Feminism and Science
The politics of science
• The enlightenment view science is framed in terms of
universal values, epistemic objectivity and challenges
to entrenched (and unjustified) authority.
• In the mid-twentieth century, science came to be
identified with threats as well as promises– the atom
bomb, chemical pesticides, corporate dominance of
the economy and politics and unjustified authority.
• Now progressive political groups have a more
conflicted and even sometimes an outright negative
view of science.
• In particular, feminist critiques of science have
emerged.
18th Century rhetoric
• Sexist views and sexist rhetoric are extremely easy to
find in 17th and 18th century scientific writings.
• They are also pretty easy to find more recently.
• The structures of authority (institutions, journals and
associations) that have developed in science have, for
obvious reasons, been dominated by men.
• The concerns about institutionalized science that we’ve
just raised added fuel to the fire here: if science is a
male-dominated enterprise serving military and
corporate and privileged interests, there are plenty of
reasons to be concerned and critical of it.
Examples of feminist work on science
• Lloyd, The Man of Reason: Francis Bacon’s view of
knowledge as (male) power/control. Such
metaphors are still around, though just how
influential they are is not entirely clear. (Keller:
the image of a scientist modeled on patriarchal
husband imposes inauthenticity on women who
identify with it.)
• Hrdy, The Woman that Never Evolved:
Primatology and sexual behaviour. Did female
primatologists correct an imbalance in the field?
(Leakey’s ‘angels’: Goodal, Galdikas and Fossey…)
A question
• In what areas, or regarding what sorts of questions, do
you think the differences between male and female
scientists are most likely to be important or influential?
• This seems to me to be an important question to keep
in mind here. Physics and chemistry don’t (or don’t
obviously) engage social issues in ways that make these
differences important– biology and especially
primatology, on the other hand, do.
• See also Gould, The Mismeasure of Man, on such
concerns.
Feminist epistemology 1
• This field covers a very wide range of positions–
• At one extreme, we find pretty traditional empiricism,
leavened with the modest claim that some issues or topics
can be dealt with better when womens’ perspectives are
included as correctives against certain fairly concrete and
specific biases. (Harding)
• In the middle we find more ambitious efforts to modify and
improve empiricism (broadly, by removing deeper, more
general and subtle biases in epistemic thinking). (Longino)
• The challenge here is to show that there are systematic
differences between women and men that really matter to
the science that gets done...
Feminist epistemology 2
• At the other extreme we find radical feminist
epistemology (which is generally postmodern and
relativist in outlook) and standpoint epistemology,
which holds that certain facts are only ‘visible’ from the
point of view of people who occupy disadvantaged or
marginalized positions in society– this can include
women, the poor, disadvantaged races or cultures.
• Longino’s response to standpoint epistemology pushes
back in the direction of Mill– the ideal here is that all
points of view have a voice in the debate. (Contextual
empiricism)
The Science Wars
• Sokal’s paper:
http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/transgress_v2/transgress
_v2_singlefile.html
• This is a real hoot (whether it was constructive or not as a
contribution to the debate).
• For example:
– Just as liberal feminists are frequently content with a minimal agenda
of legal and social equality for women and ``pro-choice'', so liberal
(and even some socialist) mathematicians are often content to work
within the hegemonic Zermelo-Fraenkel framework (which, reflecting
its nineteenth-century liberal origins, already incorporates the axiom
of equality) supplemented only by the axiom of choice. But this
framework is grossly insufficient for a liberatory mathematics, as was
proven long ago by Cohen (1966).
• Cohen (1966): Set Theory and the Continuum Hypothesis.