Revaluing science

starting from the practices of women

Nancy Tuana

pp. 17-35

in: Lynn Hankinson Nelson, Jack Nelson (eds), Feminism, science, and the philosophy of science, Berlin, Springer, 1996

Abstract

Work in the social studies of science in the last twenty years has undermined the belief common to positivist models of science that value-neutrality is both a hallmark and goal of scientific knowledge. The ideal of a value-free science was linked to the tenet that neither the individual beliefs or desires of a scientist nor the social values of a scientific community are relevant to the production of knowledge, and models of scientific method were constructed with the goal of factoring out such contaminating influences. The rapid militarization of science in the United States since the 1970s and the current rise of influence of venture capital in charting the direction of scientific research have made it increasingly difficult to draw any clear lines between a "pure," disinterested science, and a goal-oriented, transformative "applied" science. Questions in the philosophy of science have shifted from the "pure" epistemological question "How do we know?" to questions that reflect the locations of science within society and the relationships between power and knowledge: "Why do we know what we know?" "Why don't we know what we don't know?" "Who benefits or is disadvantaged from knowing what we know?" "Who benefits or is disadvantaged from what we don't know?" "Why is science practiced in the way that it is and who is advantaged or disadvantaged by this approach?" "How might the practice of science be different?"