The Science Question in Feminism: Industrial Policy in Europe

by Sandra G. Harding

Book Overview

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...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0801493633
• ISBN13: 9780801493638
• Release Date: May 1986
• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Length: 296 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.1" x 9.1"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

An essential book for scientists, philosophers, ethicists

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.