SANDRA HARDING

Part 1 - Sandra Harding, Feminist Ethics and the Science Question in Feminism

Sandra Harding is an American philosopher of feminist and postcolonial theory, epistemology, research methodology and philosophy of science. She is currently a professor at the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies.

Sandra Harding proposes that the Social Sciences serve as the foundational science. An adequate science requires a scientific study of the social beliefs and practices of scientists themselves. But natural scientists, with their fixation upon physical sciences as the foundational model for all sciences, have created the myth of a value-free, neutral science where social beliefs and practices are irrelevant. The myth is best captured in the separation of the context of discovery from the context of justification and then the relegation of the context of discovery to an insignificant side issue. As a result of the myth, scientists do not understand the "real causes and meanings" of their own work.

Part 2 - Sandra Harding, Feminism and the Social Sciences

According to Harding, the social sciences, such as history, sociology, and anthropology, provide a more sound foundation for science than the physical sciences. They present a more "naturalistic" approach to science. The social sciences can deconstruct or strip away the veneer of scientific rationality that misleads physical scientists and philosophers of science into presuming the objective nature of their accounts. For example, whereas physical scientists may believe that the methods developed during the rise of modern science in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries represent a triumph of purely objective, intellectual advancement and were the cause of subsequent social progress, the social sciences can show that "changes underway in the late feudal and early modern European social life were primarily responsible for the popular acceptance of sciences new ways of conceptualizing nature and inquiry. On a deeper level, the social sciences can reveal how race, class, and gender have skewed science in particular directions. Harding writes:

"But our contemporary social theory, influenced by psychoanalytic concerns, also reveals the distinctively Western masculine desires that are satisfied by the preoccupation with method, rule and law governed behavior and activity. Here, too, modern science projects onto nature distinctively Western masculine projects and destinies."

(The Science Question in Feminism, p. 229)


Part 3 - Sandra Harding, Feminism and Physics

Harding sees the attempt to set up physics as the foundational science to be misguided. She writes,

Why then should we take as the model for all knowledge - seeking a science that has no conceptual space for considering irrational behavior and belief? Moreover, possible explanations even in physics would be more reliable, more fruitful, if physicists were trained to examine critically the social origins and often-rrational social implications of their conceptual systems. For instance, would not physicists benefit from asking why a scientific worldview with physics as its paradigm excludes the history of physics from its recommendation that we seek causal explanations of everything in the world around us?

(p. 47)

Part 4 - Sandra Harding, Feminism, the Social Sciences and Gender

According to Harding, there is an Androcentric Bias in the Social Sciences. Harding cites feminist studies in the social sciences that show a male centered or Androcentric bias, which is both conceptual and political in traditional science. Conceptually, masculine identity favors rational thinking over feeling, the abstract and general over the concrete and particular, the separation of knowledge itself from its social issues, the separation of the subject from what is observed, the domination of the subject over the object, and objectivity over subjectivity.

So male scientists framed the conceptual structure of science to fit the needs of masculine identity. Accordingly, there is nothing surprising in the reliance on physics as a paradigm for all science, in the exclusive concern with the context of justification rather with the context of discovery, in the assumption of neutral or value-free scientific objectivity. Rather than being a reflection of reality, the traditional conceptual structure of science reflects the male ego.

Androcentric science demeans the status of women by ignoring their interests and excluding feminist oriented methodology. It devalues the special advantages women bring to scientific study, such as the value of experiential relations with others, the appreciation of feelings in social life, an understanding of practical life activities, and direct experience of the social harm resulting through the separation of abstract knowledge from its oppressive social uses.

Part 5 - Sandra Harding, Feminism, and Androcentric Science

Politically, Androcentric science focuses upon domination. The object of the domination in such a scientific approach may be in relation to nature, race, class, or sexuality. This domination has little concern for or sensitivity to the consequences of such domination. Environmental or ecological problems can occur as a consequence when this domination is practiced in relationship to the environment. Another result of this domination is social oppression with respect to race, class and gender. The entry of more women into science in contemporary times meets political resistance from male scientists because it threatens their sense of masculine identity. So as a defense mechanism, they require that women assume a masculine identity in the form of scientific rationality as a prerequisite for doing scientific work. In other words, women are forced to surrender their feminine identity in order to become scientists.

The development of scientific rationality during the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries was accompanied by the desire of men to achieve dominance over women. Harding finds it significant that modern science arose at a time following the social breakdown in feudal society, when women were emerging to participate more fully in public life. Science was a way of meeting the threat that the emerging activity of women posed.

Part 6 - Sandra Harding, Feminism and Gender Symbolism

Gender metaphors are key indicators of the Androcentric bias in science according to Harding. A prime example is the use of rape and torture metaphor by Francis Bacon (561-1626). Bacon is usually regarded as one of the great founders of the modern scientific method. In explaining the new method and referring to nature in feminine terms, as was usually done, Bacon wrote about the need to "hound nature in her wanderings", to "lead and drive her," and to have no scruples about "entering and penetrating into those holes and corners", all in the interest of pursuing truth.

Even in the 1960's the Nobel Prize winning physicist Richard Feynman felt no reservations in likening acceptance of a scientific theory to falling in love with a woman having faults not immediately obvious according to Harding. And, in time, the theory's "become an old lady, who has very little that's attractive left in her, and the young today will not have their hearts pound when they look at her anymore."

Part 7 - Sandra Harding, Feminism and A Feminist Successor Science

To eliminate the Androcentric bias in science, according to Harding, we need much more than an increased number of women scientists. If more women become scientists but adopt the Standard Scientific Explanation, then nothing will change in the field of science. She, therefore, proposes a feminist successor science. At this point, Harding does not think that the boundaries of this successor science are clearly discernible. Yet there are key features that emerge. The social sciences not the physical sciences will provide the foundational paradigm. Science must be focused upon the context of discovery. The manner in which the sciences are used, and their social/political effects, will become more important than abstract conceptions of knowledge for its own sake.

The special methodological interests of women, such as the value of experiential relations with others, the appreciation of feelings in social life, and an understanding of practical life activities, will take the place of excessively quantitative studies and separations that isolate the scientific investigator from the subjects of study. Value concerns will then replace value neutrality. Science will benefit from the unique experiences and understandings that women being to the presentation of problems as well as to the collection and evaluation of data. As both victims and acknowledgers of Androcentric bias in science, feminist have an advantage over men in correcting "bad" science.










Nel Noddings, Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education; Catherine A. MacKinnon, Toward a Feminist Theory of the State; Sandra Harding, The Science Question in Feminism.