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Whose Science? Whose Knowledge?: Thinking from Women's Lives

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A feminist critique of the mainstream themes in the philosophy of science. Argues for a 'stand-point' approach, which entails the explicit incorporation of value-judgements into science and giving greater weight to the 'subjects' of study in social science. It is argued that by taking the stand-point of the subjective and lived-experiences of the oppressed into one's theories and practices, one's understanding of social phenomena can be both more 'objective' (in a special sense) and potentially empancipatory.

I've struggled with issues in my attempts to operate within the domain of "science" (soiology) - and I have formulated many critiques on my own, and then I came across this book, which gave me a vocabulary of critique and connected a lot of the thoughts I had been having, with new ones. Harding's work is original, fair, and very thought-provoking. It's a deconstruction of the concept of "objectivity" as it often is understood (implicitly) by practitioners of science. She explains that supposedly "value-free" science is actually very much situated and biased. She offers the beginnings of a new paradigm or epistemology, which she calls "strong objectivity". This is a mode of knowledge production that is more self-aware of its own situatedness, and, for this, generates more reliable, more responsible and more useful knowledge.

I always use this book as an example of what's wrong with much of the humanities. I hope people who take this stuff seriously take the time to read some rebuttals. The fact that "truth" is a philosophically difficult concept really doesn't in any way change the spectacular achievements of the scientific method. That most of the foundations of science were built by white males is a historical accident. The discoverers of deep science may have benefited from a twisted social order, but the whole world has benefited from their work. More to the point, Maxwell's equations or Newton's laws would not be substantially different if discovered by a Balinese woman, they would just have a different name. No amount of pseudointellectual babble will change that. It's, sorry, a fact.

Sandra Harding is so repetative and redundant, it was extremely difficult to concretly understand her point. Her argument that feminist theories challenge androcentric approach of western philosophy and scientific thought was lost in her writing style and syntax.