The following appeared in Volume 98, Number 2 (Spring, 1999) of the APA Newsletters

Reviewed by Norah Martin, University of Portland

Feminist philosophy of science has taken a beating in popular books and the press in recent years, especially since the Sokal controversy. Much of the criticism amounts to little more than personal attack, blatant quoting out of context, and obvious lack of understanding of both philosophy of science in general and of feminist philosophy in particular. In order to understand and appreciate what feminist critiques of science are attempting to do, one must understand them within the historical context of philosophy of science. Many of the same people heaping criticism on feminist philosophers of science would no doubt be shocked to discover the ways in which traditional philosophy of science calls into question their dearly held notions of what is real, what science can and cannot talk about, and what counts as an explanation, just for starters (though of course there are traditional and highly regarded philosophers of science who are also very critical of recent critiques of science, feminist and otherwise). I anger numerous students in my philosophy of science classes long before I ever discuss feminist criticism because many of their ideas about science are destroyed even by reading Hume, never mind twentieth century philosophy of science. It is important for anyone trying to understand feminist philosophy of science, and indeed any of the other radical critiques of science, such as those of science studies and postmodernism, to see how these emerge from more traditional philosophy of science and what the issues at stake are for philosophers of science throughout the twentieth century. Jane Duran undertakes this project of historical contextualization in Philosophies of Science/Feminist Theories. She also points to tensions within contemporary critiques of science and towards a possible resolution.

Duran begins with an overview of philosophy of science from its origins in epistemology and the rise of the Vienna Circle. This chapter of overview moves quickly through Carl Hempel’s D-N model, Popper’s falsificationism and the Kuhnian revolution. She then goes on to briefly discuss the feminist and radical critique of science, the realist/instrumentalist controversy, the sociology of science, and the problem of incommensurability. In this chapter, Duran also discusses the impact that the history of science has had on the philosophy of science, namely that it has led to an awareness of the importance of contextualization for theorizing. The radical and feminist critiques of science have shown that the idea of a "god’s-eye view" does not make sense. These critiques have also shown that any area of theorizing is dominated by a point of view. "The impact of the history of science," Duran says, "is that it suggests that each area is subject to the constraints of localization under which it was initially formed" (12). This overview of which Duran’s first chapter is comprised is useful not only as an introduction to the themes of her book, but in its own right for anyone who wants to get a quick lay of the land in twentieth century philosophy of science. It is rare to find an overview that covers the "Received View," the issues involved in the debates about realism, and feminist and radical critiques, the sociology of science and the impact of the history of science. It is even more rare to find all of these positions to be presented fairly and sympathetically.

Subsequent chapters in Part I discuss traditional twentieth century philosophy of science in more depth and detail. Those with little or no background in the analytic philosophy of science tradition may find these chapters a bit rough going. For those interested in the feminist critique of science, however, they are worth working through as both the chapter on positivism and the one on post-positivist philosophy of science end with discussions of what feminist critique might offer these traditional perspectives. Duran argues in chapter two, for example that the positivist tendency towards operationalism in the social sciences is ripe for feminist criticism (and other sorts of criticism as well). "[T]he desire to objectify and quantify," says Duran, is related to a certain position that can be labeled as male objectification, and it is also clearly linked historically to the overview of the Vienna Circle, which emphasized correspondence rules, deductive certainty, empirical tightness, and so forth" (30). Drawing on psychoanalytic theory and the work of feminist philosophers such as Susan Bordo, Duran identifies this, and the general project of unifying science, as related to androcentric tendencies of objectification, dominance and mastery. Another important focus for the critique of positivism is that it ignores the actual functioning of real-life scientists and the thinking patterns of actual practitioners of science. Indeed in the conclusion to her following chapter entitled "Positivist Influences," Duran argues that naturalizing epistemology offers a promising road out of the problems characteristic of the Received View. The desires for autonomy and objectivity inherent in the belief that there is a Complete Account at which theory aims (the god’s-eye view) and which are characteristic of the logic of the science of the received view is, Duran argues, deeply rooted in the male personality structure as a whole. Feminist critique shows us where the Received View has "gone awry" and why it has been so difficult to articulate problems with it—problems that stem from some very basic epistemological presuppositions that are androcentric. Feminists such as Lynn Hankinson Nelson and Louise Antony have worked to develop the notion that the "naturalization" originally called for by Quine is strongly related to such notions in feminist theory as a community of knowers and the undercutting the observation/theory distinction. "Much earlier work in epistemology took as its model an epistemic agent working alone and with the data of only his [sic] senses" (48). Naturalized epistemology and feminist theory undermine this view of knowledge acquisition.

Part II of Philosophies of Science/Feminist Theories explores the new moves in science studies. Duran begins with Kuhn and goes on to discuss responses to him. The Weltanschaaungen views, and Kuhn in particular, are important adumbrations of feminist critique, as Duran points out. Kuhn’s emphasis on the social was particularly important not only for feminist criticism, but also for the area known as the sociology of science. In her chapter on the sociology of science Duran focuses on the work of Steve Fuller, David Bloor, Peter Winch, Jon Ulster, and, of course, Bruno Latour. She then goes on to discuss recent attacks on science studies, most notably by Paul Gross and Norman Levitt in their influential Higher Superstition. Most interesting to feminist readers may be Duran’s insightful discussion of Gross and Levitt’s attack on feminist philosophy of science. Gross and Levitt are guilty of much of what they impute to others when it comes to their ridicule of the feminist critique of science. They seem to believe that feminist theory "would have to, in some sense, tell us how some of our solid-looking theories were wrong" (89). But, as Duran points out, this misses what feminist critique is all about. Feminist critique of science "is aimed at the practices, assumptions, and processes that appear to be guiding the constructs of science. Because [Gross and Levitt] take as implicit a view of science that is informed by, roughly, a sort of 1950s post-Hempelian outlook, they fail to understand a great deal of what the feminist critique is about" (89). As Duran shows, Gross and Levitt’s attack of feminist (and other) critique is a series of straw person arguments which bear little relation to the views they supposedly criticize.

The last chapter in Part II has the advent of feminist theory in science studies, philosophy of science and history of science as its focus. Feminist theory and critique of science has been greatly influenced by and in turn influences the field of cultural studies. No where is this clearer than in the work of Donna Haraway. While Duran recognizes that Haraway’s work is not as important to traditional philosophy of science as that of some other feminists, she considers Haraway’s work on primatology to be "among the most crucial work done in feminist theory in the last decade" (94). As well as discussing Haraway’s work in some detail, Duran also discusses the role that the rise of science studies had in helping Haraway’s work to attain the importance it has.

The work of Sandra Harding has also been of fundamental importance. According to Duran, her original impact was to set out three feminist epistemologies that could be used to combat androcentric styles of knowledge acquisition. Her more recent work, however, is concerned to give a wholistic account of science that shows how standard histories of scientific progress have left out a lot. In her discussion of Harding, Duran points to a conflict between two sorts of feminist agendas that is not only of concern to Harding, but is one to which Duran returns in subsequent chapters. This conflict is between feminist empiricism and what Duran calls "more rigorous feminist critique" (97), in particular that shaped by standpoint theory or marxism. This more rigorous critique makes the claim that science as usual must go. Feminist empiricism, on the other hand, wants to use feminist critique to correct bad science. Harding believes that such a critique can only benefit white women—it does little to change the social structure of science as far as other non-dominant groups are concerned.

Duran discusses Lynn Hankinson Nelson’s Who Knows: From Quine to a Feminist Empiricism as important in that it bridges traditional epistemology and philosophy of science in a feminist way. Unlike Haraway or the later Harding, Nelson focuses on core questions in the tradition of philosophy of science. Duran also sees Nelson’s work as helping to bring together post-positivist theorizing with Quine’s criticisms of it in ways that are clearer and more comprehensible than others (feminist or non-feminist) have. Nelson tries to show how Quinean criticisms of such things as the observation/theory distinction, the givenness of sense-data and the importance of biconditional correspondence rules can also be used in the development of a feminist epistemology and view of science. Nelson wants to develop an empiricism, says Duran, that is plausible feminist theory without sacrificing the important feminist criticisms of empiricism. She uses Quine’s concept of communities of knowers as her point of departure. Duran also discusses the work of biologist Ruth Hubbard who uses science to criticize science. For example, her criticisms of sociobiology, especially as it is articulated by E.O. Wilson, involve showing how Wilson distorted, and in some cases falsified, a great deal of biological evidence. In this chapter Duran also discusses Helen Longino’s Science as Social Knowledge and several of the articles in Knowing the Difference: Feminist Perspectives in Epistemology (Kathleen Lennon and Margaret Whitford, eds.).

Finally, Duran returns to what she calls the "Postmodernist Dilemma." She sees feminist theory as basically being in two camps. Haraway and the contributors to the Lennon and Whitford anthology are in the postmodern camp. They take all claims to be politicized and believe that there are no independent standards for judging claims. Harding’s latest work may, Duran says, put her into this camp also. Nelson, Longino and Hubbard, feminist empiricists, as Duran calls them, have an interest in the enterprise of science but are concerned with uses to which science has been put. Duran believes that the key to resolving, or at least partly resolving, the postmodern dilemma lies in the development of a feminist epistemology based in the notion of communities that also recognizes that women are natural empiricists. Indeed, in most societies women do not have the luxury (which men generally have) of ignoring the empirical in favor of a priori religious teaching or speculative conceptualization. The partial resolution to the postmodern dilemma lies in the fact that a commitment to the world of experience and of the senses helps "to resolve the tendency to assert that claims are indistinguishable or that the highly politicized nature of the claim making prevents one from being able to choose" (114).

Part III, "Extensions of Philosophy of Science," begins with a chapter on the radical critique of science which includes discussions of its basis in marxist theory, the critique of reproductive technology as exemplary of radical critique (which unfortunately does not include discussion of the Feminist International Network of Resistance to Reproductive and Genetic Engineering [FINRRAGE] or Janice Raymond’s critique of RU 486), and Carolyn Merchant’s The Death of Nature, as well as a number of other radical critiques, both feminist and non-feminist. The second chapter in this section, however, is most important to Duran’s project of overcoming the postmodernist dilemma. She believes, along with feminist empiricists, that we ought not to throw the baby out with the bath water when it comes to science, and sees naturalizing epistemology as a promising way to, as it were, save the baby.

Duran clearly sees the tension between the need for some sort of empiricism if we are to make any claims at all about oppression and exclusion, and the compelling critique offered by postmodern thinkers which undermines all claims to empirical "truth." She suggests that a possible road forward lies in the notion that the same principles of empirical confirmation that we use in our daily lives are those that can guide an account of justification in science. There is an unfortunate tendency these days for people trained in literature and the humanities to hold that empiricism is the same as positivism. This erroneous and dangerous view is responsible for many of the weaknesses in contemporary dialogue. "Without some kind of notion of empirical confirmation," Duran reminds us, "claims to have had any kind of experience—including an experience of victimization—cannot be confirmed. The contemporary efforts on the part of many reactionary political forces to delegitimize a great deal of what has transpired in the history of various minority groups should disabuse us of any notions we may have that confirmation is not important" (181). Feminists, Duran argues, need to try to build on theories that resuscitate at least some minimal notion of empirical confirmation that offer a connection to the tradition of women engaged in the world. In Duran’s view, "philosophies of science and feminist theories intersect at precisely those points where we might wish for a clearer notion of confirmation" (182). For Duran, the future of science rests on some notion of accountability. Feminist philosophy of science demands such accountability.