The Science Question in Feminism - by Sandra G Harding (Paperback)

About the Book

Can science, steeped in Western, masculine, bourgeois endeavors, nevertheless be used for emancipatory ends? In this major contribution to the debate over the role gender plays in the scientific enterprise, Sandra Harding pursues that question...

Book Synopsis

Can science, steeped in Western, masculine, bourgeois endeavors, nevertheless be used for emancipatory ends? In this major contribution to the debate over the role gender plays in the scientific enterprise, Sandra Harding pursues that question, challenging the intellectual and social foundations of scientific thought.Harding provides the first comprehensive and critical survey of the feminist science critiques, and examines inquiries into the androcentricism that has endured since the birth of modern science. Harding critiques three epistemological approaches: feminist empiricism, which identifies only bad science as the problem; the feminist standpoint, which holds that women's social experience provides a unique starting point for discovering masculine bias in science; and feminist postmodernism, which disputes the most basic scientific assumptions. She points out the tensions among these stances and the inadequate concepts that inform their analyses, yet maintains that the critical discourse they foster is vital to the quest for a science informed by emancipatory morals and politics.

Review Quotes

"Offers a plentiful feast of sticky problems, embarrassing questions, and nagging doubts about current practices in both history and philosophy of science that will not go away by themselves."--Elisabeth A. Lloyd, Isis, Vol. 79, 1988

"Provocative and often persuasive, this examination of trends in feminine critiques of science presents a useful, comprehensive account of a subject claiming increasing attention among philosophers, historians of science, and feminine theorists."--E.C. Patterson, Albertus Magnus College, Choice, 1986

"This is the book many scholars in feminist theory and the philosophical and historical studies of science have been waiting for. It is ambitious, sophisticated, and subtle: the best book yet written in feminist approaches to philosophy and the theories of knowledge."--Donna J. Harraway, Department of the History of Consciousness, University of California, Santa Cruz

About the Author

Sandra Harding is Professor of Social Sciences and Comparative Education at the University of California at Los Angeles. She is also Director of the UCLA Center for the Study of Women.