The Science Question in Feminism [Paperback]

Sandra Harding (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 12, 1986

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.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"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

"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

"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

Product Details

• Paperback: 296 pages
• Publisher: Cornell University Press; 1St Edition edition (June 12, 1986)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0801493633
• ISBN-13: 978-0801493638
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #487,120 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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24 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars That postmodern fever makes people say the funniest things!, December 18, 2007

By 

Brett Williams (Dallas, TX) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Science Question in Feminism (Hardcover)

Harding maintains feminist theory is "critical thought" equivalent to that applied by remarkably successful science, while demanding science conform to political, social, financial and gender-based passions of feminist theory. A remarkable paradox, but one frequently heard from archrivals to her radical Right, the Creationists, who also demand science abandon its description of nature, becoming something to make us feel better. To Harding science is "racist, sexist, classist, culturally coercive, serving primarily regressive social tendencies" (as Creationism claims Darwin is responsible for every "ism" - Socialism, Communism, Stalinism), insisting "dogmas of empiricism" "inhospitable to gender theory" be removed. While masculinity in science is evil, feminism in science is not. (Feminist theory is to feminism, as the Black Panthers were to Civil Rights.) "The best scientific activity and thinking about science are modeled on men's misogynistic" and "natural relations to women", writes Harding - which are "rape and torture". Sexist meanings in science are then used to attract young men into the field. (Funny!) Science's "objectivity" stems from its guilty conscience for this, its ecological / military disasters and "making labor physically and mentally mutilating". While any lack of overt misogynistic expression is not due to any absence, it's subverted, seen only by the eyes of Harding's "penetrating" analysis.

Harding has a well-developed strategy and she's a good deal more readable than, say, Lacan. She uses repetition to convince, frequently without the slightest effort to support, other than quotes of other unsubstantiated allegations from postmodernists. She has a nasty habit of making claims no one rejects, while asserting they do. Then drones on for pages attacking these fanciful rejections. Harding employs a Rush Limbaugh tactic, feigning ignorance of metaphorical differences, lumping validity with absurdity to prosecute validity through association and put opponents on their heals. She chronically misrepresents scientists, putting words in their mouths, then claiming how wrong they are. Harding indicts explanations of science and its method, extending this indictment to science itself. But if such explanations are inadequate and flawed, does that make science inadequate and flawed? (Just because you can't predict tornadoes, doesn't mean the earth isn't round.) She attributes all dichotomies - mind vs. nature and body, reason vs. emotion, subjectivity vs. objectivity, abstract and general vs. concrete and particular - as gender-loaded, masculine vs. feminine. While Gauchet makes a stronger case (substantiated) for all of these as matters of developments in religious thought. Harding patronizes by labeling science "sacred", "religious", "magical", "mysterious". While those of us practicing in the sciences may see it as nearly sacred, we do not see it religiously, nor magically, and outcomes of science, as a human endeavor are certainly not unassailable. As for a sense of mystery, Harding reveals she never practiced science - and what better way to understand it? Applying feminist theory to science to understand how scientists "do or should" explore nature is like art critics trying to explain how artists create art. Critics attempt to deconstruct the artistic process to grasp it, while for artists this process is transcendental, beyond confinement. So too for science, at least in so much as the moment of connection and understanding of nature remains a mystery in how the brain works. While guided by a rigorous method and policed by its open forum, the heart of scientific practice is found through personal discovery, not a triptik. Dismissals of Harding convey what scientists know about other forms of inquiry (or inquisition) - non-scientists don't grasp science because they read the public "how to" book by Harding, her peers the postmodernists and Creationists. Harding finds industrialization of labor "to make unique... characteristics irrelevant, standardizing labor routines so individual workers possess no special knowledge of their laboring process." So, "why does the division of labor in science preserve racial, gender and class status?" First, she confuses intellectual requirements of science with routine manual labor. Difficulties within science finding those nimble enough on the borders of understanding to be innovators is lost on Harding. Some are simply better at it, mentally wired to earn their place at Cal Tech or Princeton's IAS. Those of us less talented may lament our shortcomings but we do not deserve status as equals for a social cause. While Science didn't invent the various "isms" she grieves, to her point, such a meritocracy inherits them from society as an imprint (as talent tends to come from those not discriminated against), though this does not mean as a practice, which is Harding's charge. Harding continues exposing her lose grip, next on mathematics. Different concepts, she says, occupied different groups and discoveries occurred at various times, presenting mathematics as a "cumulative growth of mathematical knowledge" having no trace of social history left on its equations. Harding strives to redefine mathematics to the level of party politics. Once demoted she can steer it in any direction desired (as Creationists define science as amoral atheism). Like Creationist critiques, for Harding the discipline must have been born fully grown with no opportunity for learning as learning takes time and time passes as history. What she misses as advancements in technology, allowing greater precision, witness to new phenomena or clarifying competing hypotheses is for Harding "social negotiation". We find the mathematics of Newton and Einstein have layered upon their equations gender-laden bigotry. F=ma, E=mc(squared), gender-biased all. Much longer formulas that "take a computer an hour to read", writes Harding, cannot be descriptions of natural phenomena because no one understands them. But such models are verified to be accurate representations of nature in the lab or field everyday in everything from automobiles and aircraft to antennas and artificial hearts. Simply because they're not understood by Harding is not to say they're not understood. Harding writes that "...favored intellectual structures and practices of science [are] cultural artifacts... sacred commandments". But if this were so those cell phones, TVs, ships, satellites, and vaccines wouldn't work as science designs and predicts they will. One wonders if Harding accesses the fruits of science in her daily drive, entertainment and healthcare? Does she imagine those devices and cures worked as intended by a matter of pure chance, millions of times round the world each day? If they are indeed gender-biased, perhaps it's best not to fiddle, they're doing quite well as it is.

Harding portrays science as one monolithic machine where even "socializers of infants" are part of the horror, pandering to the fiction that males have nascent masculine traits selected for by invisible powers as they commence science camp in primary and secondary education to feed our universities. All of it under control of a secret elite minority of "director-managers", luring unsuspecting graduates with promises of heroism, only to be enslaved by the "scientific belief" factory running the world. The sheer capital to conduct such control makes this terrain only of those rich and powerful. "...patent and copyright laws help ensure that knowledge will be produced to benefit only those who have the capital to distribute results for profit (is this why Harding and her universities copyright her books?) or the power to organize and maintain polices of social control." But Apple, Google, YouTube, invented in a garage, benefited by patent protection from giants long before exploiting gratuitous efforts, making them worthwhile. Harding makes any utilitarian enterprise with a hierarchy interested in efficiency appear nefarious. Challenging her corporate-control theme are discoveries of quasars, black holes and work in string theory, which don't exactly show up on the retail shelf for profit. These endeavors are money down the research-corporate hole. Harding's corporate-science connection is not denied, as many scientists lament modern requirements for product-associated research and demands for university grant money from the same entities, but it's not quite universal nor inherently evil.

Harding's strategy is transparent, but she then laments in patient terms that reactions are dismissive rather than garnered with respect. Frequently anticipating this criticism confers her both an air of Bertrand Russell's "superior virtue of the oppressed", and preempting critiques she claims to be so in favor of with a best defense that's an offense. While effective argumentation, Harding fails to advance her hypotheses, seeking only pity for not being understood. For her program to be successful males in science must be converted or expunged. When Harding finally gets around to her holy cause, that not science alone, but all of society must be transformed, it all has a familiar ring to it, a national socialist program if ever there was one. Her plan fits with splendid exactness Hayek's observations concerning early steps to socialist tyranny in his "Road To Serfdom". Rally the troops emotionally; provide stirring but vague phrases like her "more just and caring culture" allowing for a wide latitude of solutions; create an enemy upon which to focus the rebellion; recast old paradigms in a new light we always sensed but could never articulate. Someday, someone must carry out by force the final requirements of this movement, however ugly, if its program is to succeed. Harding's attempt to hold an even strain falters here as she cannot resist venting her ultimate agenda as "a painful world-shattering confrontation..." As postmoderns are... Read more ›

16 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Dissapointing, December 18, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Science Question in Feminism (Paperback)

I was dissapointed with the quality of this book. It sits on my shelf only 3 chapters read. There is more loud-writing than persuasive argument in this book and unfortunately it reinforces the stereo-type of the militant hand-waving feminist (note this reader was not impressed with "Whose science" either). Not recommended for philosophers (incidentally, Harding edited and wrote a very good introduction for an excellent philosophical book on the Duhem-Quine Thesis, "Can Theories be Refuted?").

14 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An essential book for scientists, philosophers, ethicists, April 2, 2001

By 

Robin Ficklin-Alred (Decatur, GA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Science Question in Feminism (Paperback)

In this ground-breaking work that has become a classic, respected philosopher of science Sandra Harding provided the first critical survey of three feminist critiques of science, mapping both their inadequacies and the essential discourse they provide in a quest for science that is informed by moral considerations. She shows how science that holds itself aloof from moral and political considerations, and claims to be objective, rational, and value-neutral, is actually none of the above, but is instead laden with hidden values and interests that select the problems, theories, methods and interpretations of research. Harding shows how the end result of such science is deficient, as it fails to make any sense of women's social experience--that is, it fails in its explanatory power for over half of the world.