Feminism and Science

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Feminism and Science
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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.

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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
  weve 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.

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Examples of feminist work on science

• Lloyd, The Man of Reason Francis Bacons 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? (Leakeys
  angels Goodal, Galdikas and Fossey)

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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 dont
  (or dont 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.

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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...

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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.
• Longinos 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)

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The Science Wars

• Sokals 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.