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Science ‘From a Feminist Perspective’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

Susan Haack
Susan Haack
Affiliation:
University of Miami
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Extract

Women themselves, for the most part, think of themselves as the sensible sex, whose business it is to undo the harm that comes of men's impetuous follies. For my part, I distrust all generalizations about women, favourable and unfavourable, masculine and feminine, ancient and modern; all alike, I should say, result from paucity of experience.

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Type
Articles
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Philosophy , Volume 67 , Issue 259 , January 1992, pp. 5 - 18
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1992

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References

1 The first quotation is from ‘An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish’, in Unpopular Essays (1950) (London: Unwin Paperbacks, 1976), p. 114Google Scholar; the second is from ‘Ideas That Have Harmed Mankind’, p. 172 in the same collection.Google Scholar

2 See Howe, Kapp, Louise, Pink Collar Workers: Inside the World of Women's Work (New York: Avon Books, 1977).Google Scholar

3 Mill, J. S., The Subjection of Women (1869), Everyman edition, (London: J. M. Dent and Sons, 1970), 239–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 Cf. Hutt, C., Males and Females, (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1972), chapter 7Google Scholar; her source is Guilford, J. P., The Nature of Human Intelligence, McGraw Hill, 1967Google Scholar. See also Benbow, C., and Stanley, J., ‘Sex Differences in Mathematical Ability: Fact or Artifact?’, Science, 210, 1980, pp. 1262–4CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed, and ‘Sex Differences in Mathematical Reasoning: More Facts’, Science, 222, 1983, pp. 1029–31Google Scholar; but cf. p. 15 below.

5 Watson, J. D., The Double Helix (New York: Atheneum, 1968)Google Scholar; cf. Sayre, R., Rosalind Franklin and DNA: A Vivid View of What it is Like to be a Gifted Woman in an Especially Male Profession (New York: W. W. Norton, 1975).Google Scholar

6 Polanyi is notable for his appreciation of these issues; see ‘The Republic of Science’, in Knowing and Being, Grene, M. (ed.) (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1969), 49–62.Google Scholar

7 Polanyi, M., Personal Knowledge (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1958), 150ff.Google Scholar

8 For an estimate of how much, see Maxwell, N., From Knowledge to Wisdom (Oxford: Blackwell, 1984), p. 54Google Scholar; his source is Norman, C., The God that Limps, (New York: Norton, 1981).Google Scholar

9 See Watson, Julia on women in the USSR, Good Housekeeping, 11 1987, p. 173.Google Scholar

10 Harding, J., ed., Perspectives on Gender and Science (London, New York and Philadelphia: The Falmer Press, Taylor and Francis, 1986).Google Scholar

11 Bleier, R., ed., Feminist Approaches to Science (New York, Oxford, Toronto, Oxford, Sydney, Frankfurt: Pergamon Press, 1986).Google Scholar

12 Keller, E. Fox, Reflections on Gender and Science (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1985).Google Scholar

13 Cf. Siegel, H., ‘Genderized Cognitive Perspectives and the Redefinition of Philosophy of Education’, Teachers' College Record, 85, 1983, 100–119.Google Scholar

14 This paper is dedicated to the memory of Isaac Franck, in appreciation of what I learned about racism and, indirectly, about sexism, from his work on the Nazi concept of ‘Jewish physics’.