Otherwise, only the gender, race, sexuality, and class elites who now predominate in institutions of knowledge-seeking will have the chance to decide how to start asking their research questions, and we are entitled to suspicion about the historic location from which those questions will in fact be asked."
*Standpoint theories explain scientific revolutions* "Scientific method itself was created by a "new kind of person" in the early modern era. Feudalism's economic order separated hand and head labor so severely that neither serfs nor aristocrats could get the necessary combination of a trained intellect and willingness to get one's hands dirty that are necessary for experimental method. One can also point to pre-Newtonian science's involvement in political struggles against the aristocracy. Or one can focus on the "fit" of Ptolemaic astronomy's conceptual scheme with the hierarchical social structure of the Catholic Church and feudal society while, in contrast, the Copernican astronomy mirrored the more democratic social order that was emerging. Or one can note the way the problematics of the new physics were "for" the rise of the new merchant classes: it was not that Newton set out to "conspire" with these classes; rather, his new physics solved problems that had to be solved if transportation, mining, and warfare were to be more efficient."
Chapter 6. "Strong Objectivity"
*The (fruitless) debate about neutrality of "objectivity"* "Because there are clear commitments within feminism to tell less partial and distorted stories about women, men, nature, and social relations, some critics have assumed that feminism must be committed to value-neutral objectivity. Like other feminists, however, the standpoint theorists have also criticized conventional sciences for their arrogance in assuming that they could tell one true story about a world that is out there, ready-made for their reporting, without listening to women's accounts or being aware that accounts of nature and social relations have been constructed within men's control of gender relations. "
*Is science objective enough?* "[Standpoint theories] call for the acknowledgment that all human beliefs—including our best scientific beliefs—are socially situated, but they also require a critical evaluation to determine which social situations tend to generate the most objective knowledge claims. They require [...] a scientific account of the relationships between historically located belief and maximally objective belief. "
*Data and its interpretation in astronomy* "Many of the observations collected by medieval European astronomers are preserved in the data used by astronomers today. But what "facts" these data refer to, what further research they point to, what theoretical statements they support and how such theories are to be applied, what such data signify in terms of human social relations and relations to nature—all these parts of the sciences can differ wildly, as the contrast between medieval and contemporary astronomy illustrates."
*"New empiricism"* "[...] the sciences' power to manipulate the world is considered the mark of their success."
*Cultural constructs* "[...] there are no "women" or "men" in the world—there is no "gender"—but only women, men, and gender constructed through particular historical struggles over just which races, classes, sexualities, cultures, religious groups, and so forth, will have access to resources and power. "
*Maximal objectivism* "To enact or operationalize the directive of strong objectivity is to value the Other's perspective and to pass over in thought into the social condition that creates it. [...] Strong objectivity requires that we investigate the relation between subject and object rather than deny the existence of, or seek unilateral control over, this relation. "
Chapter 7. Feminist Epistemology in and after the Enlightenment
*Paraphrasing: "Successor sciences" should be linked to maximizing objectivity on the imperfect social order within which science exists today.*
*Truth is socially situated* "[Standpoint theories insist] on the recognition that not just false claims but also true (or less false) ones are socially situated. It insists on causal symmetry in explanations of how to arrive at "good" beliefs. Thus it places the observer and her "institutions of observation" in the same critical plane as the subject matters to be observed"
Chapter 8. Toward the Science Question in Global Feminisms
*Avoid falling into the individualist trap when acknowledging Others' work* "A search for Great African American Women in the sciences would suffer from the fact that it tried to establish the individuality of a few women at the expense of the masses whose efforts made those achievements possible. Such an approach would advance Eurocentric preoccupations with individualism and meritocracy at the expense of understanding and supporting the collective and community-focused ways in which science and technology have in fact been practiced in our own and other cultures. "
*What is the impact of Others' contributions beyond "pure research"?* "Another challenge is to resist the temptation to assess the contributions of African American women to science and technology only from the perspective of what European American elite men or women count as scientifically and technologically interesting and valuable. Hine's studies of black women physicians' educational and social work to benefit their communities' activities and of black women's later focus on nursing rather than doctoring highlight the importance of kinds of scientific activities that are devalued in dominant white, Western men's science circles. "
Chapter 9. Common Histories, Common Destinies. Science in the First and Third Worlds
*"Western" science has never been an island* "There were continual minglings and interchanges between the Mediterranean, African, and Middle Eastern cultures from antiquity through the modern era. Western scholars, intentionally or not, justify the West's inflated self-image and its devaluation of the achievements of Third World cultures through their constant refusal to acknowledge these connections. "
*Third World labor made First World science possible* "[...] making possible someone else's achievements [can be] an unintended consequence. [...] It seems reasonable to hold that people of African and other Third World descent deserve a good part of the credit for making possible with their labor and lives, regardless of whether they so intended, scientific and tech- nological innovations in the North Atlantic societies. "
*Science is not neutral* "The character and meanings of "real science" are not beyond politics; they are resources over which contesting groups try to gain control."
Chapter 11. Reinventing Ourselves as Other. More New Agents of History and Knowledge
*A path toward "successor sciences"* "Standpoint theories show how to move from including others' lives and thoughts in research and scholarly projects to starting from their lives to ask research questions, develop theoretical concepts, design research, collect data, and interpret findings."
*Allyship is a delicate matter* "I find it paradoxical—and, frankly, suspicious—that most of the European-American feminists I know who admire, learn from, and use the understandings of feminists of color appear to overestimate their own ability to engage in antiracist thought but to underestimate men's ability to engage in feminist thought. They seem to believe that European American feminists are perfectly capable of generating antiracist analyses "
*Thinking from Others' lives (not just our own)* "Having women's experiences—being a woman—clearly is not sufficient to generate feminist knowledge; all women have women's experiences, but only at certain historical moments do any of us ever produce feminist knowledge. Our experience lies to us, and the experiences of the dominant gender, class, race, and sexuality produce more airtight."
Chapter 12. Conclusion
*Beyond "feminine" science* "Other critics of feminism—and a few feminists—have conflated feminist science and something they refer to as feminine science. It is true that feminism reevaluates "the feminine"; all the feminist thinkers who have pondered the possibility of feminist science have rejected tendencies in the dominant culture to devalue and ignore the distinctive insights and skills that women can bring to social life, including to science. So a reevaluation of the activities assigned to women, of the skills and talents developed in performing those activities, and of what can be learned by starting thought from women's lives is an important aspect of feminist thought in every disciplinary area. "
*What feminist science could be* "Feminist science would not be elite and authoritarian and, therefore, it would have to be accessible-physically and intellectually-to anyone interested. It would be humble and acknowledge that each new "truth" is partial; that is, incomplete as well as culture-bound. Recognizing that different people have different experiences, cultures, and identifications (therefore, different perspectives, values, goals, and viewpoints), feminist science would aim for cultural diversity among its participants, so that through our diverse approaches we would light different facets of the realities we attempt to understand. Such diversity would help to ensure sensitivity of the scientific community to the range of consequences of its work and thus its responsibility for the goals of science and the applications and by-products of its research. [Bleier]"
*What feminism+science can be today* "At this historical moment, what we are developing is not a feminist science, but a feminist critique of existing science. It follows from what has been said about the relationship of science to society that we can expect a sexist society to develop a sexist science; equally, we can expect a feminist society to develop a feminist science. [... we should not] take our inability to imagine a fully developed feminist science as evidence that a feminist science is itself impossible. [Fee]"
*Beyond Eurocentrism* "[Saying] that "real science" is only what the modern West has done or chooses to call science, falsely assumes that it makes no sense to imagine effective sciences with very different theories of nature, different approaches to gaining empirical knowledge, and different agendas from those of modern Western science."
*Science can be (metaphorically and literally) weaponized* "[...] science contains both progressive and regressive tendencies, and it leaves itself open to manipulation by regressive social forces to the extent that its institutions do not acknowledge and grapple with [its] contradictory internal features."
*Can physics be feminist?* "There are feminist criticisms of various aspects of physics and chemistry, analyses of the role of the natural sciences in promoting androcentrism, and the beginnings of less sexist social relations in the labs. But research in these fields is organized on an international level, and thus is less susceptible to the kind of feminist influences that have been effective in more locally organized social research projects."
*MAXIMAL OBJECTIVISM* "[...] experience in many respects hides the realities of our lives: experience "lies." It is necessary to avoid the "view from nowhere" stance of conventional Western epistemology while refusing to embrace the exaltation of the spontaneous consciousness of our experiences—the experiential foundationalism—that has too often appeared to be the only alternative. One reasonable position is to say that the experiences of more powerful groups lie more often, more deeply, and more tenaciously than the experiences of the less powerful, though the latter must also be scientifically, causally explained. "
October 17, 2014
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Read this and reviews of other classics in Western Philosophy on the History page of www.BestPhilosophyBooks.org (a thinkPhilosophy Production).
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One of the first book-length treatments of feminist epistemologies, this is still the place where a certain terrain is mapped for the future of feminist contributions to discourses on knowledge and science studies. It is even more striking, this time around, how dated the political assumptions of a democratic and liberal society that motivates this and some other feminist projects in this area.
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Read this and reviews of other classics in Western Philosophy on the History page of www.BestPhilosophyBooks.org (a thinkPhilosophy Production).
---
Read this and reviews of other classics in Western Philosophy on the History page of www.BestPhilosophyBooks.org (a thinkPhilosophy Production).
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One of the first book-length treatments of feminist epistemologies, this is still the place where a certain terrain is mapped for the future of feminist contributions to discourses on knowledge and science studies. It is even more striking, this time around, how dated the political assumptions of a democratic and liberal society that motivates this and some other feminist projects in this area.
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Read this and reviews of other classics in Western Philosophy on the History page of www.BestPhilosophyBooks.org (a thinkPhilosophy Production).
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September 26, 2019
Old joke. What do you call alternative medicine that works? Medicine.
Q: What do you call feminist science? A:Well, at least according to Sandra Harding, it is a recognition that "science" is a social construct that that perpetuates existing power dynamics that have excluded the experiences of women and marginalized communities.
Q: Does this feminist science actually predict anything useful? Does it work? A: It doesn't really matter, since the fruits of science also tend to employed to the furtherance of existing power dynamics whose legitimacy must be questioned and deconstructed.
Q: Does feminist science as understood by "standpoint theory" predict if planes will fly, gases will combust, neutrons be absorbed? A: The important thing is that we understand how all of these developments have assisted the patriarchy, and maybe a feminist science would not ask such questions.
Q: Is feminist science good for science? A: Feminist science is a challenge the the underlying power dynamics of so-called "science" and is good for women and marginalized peoples.
Q: Does feminist science further our understanding of an objective reality? A: There is no such thing as viewpoint nuetral interpretation of an objective reality.
Q: Is there a relationship between temperature, pressure, and volume in gasses? A: The tendency of science to measure and quantify even the most amorphous of substances and subject them to tightly bound rules is an instantiation of the hegemony of the masculine, patriarchal paradigm that we recognize as the oppressor.
Q: How should we understand the behavior of gasses? A: We need more women to work on this problem.
Q: Women so far don't seem to have reached a different conclusion with regard to gasses, why is that? A: Women who work in the sciences have be indoctrinated in the paradigm of "science" and have internalize misogyny.
Q: And new women entering the sciences won't have internalized misogyny? A: Not if they are feminists.
Q: What is a feminist scientist? A: One that tears down the existing scientific paradigm so that a feminist science might thrive and build science from a more gynocentric standpoint.
Q: Will science from a gynocentric standpoint be more predictive? A: It is a masculine patriarchal notion that everything needs to be taxonimized, regulated, and subjugated to your need to understand.
Q: So feminist science is not more predictive? A: It is better for women and marginalized peoples.
Q: So, I'm fixing an air conditioner. How does it work? A: Air conditioning disproportionately affects women who prefer temperatures several degrees higher than men....
Fuck me. This was a hard book to get through.
Q: What do you call feminist science? A:Well, at least according to Sandra Harding, it is a recognition that "science" is a social construct that that perpetuates existing power dynamics that have excluded the experiences of women and marginalized communities.
Q: Does this feminist science actually predict anything useful? Does it work? A: It doesn't really matter, since the fruits of science also tend to employed to the furtherance of existing power dynamics whose legitimacy must be questioned and deconstructed.
Q: Does feminist science as understood by "standpoint theory" predict if planes will fly, gases will combust, neutrons be absorbed? A: The important thing is that we understand how all of these developments have assisted the patriarchy, and maybe a feminist science would not ask such questions.
Q: Is feminist science good for science? A: Feminist science is a challenge the the underlying power dynamics of so-called "science" and is good for women and marginalized peoples.
Q: Does feminist science further our understanding of an objective reality? A: There is no such thing as viewpoint nuetral interpretation of an objective reality.
Q: Is there a relationship between temperature, pressure, and volume in gasses? A: The tendency of science to measure and quantify even the most amorphous of substances and subject them to tightly bound rules is an instantiation of the hegemony of the masculine, patriarchal paradigm that we recognize as the oppressor.
Q: How should we understand the behavior of gasses? A: We need more women to work on this problem.
Q: Women so far don't seem to have reached a different conclusion with regard to gasses, why is that? A: Women who work in the sciences have be indoctrinated in the paradigm of "science" and have internalize misogyny.
Q: And new women entering the sciences won't have internalized misogyny? A: Not if they are feminists.
Q: What is a feminist scientist? A: One that tears down the existing scientific paradigm so that a feminist science might thrive and build science from a more gynocentric standpoint.
Q: Will science from a gynocentric standpoint be more predictive? A: It is a masculine patriarchal notion that everything needs to be taxonimized, regulated, and subjugated to your need to understand.
Q: So feminist science is not more predictive? A: It is better for women and marginalized peoples.
Q: So, I'm fixing an air conditioner. How does it work? A: Air conditioning disproportionately affects women who prefer temperatures several degrees higher than men....
Fuck me. This was a hard book to get through.
June 2, 2007
Oh, it's been a long time! Science and knowledge are social constructs, and the way they have been constructed in Western culture is largely uniformed by women's experiences.
Read
April 7, 2018Long ago.
Only comment is "very tough to read"
Only comment is "very tough to read"
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