Feminist politics is not the same the thing as feminist philosophy, only one part of which is looking at how sexism has influenced the intellectual history of philosophy, that is, how philosophical theories and ideas have been distorted or at least influenced by sexist assumptions of philosophers. Much of feminist epistemology and philosophy of science is of that type.

It is certainly true that science as practiced discriminates against women and is less interested in the concerns of women than of men.

The reasons for this are pretty much the same as the reasons women are discriminated against in the rest of society. They are not special to science, and certainly they are not relevant to the norms and standards according to which science should be practiced.

That is a point of feminist politics. Feminist philosophy argues that being female is in some way of relevance to the correct practice of science. The clearest case is that some feminist philosophers of science claim that women are better scientists than men, simply because they are women, and so good science should be largely done by women.

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Genevieve Lloyd wrote "The Man of Reason" in which she argues that the very idea of reason arose as an idea of what men do in contrast to what women do. The best case is Francis Bacon. Sandra Harding called Newton's Principia "a rape manual."

It is still true that many scientific terms have origins in the metaphor of man dominating mother nature. For example, observations "yield" to a theoretical analysis.

So far, what I have told you is just intellectual history. It doesn't show, and I haven't argued, that there is anything particularly masculine or misogynist about the principles of science as we view them today.

It is suggested by some feminist philosophers that science puts competition over cooperation, tends to ignore complex networks over single-factor explanations, ... . If this is what feminist philosophy is about, feminist philosophy advocates stereotypes about women many political feminists want to resist.

There is no question that the intellectual history of science is deeply connected with certain ideas we now find sexist and that much of scientific terminology at least contains the traces of that sexism. Moreover, many of the ideals for scientists are coded as masculine in Western culture.

So, what alternative is there?

1. People who have been oppressed or marginalized (women) have a unique way of looking at things that makes them better scientists. There may be particular sciences (primatology) in which women seem to have an advantage for special reasons. But how could something like that be true in general? Men are part of the power structure of science, the dominant views are created and enforced by men, and so women, as outsiders, are much more likely to find problems with basic assumptions. More generally, one of the norms of science is skepticism, and people who have nothing to gain from a system of beliefs are more likely to be able to view it skeptically. Even if that is true, does that make women better scientists or just different? After all, sometimes the dominant view may be correct, and sometimes going on with normal science instead of questioning assumptions may be the fruitful thing to do.

It is true that science tends to serve the interests of those who are dominant in a society and, more particularly, those who are dominant within science. That is true of any human endeavor, and it provides a good political argument for opening up the practice of science to those who have been excluded. That is different from the argument above.

1. Standpoint theory: There is no such thing as neutral observation. What you see is not only conditioned by your theories, but also by your entire life experience.

There are special science where there is a quite different case, where women clearly are better in some respects.

-- ShaughanLavine - 12 Oct 2005 - 10 Oct 2007

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Science Studies

It became clear that some interdisciplinary work might be useful.

Most conservative version is History and Philosophy of Science (HPS).

Most radical: Postmodernist Science Studies. Thoroughly relativist. Science is no better than any other way of coming to believe. There are no universal standards of truth, indeed there is no such thing as truth, and no methodology is better than any other.

A physicist, Alan Sokal, decided to use "the scientific method" to prove that the postmodernist science studies people had no method or standard and were not concerned with truth: He did an experiment. He wrote a gobbledegook paper that used lots of postmodernist terminology and said it was supported by lots of technical results in science and mathematics, and he threw around lots of science and mathematics. He submitted the article for inclusion in a prestigious collection of work on postmodernist science studies, which had article by the top people in the field, and it got accepted.

-- ShaughanLavine - 17 Oct 2005