OBJECTIVITY IN THE FEMINIST PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE
DISSERTATION
Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requisites for
the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate
School of The Ohio State University
By
Karen Cordrick Haely, M.A.
*****
The Ohio State University 2003
Dissertation Committee: Approved by Professor Louise M. Antony, Adviser
Professor Donald C. Hubin ______Professor George Pappas Adviser Philosophy Graduate Program
ABSTRACT
According to a familiar though naïve conception, science is a rigorously neutral enterprise, free from social and cultural influence, but more sophisticated philosophical views about science have revealed that cultural and personal interests and values are ubiquitous in scientific practice, and thus ought not be ignored when attempting to understand, describe and prescribe proper behavior for the practice of science. Indeed, many theorists have argued that cultural and personal interests and values must be present
in science (and knowledge gathering in general) in order to make sense of the world. The
concept of objectivity has been utilized in the philosophy of science (as well as in
epistemology) as a way to discuss and explore the various types of social and cultural
influence that operate in science. The concept has also served as the focus of debates
about just how much neutrality we can or should expect in science.
This thesis examines feminist ideas regarding how to revise and enrich the concept of
objectivity, and how these suggestions help achieve both feminist and scientific goals.
Feminists offer us warnings about “idealized” concepts of objectivity, and suggest that power can play a crucial role in determining which research programs get labeled
“objective”. In addition, the views examined in this thesis offer conceptions of objectivity that are intended to allow us to increase the extent to which our scientific theories are objective, but at the same time allow us to appreciate (and not eliminate) the role of cultural and social interests as they play a role in science.
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Dedicated to R.M.H.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I wish to thank my adviser, Louise M. Antony, for sharing her philosophical insight, encouragement and helpful critique that made this thesis possible, as well as for her patience in correcting both my stylistic and philosophical errors.
I also wish to thank Don Hubin and George Pappas for their suggestions and guidance, especially in the earliest stages of this project when it was at its worst.
I am also grateful to Hank Kreuzman who has given me philosophical guidance and critique for over a dozen years.
Finally, I wish to thank my husband, friends and family who have encouraged and supported my efforts to complete this thesis.
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VITA
September 7, 1970.….Born – Fayetteville, North Carolina
1995…………………M.A. Philosophy, The Ohio State University
1992…………………B.A. Philosophy, The College of Wooster, Dept. Honors
2002 – present……… Adjunct Instructor The College of Wooster, Wooster, OH Ursuline College, Pepper Pike, OH
2000…………………Adjunct Instructor University of St. Francis, Joliet, IL (in Atlanta, GA)
1997 – 2000…………Adjunct Instructor Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA
1992 – 1997…………Graduate Teaching and Research Associate The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH
PUBLICATIONS
1. Karen C. Haely and Donald C. Hubin, “Rape and the Reasonable Man”, Law and Philosophy 18: 113-139, 1999.
FIELDS OF STUDY
Major Field: Philosophy
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LIST OF FIGURES
Figure Page
1.1 Epicycle illustration………………………………………………………….16
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page Abstract…………………………………………………………………………….. ii
Dedication…………………………………………………………………………. iii
Acknowledgments…………………………………………………………….…….iv
Vita…………………………………………………………………………………..v
List of Figures………………………………………………………………………..vi
Chapters:
1. Background for the Feminist Studies of Objectivity in Science………………….1 1.1 Influences on Feminist Views of Objectivity…………………………….8 1.2 Objectivity in the Feminist Philosophy of Science………………………26
2. Power and Objectivity: A Warning from Catherine MacKinnon………………..28 2.1 Power and Facts………………………………………………………….29 2.2 Should We Keep Objectivity?…………………………………………...38
3. Evelyn Fox Keller’s Dynamic Objectivity……………………………………….44 3.1 Dynamic Objectivity…………………………………………………….45 3.2 Understanding Dynamic Objectivity – The McClintock Case………….53 3.3 Warnings About Domination……………………………………………65 3.4 Keller’s Contributions...…………………………………………………68
4. Sandra Harding’s Strong Objectivity…………………………………………….73 4.1 Weak Objectivity………………………………………………………..73 4.2 Strong Objectivity……………………………………………….……....76 4.3 Summary………………………………………………………….……..89
5. Helen Longino: Science as Social………………………………………………94 5.1 Science as a Social Practice…………………………………………….95 5.2 The Social Aspect of Science and Increasing Objectivity……………..105 5.3 Diversity……………………………………………………………….113 5.4 Response to Criticism………………………………………………….116 5.5 Criticism from Outside Science………………………………………..123
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5.6 Summary……………………….………………………………………125
6. Conclusion……………………………………………………………………….126
Bibliography………………………………………………………………….…….142
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Chapter 1
Background for the Feminist Studies of Objectivity in Science
There is a story with which we are all familiar about how science proceeds, and this
story emphasizes the objectivity of science. Objectivity is commonly taken to be the extent to which we allow our scientific beliefs to be driven by “some impartial and nonarbitrary criteria rather than by our wishes as to how things ought to be”.1 When we assert that research programs are objectively done, or that our scientific knowledge is
objective, we are indicating that what supports the conclusions of these research
programs is not merely a reflection of social values, politics, religious convictions or
simply our desires about how we would like things to be. Rather, we are asserting that
“the facts” support the conclusions drawn.
Given that science is supposed to be objective – or at least more objective than what is
characteristic of fields such as art or literary criticism – many scientists and some
philosophers have held that what counts as real science is (or should be) unmarred by what goes on in our social and political lives, and this view is part of the familiar story we’ve all been told about science. Indeed, the very separation between what we call science and everything else (non-science) rests on the extent to which our scientific practice adheres to certain norms and rules that are supposed to be the great equalizers of
1 Helen Longino, Science as Social Knowledge (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), 62.
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all biases, prejudices, guesses, emotions, social and political beliefs, and the like. These
norms and rules – embodied in what we call the scientific method – are supposed to wash
out all the non-empirical and non-scientific bits and pieces that are so characteristic of religion, art, music, politics and culture.
The assumed distinction between the context of discovery – how hypotheses and theories become formulated – and the context of justification – where those theories are tested against evidence – has led many to claim that the relationship between science and social and political ideals is either non-existent or unimportant. Indeed, if what we call scientific knowledge is cleansed of social and political values, if it is truly objective, what could an investigation of the interaction between them possibly yield?
The objectivity of science2 is supposed to be explained by the separation of the
contexts of discovery and confirmation. In discovery, the scientists and researchers
working out scientific problems don’t follow any set of rules, and they are not required to
set aside personal views or beliefs in this context. This is where personal interests, political or religious beliefs, gut feelings and hunches are allowed to guide and direct the researcher, in effect leading him or her to a hypothesis or theory about some phenomena
or other.
But in confirming or justifying our theories – the context of justification – the
scientific process becomes, well, scientific: the process of confirming theories requires
that evidence be weighed against those theories, resulting in either the confirmation of the
2 In this paper, the most common use of the term ‘science’ is for any structured, systematic inquiry, which most commonly includes mathematics, physics, chemistry and biology (as well as more specific fields such as geology, astronomy and the like). See Elizabeth Anderson, “Knowledge, Human Interests, and Objectivity in Feminist Epistemology”, Philosophical Topics, vol. 23, Fall 1995, fn 2, in which she explains that using ‘science’ rather than ‘inquiry’ signifies that the latter is a disciplined, systematic inquiry subject to peer review. However, I am reluctant to apply the term ‘science’ as widely as Anderson, who includes the humanities, social sciences and economics in her vision of what constitutes science.
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theory or the theory’s demise. In confirming theories, the social and political preferences and desires of the research community are not allowed to have an effect on the confirmation of the theory. Indeed, if such things did have an effect on the outcome of a scientific study, then the study would cease to be, on this view, truly scientific. Again, the scientific quality of research is supposed to be based in part on its objectivity, or the extent to which subjective values are carefully guarded against, and are precluded from influencing the conclusions of the research. This basic sense of objectivity is what has elevated scientific knowledge to the value it enjoys today: to some degree or other, we trust that scientific knowledge has passed certain tests that make it less likely than non- scientific knowledge to be influenced by social or political factors, and hence less likely to be wrong.
As an example, consider the theory that some peptic ulcers are caused by bacteria.
Prior to the early 1980s, the common view was that peptic ulcers were caused by the overproduction of stomach acid (often induced by stress).3 However, in 1979, Robin
Warren, an Australian pathologist, found odd-shaped bacteria in tissue from stomach biopsies. Dr. Warren tried to grow the bacteria in a culture, but failed – as had German pathologists a century earlier. While the German work had long been forgotten, Warren continued to attempt to grow the bacteria, and did quite by accident in 1982, along with colleague Barry Marshall. Because of the Easter holiday, some of the culture samples were allowed to sit for five days instead of the standard two, and the bacterial colonies appeared. These bacteria, called H. pylori, were found to be associated with persistent
3 Martin J. Blaser, “The Bacteria Behind the Ulcers”, Scientific American, February 1996. All information regarding H. pylori taken from this article.
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stomach irritation, and several forms of stomach cancer. It was proposed that perhaps H.
pylori could cause stomach ulcers as well.
The confirming evidence came through many tests to show that being infected with H. pylori increased the risk for peptic ulcers. And, indeed, this is precisely what researchers found: H. pylori cause almost all cases of ulcer disease that are not medication-related
(i.e., people who regularly take aspirin for arthritis often develop aspirin-induced ulcers).
Had H. pylori not been found in most cases of peptic ulcers, we would not take very seriously the idea that there is a link between ulcers and H. pylori.
This simplistic example illustrates the kind of activity that is described by what has been called the “received view” of what ought to comprise all truly scientific justification of theories and descriptions of the world. On this view, theories are tested against the evidence, repeated until the theory has been confirmed or justified.4 The scientific part of this story isn’t whether Warren observed the Easter holiday, or whether he believed that bacteria could cause ulcers – on the received view, this belongs in the context of discovery. Rather, the scientific part of the story is found in the testing and re-testing of
Warren’s hypothesis about the link between H. pylori and peptic ulcers.
The received view of science, especially its insistence on the separation of discovery from justification, places importance on mathematics, logic, and observational terms.5
The received view assumes that scientific theories can be sharply distinguished from other non-scientific, though rational, human endeavors, such as ethics or metaphysics.
The received view maintains that the context of discovery ought not mix with the context
4 The level of agreement required is somewhat conventional, even on the received view.
5 Frederick Suppe, The Structure of Scientific Theories, (Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1977), 12.
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of justification, at least not if the integrity and objectivity of science is to be preserved.
Theories, on this view, are justified on the basis of their fit with the evidence and related
background assumptions,6 not on the basis of such factors as the personal preferences or
values of the scientist, or the social and political values of a given scientific community.
The separation of discovery and justification indicates that what scientists ought to do
when they accept a theory is provide empirical evidence that justifies it: the theories that
we ought to accept are those that are justified by the evidence. Carl Hempel thought that
the objectivity of science was safeguarded from the influence of values, interests,
personal desires and biases because the hypotheses and theories of science had to “pass
critical scrutiny, which includes in particular the checking of suitable test implications by
careful observation and experiment.”7 Elsewhere, Hempel makes clear that hypothesis
acceptance cannot be based on non-empirical evidence:
"[the] grounds on which scientific hypotheses are accepted or rejected are provided by empirical evidence, which may include observational findings as well as previously established laws and theories, but surely no value judgments."8
While it is certainly true that a scientific community could accept (and, indeed, has
accepted) theories based on non-empirical value judgments, this is not what proponents
of the received view envisioned for science; value judgments just don’t belong in science.
6These are hypotheses that one must assume when trying to confirm a theory. For example, one must assume that the instruments are functioning properly. This kind of background assumption is needed to confirm or support the theory in question, but is not itself "on trial": such assumptions are already accepted by the scientific community, and are not likely to be given up in any event; the central focus is on the theory being confirmed or disconfirmed, not usually its supporting assumptions or background hypotheses.
7 Carl G. Hempel, The Philosophy of Natural Science (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1966), 16.
8Carl G. Hempel, Aspects of Scientific Explanation (New York, New York: The Free Press, 1965), p. 91.
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Rather, on the received view, a theory is only properly or rightly accepted when it is well confirmed, or justified, by the objective, empirical evidence.
Of course, if taken in its simplest form, much of this line of thinking is wishful and naïve and oversimplifies the nature of scientific practice and knowledge. Eventually, hardly any philosophers took seriously the simplest form of the received view, recognizing that scientific knowledge is often statistical, it changes as new discoveries are brought to light, and scientific knowledge is not, in practice, immune from social and political influences. However, some aspects of the received view have been criticized based on the lack of actual scientific practice that resembles this view, and in particular focus has been placed on the denial that value judgments play a role in scientific justification. In fact, we’ve known for some time the “story” being told is not really at all like the practice of science, though it is true that many scientists still fail to appreciate this point. In addition, some critics of the received view have claimed that the involvement of value judgments – based on cultural, personal and/or religious convictions – in science makes the distinction between discovery and justification suspect, and they question whether the distinction plays a useful role if confirmation does involve value judgments.
Theorists such as Thomas Kuhn and Paul Feyerabend produced views that highlight the extent to which what we call science is constituted by factors that seem to fall outside the realm of justification. These theorists focused on the extent to which science is not independent of who does it. This led them to question how the identity of a scientist can shape which of our hypotheses or theories pass for scientific knowledge, and raised questions about the real level of objectivity in science.
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Quine also raised questions about how autonomous science is from the other subjects
about which we theorize, such as our metaphysical commitments. He suggested that
science is not separable from other beliefs we hold. These ideas – from Kuhn and Quine
– gave rise to questions about the objectivity of science, and these doubts arose well
within what is sometimes considered traditional philosophy of science.9
Feminists became interested in this discussion when the issue of gender was suggested as a possible factor in determining what counts as scientific knowledge, or how gender
might play a role in pursuit of (objective) scientific knowledge. In particular, sexism was
believed to be playing some kind of role in science. (Here, I’ll use the term ‘sexism’ only
as indicative that some assumption about the superiority of one gender is being made
where there is no conclusive evidence for that assumption.) Feminists began to criticize
the ways in which science excluded women, ignored scientific issues pertaining to
women (mostly in the area of medicine) and the ways in which societal views of women
influenced scientific theories and problem-choices. This led to a broader question about
the real objectivity of science: If science is so objective, we wondered, how did all these
sexist views seep into it?
What resulted from this question and others like it is a myriad of feminist ideas about
what objectivity really is (or is not), how much objectivity we should expect in science,
and even views that deny science is objective at all. Somewhat unclear and often
deliberately undefined views of objectivity permeate feminist philosophy of science. In
9 Rudolph Carnap, an adherent to the view that discovery and justification are separate and distinct, knew all too well that convention plays a role in when we determine a theory is confirmed. Convention may well be seen as something mitigated by social values, prejudices or biases, and therefore not entirely congruent with naïve conceptions of the objectivity in science. See “Testability and Meaning”, Philosophy of Science 3: 419-471.
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the chapters that follow, I will examine various feminist views of objectivity, how their
views of objectivity are used and referenced in their larger feminist theories, and how we
might use their whole views (of which objectivity is only a part) to better understand
objectivity’s role in what we might generally call science. In general, then, this thesis
examines feminist ideas regarding how to revise and enrich the concept of objectivity,
and how these suggestions help to achieve both feminist and scientific goals.
1.1 Influences on Feminist Views of Objectivity
Before discussing individual feminist accounts of objectivity, it is helpful to explore
the reasons objectivity has become the focus of so much attention and the target of so
much criticism among (feminist) epistemologists and philosophers of science. In this
chapter, I will briefly outline what I take to be the motivating discussions behind the
initial feminist critiques of science, as well as those that placed objectivity at the center of
so many debates about the role of gender in science. My main point in doing so is not to
argue for or against any particular philosophical view of science, but to show that much
of what feminists have criticized in science was already being criticized by those not particularly concerned with feminism, a fact that is somewhat unappreciated.
Looking at the groundwork for the feminist critiques of science is also useful for getting a broader picture of the objectivity terrain, and not just from the feminist perspective. The general issues and problems that arise from trying to discern the extent to which science is objective, how objectivity is undermined, and how to attain it serve to underscore just how troublesome the notion of the objectivity of science is for philosophers. The depth and breadth of this problem will highlight the fact that feminist
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views of science and objectivity are part of a complex, overall body of theories and ideas
about objectivity in science, that are complementary – not contrary – to much of what
could be called “traditional” or “mainstream” philosophy of science.
The Influence of Quine: Many theorists treat Quine’s insight as having been fatal to
the analytic/synthetic distinction, as he argued that one could not really draw a boundary
between analytic and synthetic statements, on the grounds that the distinction could not
be drawn in any straightforward manner.10 In addition to arguing against the
analytic/synthetic distinction, Quine argued that confirmation cannot be the result of
individual statement confronting experience, but rather that theories must confront
experience as a whole. So, if the predictions of a theory fail, we know only that
something in the theory is wrong, but not precisely what is wrong. Quine concluded that
since logic and experience (or empirical data) cannot tell us what is wrong in any given
theory, something else must dictate our choice about which part of the theory needs
revision. And, because logic and evidence alone cannot tell us what is wrong with a
theory that fails certain experimental tests, Quine concluded that all theories are
underdetermined by the evidence, and argued that science could not be characterized in
the reductionist fashion favored by the logical positivists.
Hence, Quine claimed that when we encounter experiences contrary to a given theory,
we have a lot of “latitude of choice” as to which statements we ought to revise or
eliminate.11 Indeed, Quine thought that any statement was subject to revision, including
the so-called analytic statements of mathematics and logic. It is this latitude and potential
10 W.V.O. Quine, From a Logical Point of View (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1953, 1980), 41. [Hereafter in text as LPV.]
11 LPV, 42.
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for revision that some theorists – feminists included – have seen as an opening for
cultural or personal bias or values to enter into science. Since experience and logic alone
do not uniquely determine which theories ought to comprise science, these theorists view
as reasonable the task of asking questions about what kinds of extra-empirical factors
may be assisting us in our theory selection, including cultural and personal bias, interests
or values.
In addition to being influenced by Quine’s holism, some theorists have utilized
Quine’s arguments regarding the “rubbing out of boundaries” to introduce cultural and
personal interests, bias and values into our philosophical discussions about the objectivity
of science. In “Epistemology Naturalized”, Quine argued that epistemology should be
treated as a “chapter of psychology and hence natural science”, such that if we want to
see how evidence relates to theories, for example, we should start with some theory we
know and see how we got there.12 Quine, then, views epistemology as having merged
with psychology and linguistics, and talks of the “rubbing out of boundaries” between
these fields as a way to procure (philosophical) progress.13
Lynn Nelson has taken Quine’s views farther and argued that the only boundary Quine
appreciated – that between science and values – really should be eliminated. While
Nelson admits that Quine thought science stood aloof from values, she thinks this was a
mistake on his part, arguing (using Quine’s point) that there is enough “slack” between
theories and evidence to make the identity of the researchers (the “who”) material to how
12 W.V.O. Quine, “Epistemology Naturalized”, in Ontological Relativity and Other Essays (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1969), 82. [Hereafter in text as EN.]
13 EN, 90.
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scientific theories are developed and accepted.14 On this view, since the individuals who
are doing science must do so from within a historically and socially located framework,
some theorists (notably feminists) have concluded that the cultural and personal values of
groups or individuals doing science play a role in the determination of what counts as
science. Furthermore, these theorists argue that the role of such values and interests
needs to be examined and analyzed in order to really understand what shapes science and to formulate a more comprehensive conception of objectivity than what has been
suggested by the received view.
In addition, Louise Antony has argued that if we had to rely only on logic and
empirical evidence alone to decide our theories, we would have too much to say about the
world to make any sense of it at all. We would be stuck, for example, reporting the
temperature of the laboratory, how many electrical outlets it contained, when the walls
were repainted and the floors last washed. We would be stuck in a cacophony of data
inputs, and would have the impossible task of reporting things that would seem to the
average science student totally irrelevant to the experiment described in the lab book.
And this is the point: with only data, we’d be lost among numerous different (and
sometimes incompatible) theories about that data. With only logic and sensory
experience, we wouldn’t get anywhere in science and a totally open mind would lead us
absolutely nowhere. 15
14 Lynn Nelson, Who Knows?: From Quine to Feminist Empiricism (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1990), 188. [Hereafter in text as Nelson.]
15 See Louise Antony, “Quine as Feminist: The Radical Import of Naturalized Epistemology” as printed in Louise Antony and Charlotte Witt, eds., A Mind of One’s Own, 2nd Edition (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2002), 138. [Hereafter in text as Antony.]
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On these views, what we have to help us make sense of this noise of data is what
Quine calls a “scientific heritage”, or other beliefs we hold true that mitigate what we are or are not willing to say about the world.16 These beliefs may not be scientific at all, since Quine believes our entire body of knowledge faces the tribunal of experience together, and not in distinct statements about the world. On this view, what we call scientific knowledge is only a part of a more general type of knowledge, but they are all woven together in the same fabric or field of force.
Quine’s approach to epistemology, then, was to treat knowledge seeking as the empirical investigation of knowers. This “naturalization” of epistemology would require that we look long and hard at what we do to accomplish knowledge. So, following
Quine, some theorists have suggested that if we want to know about scientific knowledge, we must look at what scientists actually do to generate such knowledge; this empirical investigation tells us all about scientific knowledge.
Quine’s ideas provided feminists with a conceptually based motivation for examining the role of social factors such as gender in science. Based on the suggestion that we should empirically investigate what scientists do to produce scientific knowledge, then, what did we find? As Quine suggested, when we look at what scientists actually do to produce scientific knowledge, we find instances where scientists are more than willing to hold onto beliefs that conflict with experience and that they do not treat their investigations as purely driven by attention to sensory data, and this is the starting point for many feminist inquiries into science, objectivity and the role of cultural and personal values in science. For the work that provides feminists with a historically based
16 LPV, 46.
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motivation for the feminist critiques of science, then, I’ll turn now to Thomas Kuhn,
whose work emphasized the actual practice of scientists and its failure to meet the
mandates of the received view.
The Influence of Kuhn: The idea that cultural or personal interests and values influence the justification of our theories in science is closely related to issues in objectivity: If science contains interests and values, and if our theories are themselves
justified on the basis of something other than logic, reason, or empirical facts, then
perhaps science is not all that objective. Many theorists have promulgated views to the
effect that scientific theories and claims are not interest- or value-free, or that they are not
fully objective. In particular, Thomas Kuhn's work on the role of social, political and personal values in scientific practice is frequently cited as having laid a groundwork for
feminist charges concerning questions about the objectivity of science.17
In his book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Kuhn explored the ways in which
values are inherent in science.18 He argued that theory or what he called “paradigm”
acceptance and the practice of science in general does not depend solely on empirical
evidence, and that we cannot ignore the context of discovery and still have a complete
picture of what goes on in science.19 In fact, Kuhn suggested that the very distinction
between discovery and justification is suspect. Kuhn argued that many social, political,
17 See Sandra Harding, The Science Question in Feminism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986, 1990), 35 [Hereafter in text as SQF.]; also Helen Longino, Science as Social Knowledge (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990), 21 [Hereafter in text as SSK.]; and Nelson, 62.
18Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolution (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1962, 1996). [Hereafter in text as SSR.]
19A cautionary note is needed here. There are many ways in which one might understand what Kuhn has said concerning theory, or paradigm, choice, as well as what he could mean by suggesting that competing theories are "incommensurable". The controversy surrounding how he ought to be interpreted is only complicated by the fact that he uses the term 'paradigm' in several different ways.
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personal and suspiciously “non-scientific” factors have contributed to the progress of
science and the way in which it is practiced.
Kuhn’s historical account of science emphasizes the extent to which observations are
influenced by some theory or other that guides how one views the data: “What a man sees depends both upon what he looks at and also upon what his previous visual-conceptual experience has taught him to see.”20 The theory-ladenness of observation that Kuhn finds
evident in historical accounts of scientific practice is supposed to account for how
cultural and personal factors find their way into science.
For Kuhn, this is because the kinds of theories that can affect one’s interpretation of the data can be highly cultural or personal, and not merely reflective of allegiances to certain scientific theories. Rather, one’s problem choice, interpretation of observations, as well as what one deems appropriate scientific behavior, can be reflective of allegiances to beliefs that do not seem all that scientific or even pretend to be rooted in evidence or the bare facts of the matter. So, Kuhn did not just highlight the theory-ladenness of observations, though he did so quite well. He also emphasized the role that individual and cultural interests played in scientific progress, interests and values that seem to belong in the context of discovery.
The Copernican Revolution: An illustration of the kinds of interests and values
operating in science that Kuhn felt were essential to really understanding science can be
found in the details of the Copernican Revolution. The motions and directions of our
planets were of interest to early humans for both agricultural and navigational purposes;
for these practical interests, simply knowing the positions of the stars, Sun, and Moon
20 SSR, 113.
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was sufficient.21 But as early as 1900 B.C., astronomers noticed that some stars appeared
to move eastward, then loop back in a westward direction, finally looping back again in
the eastward direction.22 This retrograde motion troubled the Greeks, who viewed the
world as entirely orderly – and this retrograde motion just didn’t fit well with their beliefs
about the orderly nature of the cosmos. So, providing a model of the universe that
explained, among other things, the retrograde motion of the planets became a serious
project for the Greeks, among them Eudoxus, Callipus, Aristotle, Appollonius,
Hipparchus and Heraclides.
The Greeks had some specific requirements about the order of nature, founded in what
is called Pythagoreanism, which itself stemmed from the influence of the mathematician
Pythagorus, who believed that mathematics could be used to understand the universe.23
In particular, adherents to Pythagoreanism held the view that the planets must move in perfect circular motion and with uniform speed. The Greeks were so committed to this view – this value placed on circular motion and uniform speed – that all of the models of the universe they suggested to account for the retrograde motion of the planets incorporated these two requirements.24 However, these requirements were not based on
empirical data or evidence to suggest their necessity.
Of course, there were also many empirical restrictions on these models. The model
had to account for precise locations in which certain planets were observed at certain
21 Ronald Pine, Science and the Human Prospect (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Co, 1989), 133. [Hereafter in text as Pine.]
22 Pine, 132.
23 Pine, 132.
24 Pine, 136.
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times, for the Sun appearing more northerly or southerly given certain seasonal changes,
and for the Sun’s completion of certain movements in just about 365 days. The motion
of the Moon also had to be accurately accounted for, as well as that of the visible
planets.25
The commitment to perfect circular motion and uniform speed continued to be a factor
in determining which models were correct. Models influenced by Pythagoreanism had to
account for retrograde motion by introducing a number of epicycles into the picture –
perfect circles off the path of the main orbital that planets were thought to travel, which
looked something like this (see Figure 1.1):
Figure 1.1
By the end of the third century B.C., astronomers had narrowed down the list of possible models of the cosmos to four mathematical models. First, there was that of
Eudoxus, whose model served as the “orthodox geocentric” model; second, the modified version of Appollonius and Hipparchus; third, the partial heliocentric system proposed by
Heraclides; and fourth, the heliocentric model proposed by Aristarchus.26 Essentially, all
of these systems were accurate in their predictions to some significant extent, but failed
to be accurate in other ways.
25 Pine, 133-134.
26 Pine, 138.
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However, the influence of Aristotle proved crucial for the acceptance of the Eudoxian system. Aristotle chose this system as the correct one because of several factors, including the popularity of the Eudoxian system, the observational evidence that supported it, and the fact that it fit nicely with other beliefs Aristotle had about motion and physics that necessitated an Earth-centered universe. Finally, the Eudoxian system did not violate the paradigm of perfect circles and uniform motion.27 So, in spite of not being able to account for the increase in brightness of planets in retrograde motion, the combined Aristotelian-Eudoxian cosmological model of the universe provided a basic guide for astronomy for several centuries.28
Eventually, Ptolemy (A.D. 85 – 165) advanced this model to include over 80 circles and various combinations of epicycles, giving a somewhat convoluted geometric scheme.
However, the Ptolemaic system was much more successful than all previous models in explaining and predicting astronomical phenomena, and could still be used today with only a single degree of error for many calculations. 29 However, one troubling aspect of the Ptolemaic system was its violation of the uniform motion paradigm. Add to this the fact that Aristotle proposed a crystalline sphere that was supposed to support each planet, and it became a problem to explain how planets could circle a point on this sphere without crashing into it. Ronald Pine explains these troubles and the survival of the
Ptolemaic system in spite of them:
So the majority of astronomers and natural philosophers did what most scientists would do today: They accepted what made sense
27 Pine, 142.
28 Pine, 143.
29 Pine, 143.
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(a central Earth) as real and used what did not make sense (the physical epicycle) as a “calculation device”, as a tool for making predictions. This viewpoint dominated much of the Middle Ages. The Catholic Church, the most powerful political and intellectual force of the time, adopted the Earth-centered model not only because of the authority of Aristotle, common sense, and scripture – where else would God put his special creatures but in the center of things? – but also because it worked. The puzzling mathematical aspects were relegated to instruments of prediction.30
So, adherence to the Ptolemaic system was not uniquely indicated by a fit with the observed data: other competing theories also fit with the facts. However, the Ptolemaic system proved to be compelling for reasons Kuhn viewed as unique to a culture or society. Eventually, many modifications were made to the Ptolemaic system to account for observational discrepancies, the result of which was a model of the cosmos that was not aesthetically pleasing – it was a mess of epicycles, eccentrics and equants.31
Many centuries after Ptolemy, Copernicus (1473 – 1543) focused on the possibility that the Earth was not the center of the universe, and suggested that the cosmos was heliocentric. Adjusting the planets accordingly, and adhering to Pythagoreanism,
Copernicus developed a model of the cosmos that seemed simpler and more mathematically elegant than the Ptolemaic system.32 To some, the fact that Copernicus’ model was more aesthetically pleasing became evidence for its correctness. However, it was not more accurate than Ptolemy’s in terms of its match to observation of the planets.33
30 Pine, 145.
31 Pine, 146.
32 Pine, 146.
33 Pine, 147.
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In fact, it was not until the 1600s, based on the work of Kepler, that the Copernican
model was revised sufficiently to provide it the status of the correct model of the
universe. But, Kepler had to commit heresy to get there: perfect circles and uniform
motion simply would not work.34 Using the elliptical shape and variable speeds, Kepler
was able to provide the structure of the universe that could account for both observational
and mathematical behavior of the planets.
Obviously, the planets provided a complex and confusing array of movements for
which an account was required. As one historian notes of these complexities,
It is clear, however, that only a strong faith in the order of the cosmos could sustain students of Plato in tackling this problem . . . [T]he religious and philosophical ideas of the ancient Greeks encouraged precise observation of the eccentric motion of the planets and sustained the belief that the use of reason would eventually result in an explanation.35
Here we have our first glimpse at the part of this historical account that has been emphasized in Kuhn’s work: faith in an orderly cosmos and in the use of reason to procure an explanation drove these early astronomers to seek solutions to the problems created by all available models of the cosmos. While some might maintain that this kind
of commitment to religious and philosophical ideas is best placed in the context of
discovery, Kuhn argued that commitments – either cultural or individual – of this sort play a much more integral role in science than what is characterized by lumping it into the “context of discovery”.
Additional aspects of the Copernican Revolution story highlight just why Kuhn was so troubled by the division between discovery and justification. Though the Ptolemaic
34 Pine, 153.
35 Pine, 134.
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system lasted 1,400 years, it was clearly a survivor for reasons other than its fit with the observed data. Its adherence to certain interests and values – perfectly circular motion, for example – played a role it its success. But, also, commitment to uniform speed and the failure of the Ptolemaic system to conform to this value prompted uneasiness and subsequent “improvement” of the Ptolemaic system.
Issues of predictive value seem unclearly determined by any of the competing models, since they all had relatively good predictive value, and some of the geocentric models produced mathematical accuracy that is remarkable given that the Earth is not the center of the universe. In fact, both the Ptolemaic and Copernican systems were accurate with an error of approximately one percent.36 Based on this part of the story, then, we can see why Kuhn would claim that science is not driven or determined by fit with the data.
Also, the inelegant nature of some of the models – which were laden with what seemed to be ad hoc additions of epicycles – was taken as evidence that those models couldn’t be correct. For example, one element of the Copernican system that was taken to be indicative that it was correct was its seeming simplicity. However, simplicity is a relative notion: even the Copernican system required some “questionable mathematical devices”, as well as numerous deferents, epicycles and eccentrics. To have considered the Copernican model simpler than the Ptolemaic system seems like a value judgment based on desired ends, which themselves were not determined by a neutral body of data.
Commitments to certain types of motions and speeds, various interpretations of the phenomena against which accuracy and simplicity were judged, as well as the initial faith in the order of the cosmos that had to exist in order to even prompt the attempts to create
36 Pine, 147.
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a model of the universe are the types of factors that Kuhn felt the received view
erroneously placed outside of science. And this is Kuhn’s point: the history of science
does not fit well with the idealized version of science suggested by the received view.
Kuhn claimed that trying to apply these contexts to actual scientific practice proved futile: “Yet my attempts to apply [the distinction between the contexts of discovery and justification] to the actual situations in which knowledge is gained, accepted and assimilated have made them seem extraordinarily problematic.”37 Elsewhere, Kuhn argues that the distinction between the contexts of discovery and justification does not provide a plausible and useful idealization of science.38
It would be perfectly reasonable for one to note that the received view of science is prescriptive, whereas Kuhn's historical account of science is descriptive, thus calling into question the relevance of Kuhn's theories for justifying our theories: we may, in spite of our efforts, allow values and idiosyncratic features of ourselves to seep into our theories,
but it certainly isn't what we desire to do, nor what we think we ought to do when
practicing science. Just because scientists follow the method of science imperfectly
doesn't mean that the positivist model of ideal science is wrong or inadequate. Indeed,
many critics have accused Kuhn of making what is considered an illegitimate leap from
what is to what ought to be.
What muddies these waters is Kuhn’s own insistence that he was prescribing how
science should proceed as well as describing scientific practice. In a postscript note to
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Kuhn specifically states that there are places
37 SSR, 9.
38 Thomas S. Kuhn, The Essential Tension (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1977), 326-327. [Hereafter in text as ET.]
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where “the normative and the descriptive are inextricably mixed”, and that ‘is’ and
‘ought’ “are by no means always so separate as they have seemed.39 Kuhn then claims
that his historical view of science – which illustrates how scientists can and do succeed even with the influence of interests and values so plainly operating in science – is also a prescription for what scientists ought to do if they want to be successful. Finally, he states that his theory is one that actually resembles the practice of science, and he views this as further evidence that his view is correct.40
In short, Kuhn takes his theory to be prescriptive, and as such, sees his own view as
contrary to the received view. Indeed, if Kuhn’s views are interpreted as being merely
descriptive, then his accounts say little about how science should be practiced.
By recounting historical facts surrounding scientific progress and practice, Kuhn
hoped we would appreciate the significant role played by cultural and personal interests,
values and ideologies. It is through examples such as the one provided by the sequence
of events that led to the Copernican Revolution that we are given some insight into why
Kuhn was so troubled by the distinction between the contexts of discovery and
justification, and why Kuhn argued against the received view of science.
Set aside for now the well-known critiques of Kuhn’s work – that he uses the concept
of paradigm too loosely or that he fails to show that competing theories are (radically)
incommensurable. Instead, here I want to focus on this feature of his work: his
insistence on the influence of both individual and cultural interests and values in the
progression of science. Kuhn did not think that what goes on in discovery was somehow
39 SSR, 207.
40 SSR, 208.
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to be removed from science through the cleansing process of justification. Rather, he
thought that science could not progress or succeed without the influence of the scientists
who practice it, an influence that isn’t entirely rooted in logic and evidence, but can be a
product of cultural or religious beliefs, personal commitments to certain views or ideas,
and the like. For Kuhn, this is not only acceptable, but also necessary; scientists cannot
function without certain interests and values and a proper model of science ought to
account for this. He argues that his view of science has many advantages, one among
them being that it does not treat actual scientific practice as anomalous to the ideal, and
another that it recognizes the role played by values when criteria choice cannot be mitigated by logic and evidence alone.41
Feminist Epistemology and Post-Kuhnian Stories: Feminist theorists (and many
other non-feminist theorists) have viewed Kuhn’s work as grounds for questioning and/or
abandoning the ideal “objective” science prescribed by the received view of science.
Though the debate about whether the contexts of discovery and justification should be separated has not been settled, many feminist philosophers of science maintain there is one thing that Kuhn’s work has shown: historical evidence illustrates the role cultural or individual commitments, beliefs, values, and subjective preferences play in the practice of science, and prompts questions about the acclaimed objectivity of science.
Moreover, feminist critics have held that Quine’s suggestions regarding both the underdetermination of theories by the evidence and naturalizing epistemology, coupled with Kuhn's historical account of science, force us to address the role of cultural and personal values – of objectivity itself – in science. Feminists who are engaged in
41 ET, 331.
23
carefully analyzing both the empirical and social factors that seem to affect scientific
knowledge have taken seriously Quine’s insistence that we empirically study what
scientists are doing in order to learn how to properly characterize science.
Moreover, Kuhn's insistence that separating discovery from justification is implausible
and not useful has been interpreted to mean that science is not so objective after all.
Some feminist theorists take the historical accounts of science as evidence that the justification of science requires appeals to (subjective) interests and values, resulting in science itself being necessarily subjective. A purely objective science unmarked by interests and values does not, on this view, exist.
One might ask, “So what?” since the unattainable nature of ideals is rarely cause for abandoning such ideals, but the point I’m making here is simply that the critique of the objectivity of science has taken center stage in many feminist theories about science.
This is likely because, based on the work of Quine and Kuhn’s insistence on the role of interests and values as necessary for scientific progress, we are left with an opening for a
"perspectival" kind of science: the community must appeal to non-objective factors to settle theory debates and to allow science to progress, so some perspective on what values are relevant must exist. As Evelyn Fox Keller states:
[t]he possibility of extending the feminist critique into the foundations of scientific thought is created by recent developments in the history and philosophy of science itself . . .The work of Russell Hanson and Thomas S. Kuhn was of pivotal importance in opening up our understanding of scientific thought to a consideration of social, psychological and political influences. As long as the course of scientific thought was judged to be exclusively determined by its own logical and empirical necessities, there could be no place for any signature, male or otherwise, in that system of knowledge . . . But as the philosophical and historical inadequacies of the classical conception of science have become more evident, and as historians
24
and sociologists have begun to identify the ways in which the development of scientific knowledge has been shaped by its particular social and political context, our understanding of science as a social process has grown. This understanding is a necessary prerequisite, both politically and intellectually, for a feminist theoretic in science.42
What is relevant to feminists critiquing science is the idea that gender or sex is one of the subjective factors that can affect one's judgments in science, and therefore affect the objectivity of science. The “feminist theoretic in science” involves, among other things, the view that being of one sex rather than another gives one certain social and perhaps political values, beliefs and plausibility judgments that one might otherwise not have. These non-empirical factors allegedly contribute to some theory choices, descriptions and methods, which in turn are alleged to threaten the traditional concept of objectivity in science. (It is to be noted that some theorists have suggested that the Kuhnian view need not apply only to natural science: social scientists, psychologists and even epistemologists have applied Kuhn's ideas to their respective fields.43 Consequently, most contemporary feminist theories of science are not applied exclusively to natural science, but to anthropology, sociology, and psychology, where these fields are understood to be fundamentally affected, perhaps even determined, by subjective (non-objective) factors, not just empirical facts and objective reasoning.) Rather than claim any allegiance to a particular interpretation or application of Quine or Kuhn, my intention here is to underscore how their views have motivated and underpinned the feminist critiques of science. In addition, these views serve as points of origin for the scrutiny surrounding the concept of objectivity in science. The feminist critiques themselves are interesting – they cite case after case of sexist and androcentric views that have leaked into supposedly objective theories and descriptions of our natural
42Evelyn Fox Keller, “Feminism and Science” as printed in Ann Garry and Marilyn Pearsall, (eds.), Women, Knowledge and Reality, (Boston, MA: Unwin Hyman, Inc., 1989), p. 178.
43 Sandra Harding points out that “more recent studies of the history of science have pursued the logic of Kuhn's argument in directions he did not take” (SQF, 199).
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and social world – but the more interesting results are the views feminists have developed about objectivity itself.
1.2 Objectivity in the Feminist Philosophy of Science Much can be learned by examining the views of feminists who address the notion of objectivity to make feminist-oriented points about knowledge, and in particular, scientific knowledge. In the chapters that follow, I will examine some prominent feminist theories about objectivity. My goal is not to identify the “best” or most useful concept of objectivity, but to (a) shed light on just how complex this concept is; (b) develop a clearer understanding of current feminist ideas about objectivity; and (c) show why many feminists, including myself, still think that some kind of objectivity is necessary for the success of science. In general, the views examined in this thesis offer conceptions of objectivity that are intended to allow us to increase the extent to which our scientific theories are objective, but at the same time allow us to appreciate (and not eliminate) the role of cultural and personal interests and values as they play a role in science. In Chapter Two, I will focus on the work of Catherine MacKinnon, a legal theorist whose views about objectivity focus on the extent to which political or social power can play a role in what we call “objective”. Her observations about the role of power in creating knowledge, serve to underscore once again why feminists are interested in objectivity in the first place. Though MacKinnon does not focus on the objectivity of science, her worries about the role of power in forming “knowledge” serve as an appropriate warning for feminists who are working to construct conceptions of scientific objectivity. I’ll also suggest that the conception of objectivity ought to be restructured and enriched, and that feminists should resist the temptation to give up on objectivity in science altogether. In Chapter Three, Evelyn Fox Keller’s views about how to enrich our concept of objectivity will be central to my discussion. Keller is an advocate of a particular method
26
of objectivity, and she suggests a certain approach to data that allegedly increases the extent to which individual scientists are objective. Although there are features of her work I find useful to the feminist revisions of objectivity, I’ll ultimately suggest that feminist and scientific interests are better met by crafting a mechanism for dealing with and addressing common threats to objectivity outright, and not necessarily by advocating a specific approach to scientific problems that itself is claimed to be free of these threats. In Chapter Four, I’ll examine the suggestion made by Sandra Harding regarding why something she calls “strong objectivity”, which involves critical self-reflection on the part of scientists, is suggested for increasing the objectivity of science. Harding’s method of strong objectivity presents us with a mechanism for addressing the personal and cultural values that seem to threaten or diminish the objective nature of our scientific theories. Then, in Chapter Five, I’ll outline the views of Helen Longino regarding the claim that the social nature of scientific practice is what maximizes its objectivity. Like Harding, Longino also presents us a mechanism for addressing the interests, values or assumptions that have the potential to be detrimental to scientific progress, but emphasizes the social nature of scientific knowledge in crafting her conception of objectivity.
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Chapter 2
Power & Objectivity: A Warning from Catherine MacKinnon
There has been confusion and consternation about objectivity for feminists ever since we began to suspect that the perfectly “objectively true” view that women aren’t as rational as men turned out to be, well, not all that objective, and not all that true. What we’ve come to accept – and I don’t think this is a view that only philosophers can appreciate – is that the facts of the matter often depend a great deal on who is looking at
the facts. That is, when we engage in inquiries into how our world is constructed and
how it operates, these epistemic inquiries are influenced by not just the raw data of the
world, but by our human perceptions of that raw data.
So, when we realize how imperfectly we practice being objective – how imperfectly
implemented objectivity is in our epistemic inquiries – we begin to get confounded over
what to do with it, how to improve it, and for feminists, how all of this matters to issues of gender.
As work in the history of science has suggested – and what I highlighted in Chapter
One with regard to Kuhn’s work – scientists are in the somewhat unfortunate role of being both objective and subjective observers. Their scientific training inclines them toward objective observation, but philosophical and empirical investigation into this requirement has shown this to be an imperfect enterprise, marked by subjective or non- empirical factors that are difficult to explain away and still retain the received view of science. But theorists who affirm the shortcomings of the received view of science do
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not have to give up the enterprise of saying something meaningful about objectivity in science.
In what follows, I will give some basic reasons for feminists to be interested in objectivity. In particular, will suggest that feminists can benefit from constructing more robust, enriched concepts of objectivity than those available in the tradition. In later chapters, I’ll examine these enriched concepts of objectivity, but for now, I want to establish some general reasons feminists are interested in objectivity, based primarily on the critique of objectivity as found in the work of legal scholar Catherine MacKinnon.
2.1 Power and Facts
In Toward a Feminist Theory of State, MacKinnon explicitly addresses a version of objectivity that is characteristic of both traditional philosophy of science and epistemology as well as many feminist theories. She addresses this version as follows:
Scientific epistemology defines itself in the stance of “objectivity”, whose polar opposite is subjectivity. Socially, men are considered objective, women subjective. Objectivity as a stance toward the world erects two tests to which its method must conform: distance and aperspectivity. To perceive reality accurately, one must be distant from what one is looking at and view it from no place and at no time in particular, hence from all places and times at once.44
Here, MacKinnon is characterizing objectivity as stance from which objective facts will be produced, namely as the distanced, aperspectival position or non-ideological viewpoint. This is related to the version of objectivity required by the received view of science, since under the received view scientists must not allow their cultural and personal interests or values to enter into science. On this interpretation of the received
44 Catherine MacKinnon, Toward a Feminist Theory of State, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), 97. [Hereafter in text as TFTS.]
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view, one should take the stance of a distanced knower, of one who has no preconceived
ideas or biases about how the empirical tests and research should result.
MacKinnon claims that in practice, objectivity really characterizes the male view. She
explains:
The content of the feminist theory of knowledge begins with its criticism of the male point of view by criticizing the posture that has been taken as the stance of “the knower” in Western political thought. [This is] the neutral posture, which I will be calling objectivity – that is, the nonsituated, distanced standpoint. I’m claiming that this is the male standpoint socially.45
MacKinnon’s concern here is that what we call the “objective view” in reality turns out to
be the male view, and calling this male view “objective” obscures the fact that it is a gendered view after all.46
As MacKinnon puts it, “[t]he point of science, as I get it, has been to replace opinion
with certainty, to replace religion and faith with the empirical hard stuff.”47
MacKinnon’s worry is that science will not get to certainty and the “empirical hard stuff”
as long as we fail to recognize that certain views that appear objective may not, in fact, be so objective after all.
Quine and Kuhn have argued that the empirical hard stuff does not make sense
without some subjective soft stuff. But MacKinnon’s point is that men have been able to
make it appear as if their views are the empirical hard stuff, when in fact their views are
45 MacKinnon, Feminism Unmodified, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987), 50. [Hereafter in text as FU.]
46 See Rachel Zuckert’s “MacKinnon’s Critique of Objectivity” as printed in Louise Antony and Charlotte Witt, eds. A Mind of One’s Own (Cambridge, MA: Westview Press, 2002), 273-301. Zuckert maintains, contrary to the way MacKinnon sometimes talks, that these problems can be resolved within the liberal tradition.
47 FU, 59.
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often, at least partially, mere opinion or a reflection of masculine (or misogynist) values or beliefs. So, MacKinnon’s worry is not the same as Quine’s or Kuhn’s – that is, she is not trying to provide for us a new conception of science that makes more sense, given scientific practice, than the received view. Rather, she alleges that the male view (often) gets treated as the objective view, and is trying to articulate the mechanism for this phenomenon.
Creating Facts: How does MacKinnon think that men get to do this? That is, how is
it that their views wind up looking like the objective, and therefore correct, views, even
when they aren’t? According to MacKinnon, this is a direct result of the gender
inequality in our society, specifically as it regards the sexualized gender roles into which
women are forced by men.48 MacKinnon claims that, in our culture, men have more
power and authority than women, and they can use this power to force women into
gender roles that may or may not be commensurate with what women actually want or
would choose for themselves if men didn’t prescribe these roles for women.49
For MacKinnon, this social and cultural power is connected to facts, because what is
taken to be factual is influenced by what individuals think about data, and individuals are
not immune to the force and influence of power. Power gives people intellectual
authority, an authority that can often take the place and do the work of actual evidence. I
think of this as scientific sloppiness about the confirmation or proving of a view, because
48 Note that her view is not one about essential or natural traits of males and females, but rather about how males and females are socialized to become men and women. On this view, it is our social positions, not our natures or some essential qualities about our bodies and minds, that make us men and women.
49 Certainly one could argue about the scope of gender inequality in our culture, and I think a useful extension of this project would be to explore both the reach and limitations of such inequality.
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(unexamined) views without good evidence get by as science when those with intellectual authority support them. As MacKinnon explains:
Having power means, among other things, that when someone says, “This is how it is,” it is taken as being that way. When this happens in law, such a person is accorded what is called credibility. When that person is believed over another speaker, what was said becomes proof. Speaking socially, the beliefs of the powerful become proof, in part because the world actually arranges itself to affirm what the powerful want to see.50
MacKinnon is drawing attention to circumstances that allow those in powerful social or
political positions to create the illusion that their views are facts. First, those in power
treat subordinates in ways that actually get subordinates to conform to the views the
powerful have of them. Second, MacKinnon emphasizes the ability the powerful have to
silence or ignore those who might challenge their view. Without discordant voices, there
appears to be consensus about the views of the powerful, and this consensus is taken to
be a mark of the “objectivity” of a view.
The Case of Sir Cyril Burt: Take for example the infamous story of Sir Cyril Burt.
Burt was convinced that intelligence is innate, but failed to treat this view as a
hypothesis. Instead, he treated it as a forgone conclusion, a view popular among his
contemporaries, and throughout his career treated his 1909 study as having established
that intelligence is innate. 51 However, his study was flawed on logical grounds (circular
reasoning) and because his data was “scant and superficial”.52 Later in his career, Burt
claimed to have studied fifty-three pairs of identical twins raised apart (a scientist’s
50 FU, 164.
51Stephen Jay Gould, The Mismeasure of Man (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1981, 1996), 304. [hereafter in text as Gould] Burt’s original study results were published in 1909 as: “Experimental Tests of General Intelligence” (British Journal of Psychology 3:94-177).
52 Gould, 304.
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dream), in hopes of finding evidence to prove that intelligence is hereditary. Instead of finding such evidence, Burt fabricated the data on identical twins, the kinship correlations in IQ, and declining levels of intelligence in Britain.53 Even given the terrible science
behind his conclusion, Burt’s view was long held as the correct view of intelligence.
The part of this story I find salient, however, isn’t that Burt was a fraud – surely there
are many interesting cases of scientific fraud – but that his fraud went unnoticed for so
long. As historians of this account have pointed out, it wasn't until 1976 that the charge
of forgery was leveled at Burt, nearly seventy years from the time his initial paper on
inheritance was published, and several years after the forged work had been published.
Lest we think that the fraud was particularly well done so as to fool even the brightest
scientists, consider this note from Stephen Jay Gould’s account of Burt:
[W]hile Burt had increased his sample of twins from fewer than twenty to more than fifty in a series of publications, the average correlation between pairs for IQ remained unchanged to the third decimal place – a statistical situation so unlikely that it matches our vernacular definition of impossible.54
This example illustrates the way consensus – in this case, consensus around a racist
view – prevented the kind of critical attention that is supposed to push scientific toward
ever-increasing objectivity (i.e., it illustrates what I claimed was the second way
MacKinnon thinks the powerful can create “facts”, namely by ignoring or silencing
objections that would likely have revealed problems with the view). Arguably the
intellectual authority of all those supporting Burt’s view led to that view being more and
53 Gould, 265. Gould notes that: [it] is scarcely surprising that Arthur Jensen used Sir Cyril’s figures as the most important datum in his notorious article (1969) on supposedly inherited and ineradicable differences in intelligence between whites and blacks in America.
54 Gould, 265.
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more entrenched and accepted even though the evidence behind the view was (or should
have been) highly suspicious. It is difficult to know what those without racist views did
think about Burt’s views and research, but it is hard to imagine that this kind of fraud
perpetrated in today’s political climate could survive for very long.
Imagine now a different story, one of a person of color trying to publish work based on identical twins to show that intelligence is not innate, that indeed, genetics doesn’t determine one’s position in life, and that people of color could therefore be equal to whites, for example. How long would fraudulent work supporting this conclusion have gone unnoticed? I think one could make a strong argument that it wouldn’t have lasted nearly seventy years. As MacKinnon points out, “Powerlessness means that when you say ‘This is how it is’, it is not taken as being that way”.55 Another way to think of this
issue is to consider how little intellectual authority was had by people of color (or women, perhaps) during the time of Burt’s forgery, so little, in fact, that questions or problems arising from people of color did not become part of the history of inquiries into race and intelligence in the early 1900s.
For MacKinnon, the problem doesn’t end here, because she suggests that the world also has a tendency to rearrange itself to fit with what those in power are saying about it.
MacKinnon claims that, for example, women behave in ways that affirm what men are telling them about themselves. She emphasizes the idea that women are complicit in their own oppression56:
I think that sexual desire in women, at least in this culture, is socially constructed as that by which we come to want our own
55 FU, 164.
56 TFTS, 88.
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self-annihilation. That is, our subordination is eroticized in and as female; in fact, we get off on it to a degree, if nowhere near as much as men do. This is our stake in this system that is not in our interest, our stake in this system that is killing us. I’m saying femininity as we know it is how we come to want male dominance, which most emphatically is not in our interest.57
If MacKinnon is right, we can see how troublesome and dangerous this is for women. On the picture MacKinnon has painted for us, not only do women live under the domination of men, but they also contribute to their own oppression by finding erotic those things prescribed by men as erotic, and then acting them out. This in turn makes it look as if men’s views of women are correct, since women are acting out the very roles men prescribe for them.
MacKinnon’s argument depends on the premise that men have real power over women.58 Being dominant gives one the opportunity to treat those who are not in power however desired. So, supposing males are dominant, if they want to see females as sexual objects, then they have the power to treat them that way, and in fact do, according to MacKinnon. Moreover, the powerful can make demands such that the less powerful give them what they want, so on this view, it isn’t merely a question of how people think
about data, but what data are ultimately created by how the powerful think.
For example, if men find a submissive woman erotic, and they treat with approval
those women who behave submissively, this approval will serve to create in women the
desire to be submissive. The result is that women will act submissively in order to
receive approval from men. Of course, MacKinnon must allow this to work in the other
direction: if (powerful) men find assertive female behavior erotic or appealing, their
57 FU, 54.
58 FU, 51.
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approval of this behavior will serve to create in women the desire to be assertive. The
problem, as MacKinnon sees it, is that men don’t eroticize assertive or powerful behavior in women, but instead treat as erotic only the submissive behavior she finds so objectionable.59
On this view, our social system of domination serves to exaggerate gender (and race
or class) differences in both perception and fact: those in power have perceptions of difference that serve their interests, while both the dominant and subordinate members of society act out roles that are deemed appropriate by those in power.60 MacKinnon
concludes that both how people think (perception) and what people do (reality) are
influenced, and in some ways determined, by the domination of women by men.
This vicious circle of behavior leaves us with the unsettling feeling that something just
isn’t quite right about all of this. That is, if what women are in society is whatever men
think and say they should be, then what could women be like without the influence of
men? Even worse, if what the world is like is whatever the dominant group thinks and says it should be, then what is the world like apart from what they think and say? For
MacKinnon, we’ll never know under our current social structure, because what we call the objective view of reality is too closely linked with the interests of those in power.
Metaphorically, on her view, there is a cloak that is laid over our behavior, and unless we change our social structure, we will not be able to see what is going on under that cloak.
So, the point I have been highlighting here is MacKinnon’s claim that it is too easy for people in power to use their dominance to create a reality that suits their interests.
59 MacKinnon should allow for the fact that some men do find powerful women erotic, but she’s committed to the idea that most do not.
60 FU, 40.
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The necessary trick for this to work, of course, is that the dominant group must call their
own view the objective viewpoint, and show what appear to be the relevant connections between their created reality and their claims about that reality. Of course, we may not
realize that we are doing this, so successful have dominant males been at pulling a fast
one. Indeed, as MacKinnon explains:
Thus the perspective from the male standpoint is not always each man’s opinion or even some aggregation or sum of men’s opinions, although most men adhere to it, nonconsciously and without considering it a point of view, as much because it makes sense of their experience (the male experience) as because it is in their interest. It is rational for them. Because it is the dominant point of view and defines rationality, women are pushed to see reality in its terms, although this denies their vantage point as women in that it contradicts at least some of their lived experience, particularly the experience of violation through sex.61
I take the important point from this passage to be the idea that the dominant gender
unconsciously accepts their own view as objective because it makes sense of their
experience and is in their own interest. These two components alone make it seem
rational for men to accept their own views as objective.
MacKinnon further suggests that women will not feel this same level of comfort with
objectivity, since it pushes them to see reality in a way that contradicts some of their
experiences. For example, submissive behavior in a woman may be good for some things
– for pleasing a man, for avoiding criticism from men (and some women), for not having
to assert one’s will, etc. However, submissive behavior sometimes results in (painful)
situations that do not further the interests of the person displaying this behavior. Some of
the experiences of women teach them just this lesson: submissive behavior does not
always (or perhaps usually) work in a woman’s interest, even though it may well please
61 TFTS, 114.
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men. This is the contradiction MacKinnon is worried about. The experiences of women
with actually being submissive do not seem as pleasant and comfortable as has been suggested by the male approval of such behavior. As MacKinnon points out, even though males say this behavior is good for women, the experiences of women often show this to be untrue.
Here MacKinnon has suggested reasons that feminists should be interested in investigating objectivity and its relation to both domination and reality. That is, she has brought to light ways in which it seems too easy for a dominant group to make their views look like reality, when in fact these views may only be partial or perverted versions of reality. Of course, some of the views of the powerful might actually produce reliable or good or true theories about the real world. But if MacKinnon is right about the ability of the powerful to obscure facts, then with our current conception of objectivity alone, we cannot tell. That is, merely saying “this is an objective view” doesn’t guarantee us anything if we take seriously the criticisms that MacKinnon has leveled at objectivity.
This is what I take to be the most important problem highlighted by MacKinnon, and any comprehensive attempt to revise the concept of objectivity should at least give us a way to assess the affect (if any) of personal, cultural or political power on science.
2.2 Should We Keep Objectivity?
Many feminists are engaged in attempts to revise or enrich our conception of objectivity, thinking that such conceptual reform is necessary for improving the accuracy and reliability of our claims about the social and natural world. But do we need to keep
some idea of objectivity to do this? Once we realize how imperfectly we practice
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objectivity, we might think that our poor performance is a signal that something is deeply wrong with the whole idea of being able to get to reality by sifting through our perceptions and the evidence that supports them. Moreover, we might conclude from what MacKinnon has said that objectivity is hopelessly tied to what men (or the powerful) want.62 Indeed, there is some ambivalence evident in MacKinnon’s work about the extent to which “objectivity” can be revised or changed to meet both the needs of feminists and/or those involved in epistemic pursuits.
On the one hand, MacKinnon sometimes talks as if male and female realities are so distinctive, so different in relevant ways, that to talk of a single reality as if it is that thing on which our theories and descriptions should be focused and judged is ineffective and inappropriate. To make sense of all this, consider this example. There are certain legal cases regarding rape where it has proved difficult for courts to determine whether or not consent was given – a problem prevalent primarily in cases where a woman is raped by someone she knows, but present in other cases as well. To explain how men can be so mistaken (or at least confused) about whether consent was given, MacKinnon often points to the different worlds in which men and women live. Take for example what she says here:
The line between subjective and objective perception which is supposed to divide the idiosyncratic, nonreplicable, religious, partial and unverifiable – the unscientific – from the real presumes the existence of a single object reality and its noncontingence upon angle of perception. But if women’s condition exists, there are (at least) two object realms of social meaning. Women’s point of
62 See Harding’s “Rethinking Standpoint Epistemology”, 246, for a brief discussion regarding why some feminists have argued that the very notion of objectivity should be abandoned. Article printed in Evelyn Fox Keller and Helen Longino, eds., Feminism and Science (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1996).
39
view is no more subjective than men’s if women inhabit a sex- discriminatory object reality.63
Here, MacKinnon seems to be alluding to something other than a single object reality,
perhaps two or more realities that give meaning to what we say about our experiences.
On the other hand, MacKinnon clearly wants to be able to make truth claims about
rape. If you take the distinct or multiple reality idea to its logical conclusion, the result
is that there is no common truth-maker for anyone’s claims about rape (or anything
else), because there is no domain about which we are both talking.
That is, once you give men their reality and women their different one, it becomes impossible to determine what to say about whether or not someone was raped. It also becomes difficult to know what to say about objectivity. If objectivity is supposed to be some stance – and this is the way MacKinnon characterizes it – it isn’t clear what the stance is in relation to when there is more than one reality. Men will simply argue for their own objectivity based on reference to their reality and women will do likewise, and they’ll both be right, which is just incoherent.
(Furthermore, once you extend MacKinnon’s arguments more generally so that ‘the powerful’ is defined as anyone with political, social and/or financial power, the problem
becomes more complicated. On this scenario, we aren’t just faced with male and female
realities, but with reality as it is for ‘the powerful’ and reality as it is for ‘the subjugated’
– where the latter group may be comprised of women, people of color, poor people, or some combination of various factors. The result of accepting this bifurcated or multiple
63 TFTS, 232. Similarly, elsewhere she seems to be critical of the idea that there is an objective reality that can ground our claims about the world; see TFTS, 180 and 183.
40
reality view based on who has power and who doesn’t just puts us in an even more confused state regarding our truth claims.)
I think this ambivalence can be resolved. Consider a passage from the quote above
regarding the presumption of “the existence of a single object reality and its
noncontingence upon the angle of perception”. I suggest we recast the issue this way:
we can accept the existence of a single object reality that itself is not contingent upon
what we think or say about it, but also recognize that what we learn or believe or know
about the world is contingent upon the angle of our perception. The angle of perception
may be skewed, but that says nothing about the existence of a reality that exists apart
from what we say about it.
Once the split or multiple reality is denied, we can go back to working on objectivity.
That is, we can now say something – and something rather useful and interesting, I think
– about how to improve our stance, with a keen eye toward how very skewed that stance
might be given the kind of social world in which we live. On this view, we don’t have
to worry about split realities, but we do have to worry about the extent to which our
perceptions of that reality might be drastically different – and now we have to be
concerned with correcting or accounting for these differences in perception.
And this is precisely where feminist scholarship has gone. Attempts to revise and
enrich our concept of objectivity serve to indirectly challenge male domination by
presenting alternate ways of thinking about traditionally masculine fields, by
questioning the received view, and by showing just where we go wrong when we
attempt to achieve (or think we are achieving) objectivity. This is at the heart of most of
the feminist theories and critiques of science.
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Also, it is this approach – the indirect challenge to domination – that is the backdrop for the feminist approaches to and revisions of objectivity that inform science and society in important and thoughtful ways, ways that are sensitive to feminist interests.
This approach does not require us to drop our talk about objectivity or to see only male and female viewpoints as possible positions. Rather, because our current situation is a contingent fact of our world, we can attempt to change it by enriching our concept of objectivity, and calling into question assumptions about objectivity that have been stalling social and scientific progress all along. These important and powerful ventures are what we lose when we give up on objectivity altogether.
MacKinnon’s work also suggests that we need to increase women’s political and intellectual power in order to ensure the presence of women’s (discordant) voices. This will disrupt the false consensus among those who are in power, and bring to the table of discussion contending theories, competition with which will lead to something like genuine objectivity, or will at least – and this is what I take to be one of the crucial points – make us more aware of cultural and personal interests and values that permeate science. It will allow for variations of scrutiny that are left out when the powerful protect their own views from outsiders.
MacKinnon’s work is useful to the feminist theoretic as it regards objectivity because it serves as a warning to us regarding the roles of gender politics in forming what we call the objective view as well as what we call science, though her view cannot be taken as
(nor was it intended to be) providing a mechanism for revealing and assessing the role of interest and value in science.
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MacKinnon’s view also shows us what is wrong with an unexamined version of objectivity, and why what has been called the objective view can become something else. She’s claimed that powerful people can get subordinates to behave in certain ways, and as well, the powerful can silence or ignore the discordant views of their subordinates. MacKinnon’s view also highlights the interesting psychological point about how those in power present their views, by in effect saying, “This is how it is” instead of saying, “This is how it is to me, how is it to you?”
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Chapter 3
Evelyn Fox Keller’s Dynamic Objectivity
While the merits of MacKinnon’s views on objectivity are largely in the form of a
warning as to what feminists should be mindful of, the work discussed in this chapter
presents an attempt to provide a better conception of objectivity than what is suggested
by the received view. The view assessed here, put forth by Evelyn Fox Keller, presents
an attempt to address the shortcomings of how objectivity operates (or does not operate)
in science. As well, Keller suggests an alternate conception of objectivity with an eye
toward a larger feminist agenda as well as a desire to show how this agenda is amenable
and relevant to success in science.
Keller’s views of objectivity focus primarily on how scientists approach research, and
so might be seen as relevant only to the context of discovery. But Keller views discovery and justification as inextricably linked and concludes that the interests, values and
ideology in the scientific methods and approaches to research matter to the justification
of theories. This is because Keller thinks that theories are chosen as “best” based in part
on how “consonant [the theory is] with one’s implicit ideological and emotional
expectations.” 64 Furthermore, she notes that theories that are not consonant with various
ideologies or emotional expectations will not be developed enough to even be considered
among competing theories. Hence, while her focus is on the approach to their subject
64 Keller, Reflections on Gender and Science, (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1985), 126. [Hereafter in the text as RGS.]
44
matter taken by researchers, Keller ultimately thinks that this will shape theory
justification.
3.1 Dynamic Objectivity
Evelyn Fox Keller, in her books A Feeling for the Organism65 and Reflections on
Gender and Science, details the work of Barbara McClintock, a cytogeneticist whose
unorthodox approach to science is alleged to have made her successful where others
failed. But Keller does more than just describe McClintock’s methods; she outlines for
us a conception of objectivity in science that is based on (what Keller considers)
intimacy, open-mindedness and love.
Object Relations Theory: Keller’s conception of objectivity is based on object
relations theory, a theory developed by psychologists66 and later adapted for feminist
purposes for by Nancy Chodorow67, Keller and Jane Flax.68 In general, object relations
is a set of theories that postulate that relationships, beginning with the mother-infant
dyad, are crucial for forming a sense of personal identity and gender.
For the feminist object relations theorist, childhood relationships shape the child’s personal identity and gender, including his or her sense of self. And, in most traditional models of parenting, mothers (or other women) are the primary care givers for children,
65Keller, (New York: W.H. Freeman and Co., 1983). [Hereafter in text as FO.]
66 See W.R.D. Fairbairn, An Object-Relations Theory of the Personality (New York: Basic Books, 1952); Harry Guntrip, Personality Structure and Human Interaction (New York: International Universities Press, 1961); Heinz Kohut, The Analysis of the Self (New York: International Universities Press, 1971); D.W. Winnicott, Playing and Reality (New York: Basic Books, 1971).
67 Nancy Chodorow, The Reproduction of Mothering (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1978, 1999). [Hereafter in text as Chodorow.]
68See SQF, 131, for a similar discussion of object relations theory.
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while fathers (or other men) play a less prominent role in rearing, feeding, and providing
general care for children. Based on this model of parenting, then, feminist object
relations theorists hypothesize about how this parenting structure contributes to the sense of personal identity and gender that girls and boys develop.69
According to Nancy Chodorow, whose work forms much of the basis for Keller’s
views, infants come to appreciate the concepts of ‘self’ and ‘other’ through their relationships with mother and father. Chodorow claims that an infant develops his or her sense of self primarily in relation to his/her mother, though the (allegedly distant) father influences this development as well. This occurs in part because the infant is mentally and physically dependent on his/her mother, and the infant comes to define him/herself as a person mainly through this (physically and emotionally) close relationship. But as the infant grows, he/she soon recognizes that he/she is separate from mother, though almost fully dependent on her.70
For both boys and girls, the relationship between the child and mother is fraught with
anxiety as the child begins to recognize that he or she is separate from the mother.71
However, this recognition of “self” is also pleasurable, so the child is confronted with the somewhat conflicting impulses to be both connected to mother but also separate from her.72
69 In the preface to the 1999 reprint of Chodorow’s book, she remarks that even in co-parented households, there is still evidence to suggest that the mother-child relationship will result in some of the very same ideas about masculinity and femininity as the more traditional models. See Chodorow, 1999, xv-xviii.
70 Chodorow, 69.
71 Chodorow, 69-70.
72 RGS, 81.
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There is asymmetry in the mother-child relationship, because boys do not have the same comfort level with their mothers as do girls. Chodorow maintains that a girl can construct a sense of self by in effect saying to herself, “I’m like Mom”, and her gender identity is formed in part by identification with similarities to her mother. On this view, because a girl can identify so closely with her mother in forming her sense of self, a girl’s development and recognition of her own separateness is formed on the basis of a close connection with her mother.73 As Chodorow explains, “From very early on, then,
because they are parented by a person of the same gender . . . girls come to experience
themselves as less differentiated than boys, as more continuous with and related to the
external object-world.”74
But for boys, Chodorow tells a different story. A boy looks at his mother and realizes,
“I’m not like Mom”, and from there develops a sense of self that is the negation of
features that characterize his mother. Caring, nurturing and attentive behavior are certain
behaviors boys come to associate with ‘mother’ and in forming their sense of self, boys
reject these traits and define themselves as being separate, disconnected, not as concerned
with caring and nurturing. Chodorow claims that this results in boys defining
“themselves as more separate and distinct, with a greater sense of rigid ego boundaries
and differentiation.”75, 76
73 For a lengthier description of this theory, see Chodorow, 164-170. On page 166, she specifically addresses the issues I’ve highlighted here.
74 Chodorow, 167.
75 Chodorow, 169.
76 See also Chodorow, 1999 Preface, viii: “Mothers, I argue, by virtue of their gender . . . experience daughters as, in a certain sense, like them, and sons as, in a certain sense, unlike. Reciprocally, girls and boys themselves appropriate and transform these unconscious maternal communications through their own
47
Keller suggests that what most of us have in common is that it was our mothers who
provided us the emotional context “out of which we forge the discrimination between self
and other” and that leads to skewed perceptions of gender.77 Keller claims that our
experiences of “merging” or connection will inevitably be linked to or identified with
“mother”78, while separation will be identified with “not-mother” or, indeed, “father”.79
As Keller explains, “It is the father who comes to stand for individuation and differentiation – for objective reality itself; who indeed can represent the ‘real’ world by virtue of being in it.”80
For Chodorow and Keller, then, the basic sense of what it is to be “like mother” (or
“feminine”) becomes marked by connection to the world, whereas what it is to be “like father” (or “masculine”) is marked by separation from the world.81 That is, one of the
main results they take to be of the psychological relationship between children and their
mothers and fathers is that women feel intuitively connected to others, while men assert
independence and become anxious about intimacy if it threatens their independence.82
Autonomy and Objectivity: The development of self is often understood by psychologists as the precursor to the development of autonomy, so Keller furthers her discussion by analyzing autonomy and, eventually, linking it to objectivity. However, to
intrapsychic capacities for fantasy, their own defensive reaction to anxiety and guilt, and their own desires, passions and impulses.”
77 RGS, 85.
78 RGS, 85.
79 Chodorow, 71 and RGS, 86.
80 RGS, 86.
81 Chodorow, 169 and RGS, 88-89.
82 Chodorow, 1999, Preface viii.
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follow her discussion at all, it is necessary to define some terms central to Keller’s
discussion, and to differentiate between what she deems “static” and “dynamic” forms of
autonomy and objectivity.
For Keller, ‘autonomy’ is defined as “the term to refer to the psychological sense of
being able to act under one’s own volition instead of under external control”.83 Keller
points out that this does not mean that one’s actions aren’t influenced by others, or that
one has no need of others, nor does the acquisition of autonomy result in having a radical
independence from others. Keller thinks that an improper definition or understanding of
autonomy results from an insistence on the complete separation and independence from
others as a necessary condition of true autonomy; this Keller calls “static autonomy”.
By contrast, Keller describes as dynamic the kind of autonomy that results from
understanding that one can have a sense of being able to act under one’s own volition
without being completely separated from and independent of others. This version, what
she calls “dynamic autonomy” is, for Keller, the more appropriate understanding of
autonomy. For Keller, one can (and should) be autonomous even though one might
consider others in one’s decision making process; that is, one can have a sense of being able to act under one’s own volition without totally disregarding others, or without
pretending that there are no others to consider.
Keller claims that objectivity, like autonomy, need not be rooted in one’s separation
from or dominance over the world. To be objective, on Keller’s view, means that one
recognizes that the world is independent of one’s desires about the world, and she
83 RGS, 97.
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explicitly defines objectivity as “the pursuit of a maximally authentic84, and hence
maximally reliable, understanding of the world around oneself”.85 How one operates in
science distinguishes between “static objectivity” and “dynamic objectivity”.86
‘Static objectivity’ is the term Keller gives to a pursuit of understanding the world that
is predicated on the idea that the world must be conquered or dominated in order to be
understood, and that this domination also requires distance or separateness from the
object of study. ‘Dynamic objectivity’ is the label Keller gives to a method for
understanding the world that is predicated on the idea that one can make use of
connectivity to the object of study, as well as of subjective, personal experiences in order
to enrich one’s knowledge of the natural, physical world.87
On Keller’s view, the scientist who operates under a conception of objectivity that is static attempts to sever him or herself from the world in order to fully understand it, rather than immerse him or herself in the world.88 To make the connection to object
relations theory explicit, he or she attempts to emulate the “father”, who represented
objective reality, by mimicking the father’s perceived separateness and independence
from the child.
84 Keller doesn’t carefully define what she means by ‘authentic’, but she commits herself to granting the world what she calls “independent integrity” (RGS, 117). I take her use of terms like ‘authentic’ and ‘reliable’ to be indicative of research or theories that, in some sense, accurately describe real processes of the world.
85 RGS, 116.
86 See Helen Longino, “Science, Objectivity and Feminist Values”, in Feminist Studies 14, no. 3 (Fall 1988), 566, for a discussion and critique of Keller’s conception of objectivity.
87 RGS, 117.
88 RGS, 117.
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For Keller, the connection between objectivity and autonomy is merely this: those researchers who have developed static senses of autonomy are likely to be statically objective, while those who have developed dynamic senses of autonomy are likely to be dynamically objective. The development of autonomy is directly linked to the development of how one perceives and conceives the concept of objectivity. Crudely put, the traditional, detached, “view from nowhere” notion of objectivity is linked to static autonomy. On this view, individuals who have anxiety about their own independence, and who therefore associate autonomy with separation from others, will be likely to be statically objective. We already know that Keller views static autonomy as a confusion of separateness with autonomy. It should not be surprising, then, that in advocating the dynamic version of autonomy, Keller advocates the dynamic version of objectivity.
According to Keller, a researcher who is dynamically objective pursues knowledge with a recognition of both the independence of the world around us – that it exists apart from what we say about it – and the fact that our knowledge about the world requires us to get involved with that world. Keller claims that this is a form of empathy, whereby in its usual context we get to know another person better by imagining what it would be like to be that person. As Keller explains empathy, we “draw explicitly on the commonality of feelings and experiences in order to enrich one’s understanding of another in his or her own right.”89
Here, Keller is endorsing an approach to objectivity that centers not so much on independence of the world from us, but on what happens when one tries to understand the
89 RGS, 117.
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world by connecting with that world. I take it that her analogy to empathy is intended to
make this point: when we seek to understand other humans, we must “put ourselves in
their shoes” and attempt to make a connection with their circumstances. Likewise, Keller
claims, when we seek to understand the world, we shouldn’t rely on our independence or
separateness from the world, but on our similarities and connections to it. How this is
supposed to work becomes clearer in the context of Keller’s description of efforts made
by Barbara McClintock to prove her theory of genetic transposition, and it is really by
example that we can make sense of Keller’s metaphorical way of speaking.
Before turning to the real-life example of dynamic objectivity provided by the story of Barbara McClintock, note that Keller’s reliance on object-relations theory as an explanation for the development of various personality traits deserves more discussion than what is presented here. In addition, (arguably) Keller’s views of child-rearing may be somewhat anachronistic given recent changes in parenting structures, with many more men participating in parenting – either as single parents or simply more involved fathers
– than what was common twenty years ago when Keller first published her papers on this
topic. The study of these male-involved parenting structures would be needed to round
out Keller’s discussion of the development of autonomy and objectivity.
What I want to point out here, regardless of what can be said for or against Keller’s psychological theory, is that the problem Keller sees with current scientific practice is that it endorses static objectivity, not the dynamic approach that Keller favors. To Keller, it appears that much more progress might be made in science if static objectivity would be replaced with dynamic objectivity. Keller is here endorsing a specific approach to
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science – the method of dynamic objectivity – that she believes will, if adopted by
individual scientists, yield better results than that guided by static objectivity.
Keller's supposition is that we could find many cases in science where adherence to or
preference for static objectivity has prevented scientists from fully understanding the
natural world. Moreover, Keller predicts that dynamic objectivity would help scientists
access the answers to our scientific (and epistemic) mysteries, because she thinks that
static objectivity prevents scientists from fully knowing their objects of study.90
Furthermore, while Keller is not committed to the view that men do not or cannot use this
type of objectivity, she does suggest that women are more likely to use it.91 How the
dynamic version of objectivity is supposed to work in science is illustrated in the work of
Barbara McClintock.
3.2 Understanding Dynamic Objectivity – The McClintock Case
Keller's clearest example of what she considers dynamic objectivity at work comes
from her book A Feeling for the Organism, a biographical account of geneticist Barbara
McClintock. Keller describes McClintock, born in 1902, as a renegade scientist, not only because she was a woman working in an almost all-male field, but also because she was a
“philosophical and methodological deviant”.92
Though she was always a highly regarded scientist, McClintock's greatest contribution to genetics was her discovery that genetic elements can coordinate their movements,
90 RGS, 124-125.
91 See Helen Longino’s SSK, 204-209, for similar assessment of Keller’s view.
92 RGS, 159.
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something called genetic transposition. Just a few years after her research began, Watson
and Crick discovered the structure of DNA, which provided scientists with a model of
genetic information, a model that showed genetic information flowing from DNA to
RNA to protein.93 This became the “central dogma” regarding how genetic information
flows: it flowed from the DNA, never to the DNA. DNA became, then, the controlling
factor or the “master-molecule” from which all information was controlled. Keller claims that this view of genetic organization is essentially a hierarchical organization, akin to the organizational charts of major corporations.94
As McClintock saw it, the problem with this view was that it oversimplified the
complex processes involved in genetic organization and mutation. McClintock’s theory
of genetic transposition showed that the behavior of genes is far more complicated than what was suggested by what was considered the central dogma.95
McClintock studied mutations as they arose in crops of maize. She noticed that the
rate of mutation was constant, and figured that something had to be controlling the rate of
mutation; the mutation was not randomly happening.96 While this conclusion does not
sound terribly radical, Keller points out that at the time of these experiments – the 1940s
– the idea of some kind of control factor directing genetic behavior was unheard of.97
More important to this story is the fact that genes were viewed as stable and not capable
93 RGS, 169.
94 RGS, 170-171.
95 Keller claims that Watson himself referred to the picture of genetic information flowing from DNA to RNA to protein as the “central dogma”.
96 FO, 122.
97 FO, 122.
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of moving around a chromosome string, turning on and off at different times during a
cell’s development. Genetics experts had also assumed that a mutated gene could not
reproduce another mutation, but McClintock eventually showed that environmental
conditions could, in effect, reverse some mutations and reactivate some genes.98
So, to begin her project, McClintock was starting with an idea that was viewed as heretical: that changes in the genetic heritage of the maize were being controlled by something in the genetic makeup of the corn, but that the control was not found in a central gene or “master-molecule”. The picture McClintock painted of genetics was fluid and changing, intricately regulated, but far from the simple explanations of stable genes favored by her contemporaries.99 (Note that at the time of her initial research into these
phenomena, she had little concrete evidence for her claims, but set out to prove them
nonetheless.100)
The phenomenon that had captured her attention was when the rate of mutation
seemed to be reset by the plant. McClintock focused on cases where a parent cell (with
one mutation rate) divided into two “daughter” cells with two new rates. These new rates
were almost exactly opposite, since one daughter cell had a higher rate of mutation than
the parent, while the other daughter cell had a lower mutation rate than the parent.101
Something, thought McClintock, had to explain and account for this, and she believed
98 Sharon Bertsch McGrayne, Nobel Prize Women in Science (New York, NY: Carol Publishing Co., 1993), 166-167. [Hereafter in text as McGrayne.]
99 McGrayne, 168.
100 I think it is fitting to note that this is just the sort of “faith” or commitment that Kuhn emphasized as being so prevalent throughout the history of science.
101 FO, 124.
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that genetic transposition – where a chromosomal element is released from one position
and inserted into a new one – could explain the mutations of the maize.
The first part of transposition she called dissociation, where the chromosome breaks or is released from the chromosomal element and settles in another location; this gene she called the dissociator.102 McClintock observed that this occurred systematically, and
figured that something she called an activator must be responsible. But evidence proved
the organisms to be more complex than this, for it appeared to McClintock that dissociation occurred only when the activator is present, but that there was also something about the activator itself that played a role in the timing of its own occurrence.103
Data collected showed McClintock that dissociation (which caused mutation) could
not occur if the activator gene was not present, so in one sense the activator controls the
dissociator. But the activator itself seemed to change, so McClintock had to explain what
caused this sort of change. The answer was that the “time and occurrence of changes in
[the activator] are controlled by [the activator] itself.”104 She determined that internal and
external environmental factors had an affect on the activators, which means that changes
in the activators, which themselves are dependent on their environment, had an effect on
the cellular dissociation to which they gave rise.105 As Keller explains “the dependency
of changes in the state or location of [activators] on the state of [activators] in a given cell
102 FO, 127.
103 FO, 130.
104 FO, 134, originally from Barbara McClintock, “Mutable Loci in Maize”, Carnegie Institution of Washington Yearbook, 48 (1949): 142-143.
105 FO, 135.
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constitutes an explanation of the great variety of patterns of mutability observed.”106 This
theory stood in opposition to the master-molecule models proposed by contemporary
biologists, who viewed the controller or activators as themselves stable and unchanging.
Though McClintock tried to publish her results so as to remove any doubt as to the
existence of transposition, she failed miserably. Several attempts to explain her view to
colleagues resulted in her being labeled “mad”; her views were not well received when
presented in both 1951 and 1956.107 Though a handful of colleagues lent their support,
McClintock faced years of isolation and even ridicule because of her insistence that
transposition could account for various observed patterns of mutations in cells.
McClintock was mystified by the reluctance of the scientific community to embrace
her ideas – indeed, she did not understand why it was viewed as heretical. After all,
biologists were well familiar with the ability of viral DNA to be inserted into and
released from bacterial DNA, and what was so different about the release and insertion of
resident DNA that made her view so unpalatable to her colleagues? 108 McClintock
attributes the reluctance of the scientific community to accept transposition to what she
called “tacit assumptions” – or a commitment to looking at things only as one has been
trained, and not with a “fresh mind”.109 McClintock also believed that contemporary
research lacked humility, which led to overconfidence about certain assumptions. These
tacit assumptions, according to McClintock, keep one mired in a dogmatic approach to all
new observations, even those that do not fit well with the expectations of the accepted
106 FO, 135.
107 FO, 140 and McGrayne, 168.
108 FO, 178.
109 FO, 178.
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model. More troubling to McClintock was that scientists weren’t even aware of their
own unreasonable commitments to certain entrenched ways of thinking about data, and as
she claimed, “They didn’t know they were bound to a model, and you couldn’t show them . . . even if you made an effort.”110
McClintock’s diagnosis of what was wrong with her colleagues’ approach was that
they had no “feel for what these cells had to undergo in development”, and she
recommended letting the material tell its own story, which, she claimed, usually won’t fit
into a central dogma.111 It is this feeling for the organism – the intent listening to what
the organism is saying – that is a hallmark of the style attributed to McClintock. But
before we dissect this approach, an epilogue to her research is necessary.
Eventually, the theory of genetic transposition was proved correct, but it was not
widely accepted until the late 1970s. Keller points out that even in the face of such
acceptance, McClintock’s evidence for the consequences of transposition is only
understood by a few, as are her arguments for “innate mechanisms for genetic responses
to stress”.112 Regardless, McClintock’s theory of transposition was vindicated, and she
was awarded several prestigious prizes in the late 1970s and early 1980s, eventually
winning the Nobel Prize for Medicine and Physiology in 1983.
It is McClintock’s approach to the phenomena she studied that proved crucial to
understanding Keller’s reasons for choosing McClintock’s work as an exemplar for
dynamic objectivity at work. Keller points out that McClintock claimed to have had a
110 FO, 178.
111 FO, 179.
112 FO, 193.
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certain intimacy with each organism she studied. She also let the material tell her what
was going on, and insisted that she didn’t merely try to impose her own desired ends onto the material, a mistake she found prevalent among many of her colleagues. As
McClintock herself explains, “I feel that much of the work is done because one wants to
impose an answer on it . . . If you’d only just let the material tell you.”113 This
metaphorical way of speaking is fairly straightforward in meaning: McClintock thought
that too often scientists impose some preconceived idea – what she called tacit
assumptions – about the data onto the data itself, which forces them to ignore data that do
not fit well with those tacit assumptions; that is, they have to ignore anomalous data. She
thought that scientists should give up some of their tacit assumptions and instead pay
attention to the anomalies: “So if the material tells you ‘It may be this’, allow that.
Don’t turn it aside and call it an exception, an aberration, a contaminant . . . That’s what’s
happened all the way along the line with so many good clues.”114
McClintock also emphasized her own ability to really know the organisms she studied
on an intimate level, claiming that the fact that she observed the maize from seedling
through adulthood gave her a full insight into the life of that organism. Of the plants,
McClintock said, “[I] know every plant in the field. I know them intimately, and I find it
a great pleasure to know them.”115 While this may seem like just a fanciful or romantic way of speaking, if we take McClintock seriously we cannot ignore the importance of
what she is trying to say. McClintock was emphasizing the need for a deep emotional
113 FO, 179.
114 FO, 179.
115 FO, 198.
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investment in the subject one studies, which she believed resulted in not a cold, clinical approach to understanding phenomena, but a connected approach that McClintock believed is not all that conventional. Keller likens McClintock’s approach with that of
Einstein, who said, “. . .only intuition, resting on sympathetic understanding, can lead to
[these laws]; . . . the daily effort comes from no deliberate intention or program, but straight from the heart.”116
In concurrence with Keller's dynamic objectivity, McClintock admits that her strategy
was to identify with her objects of study (maize), rather than to dominate them or view them as outside herself:
I found that the more I worked with them, the bigger and bigger [the chromosomes] got, and when I was really working with them I wasn't outside, I was down there. I was part of the system. I was right down there with them, and everything got big. . . . As you look at these things, they become part of you. And you forget yourself.117
For Keller, this being “down there” and “part of the system” that McClintock describes is part and parcel of being fully connected to the object of study, and not distanced from it. Keller suggests that the goal of static objectivity – to stand apart from the object of study as an uninvolved observer or to dominate it in order to understand it – was not met by McClintock’s approach. Rather, the goal of dynamic objectivity, which is to connect
to the object of study and get to know what it is thinking or feeling in order to understand it, was being met. This, Keller, claims, is what made McClintock successful where others had failed. Indeed, it is precisely this to which McClintock attributes her own success.
116 FO, 201, from Banesh Hoffmann and Helen Dukas, Albert Einstein, Creator and Rebel (New York: New American Library, 1973), 222.
117 RGS, 165.
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The moral of this story, according to Keller, is not simply that McClintock's intuition, open-mindedness, connection and relatedness to her objects of study contributed to her success as a scientist, though this is part of Keller's point, especially as it provides an exemplar of dynamic objectivity. The additional moral to the story, as Keller sees it, is that whatever McClintock was, she was not a man. And, claims Keller, because she was not a man, she had different commitments than her male counterparts. On Keller’s view, this means that McClintock simply did not follow the traditional pattern of other scientists, and went about her work in the non-traditional, allegedly uncommon, dynamic approach to being objective. The commitment to dynamic objectivity is presumably what led McClintock to succeed where others had failed, at least by Keller’s rendition of events. Furthermore, Keller (rather boldly) claims that most scientists conceive of nature as something to be dominated and controlled, and that most men think being masculine means being detached from others.118 She further claims that whatever diversity there is among the views of individual male scientists in terms of their attitudes about science and masculinity, the allegedly prevailing metaphor of a “marriage” between mind and nature to form science “necessarily does not look the same to them as it does to women”.119 That is, no matter how comfortable or uncomfortable a male scientist is with being connected to or detached from the world, he will always view the marriage metaphor differently – presumably, more benevolently – than will women. It is women who will presumably take issue with the idea that as the metaphorical “husband”, the scientist must “beat the answers out of” nature, the metaphorical wife. For Keller, this is the crucial point:
118 RGS, 174.
119 RGS, 174.
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Of course, not all scientists have embraced the conception of science as "putting nature on the rack and torturing the answers out of her." Nor have all men embraced a conception of masculinity that demands cool detachment and domination. But most have. And however variable the attitudes of individual male scientists toward science and toward masculinity, the metaphor of a marriage between mind and nature necessarily does not look the same to them as it does to women. And this is the point.120 [emphasis mine]
There is a lot going on in Keller's proposed moral to the McClintock story. First, there is Keller's emphasis on the fact that women practicing science are practicing it in a world of men. She assumes they will be more likely than these men to have a commitment to dynamic objectivity, and will more readily recognize (and question) masculine theoretical commitments, such as domination or dogmatic approaches to scientific quagmires. Second, there is the assertion that most male scientists view nature as something to be conquered, something to dominate, a view related to the static versions of objectivity and autonomy that Keller claims are too narrow and unproductive to procure greater scientific success than what we have already enjoyed. Keller's third and final point regarding the moral of the McClintock story has to do with how science would be affected if more women joined its ranks. Quite simply, Keller sees women's presence as the only force that would undermine the “commitment of scientists to the masculinity of their profession”.121 This means that embracing dynamic objectivity would become more prevalent. As Keller states, the method of
“[p]aying attention to [nature’s responses] – ‘listening to the material’ – may help us to reconstruct our understanding of science in terms born out of the diverse spectrum of human experience rather than out of the narrow spectrum that our culture has labeled masculine.”122, 123
120 RGS, 174.
121 RGS, 175.
122 RGS, 176.
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Keller's approach to showing that women are more likely to be dynamically objective than men relies primarily on accounts similar to the McClintock story and the assumption that women will be less likely to view nature as an object to be dominated. That is, they would be less likely to “share masculine pleasure in mastering a nature cast in the image of woman as passive, inert and blind”.124
(It is fair to note that, in certain places, Keller rejects the idea that female scientists would be more likely to embrace dynamic objectivity than their male counterparts. This is mostly because of the way scientists are socialized, which allegedly serves to undermine some of the developed femininity in women. That is, even though object relations theory offers one explanation for how women come to be dynamically objective, Keller thinks that scientific education can undermine this. As Keller explains:
“To the extent that science is defined by its past and present practitioners, anyone who aspires to membership in that community must conform to its existing code . . . for this reason, it is unreasonable to expect a sharp differentiation between women scientists [and male scientists].”125)
Keller suggests that in order to transform science, we would need to undermine the
“the commitment of scientists to the masculinity of their profession [and their masculine,
static methods] that would be an inevitable concomitant of the participation of large
numbers of women.”126 Keller also thinks that men who operate well under the auspices
123 Interestingly, Keller does not suggest revising our parenting structures as a way to fix – at the outset – the development of dynamic autonomy, which would on Keller’s view likely lead to the embracing of dynamic objectivity.
124 RGS, 174-175.
125 RGS, 173.
126 RGS, 175.
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of dynamic objectivity could also help transform science, and it seems there is a
significant group of men who adhere to the dynamic approach.127
Stephen Jay Gould, a late twentieth century paleontologist, claimed that his discipline
– evolutionary and taxonomic biology – regularly uses the procedures and reasoning processes used by McClintock. Gould notes that McClintock worked by "a kind of global, intuitive insight", and not the “style of logical and sequential thinking often taken as a canonical mode of reasoning in science”.128 In addition, Gould claims that the
dynamic approach is common to the field of evolutionary and taxonomic biology, though
not to McClintock’s field of molecular biology:
We work directly with complex organisms and their interaction with each other and their physical environment in growth and adult life. We accept the individuality of each organism as fundamentally irreducible, as the definition of biology's uniqueness and complexity. . .[McClintock] is a true taxonomic biologist, a naturalist not a mystic, working in a field unfamiliar with (and often alienated from) this approach.129
Gould’s comments were intended to illuminate the extent to which men can and do employ dynamic objectivity, and to cast some doubt on the extent to which the dynamic approach is unique to women. But Keller never claims that only women can use dynamic objectivity. Rather, she thinks women will be more comfortable with the dynamic approach, and therefore more likely than men to employ it. In any case, Keller’s main concern is with undermining what she views as the commitment of science to domination
127 See Richard Levins and Richard Lewontin, The Dialectical Biologist (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985). [Hereafter in text as Levins & Lewontin.]
128Stephen Jay Gould, An Urchin in the Storm (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1987), 165. [Hereafter in text as US.]
129 US, 167.
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and control, which she thinks can be done by infusing science with individuals who seek to understand science through the dynamic approach to objectivity.
3.3 Warnings about Domination Perhaps the most salient feature of Keller’s work is her attention to issues of domination as they relate to how researchers think about their objects of study. This aspect of her work fits nicely with Catherine MacKinnon’s attention to domination, and it forms a common theme among many feminist philosophers of science, especially in their discussions about objectivity. The idea is that domination, considered a masculine concept, plays a significant though sometimes hidden role in our scientific practice. For example, Keller emphasizes the role of “pacemaker concepts” in theories found in physics and molecular biology. Crudely put, the pacemaker or “master-molecule” concept is the idea that one particular thing – a gene, cell or other singular, identifiable object – is in charge of directing a process or change in a physical system. This one particular thing controls or dominates the fate of a process or system, by itself having full control over necessary changes in that system or process. Keller’s own research focused on cellular mold aggregation, in particular on what triggers the aggregation. Keller notes that her contemporaries weren’t asking quite this question, since they had already assumed that a pacemaker or master-molecule was responsible for triggering the aggregation, even though this assumption was not based on evidence, experimentation or other data.130 In spite of having no evidence for or against the existence of such pacemakers, researchers repeatedly referenced them as part of larger theories about aggregation, and research that did not posit pacemakers was
suppressed or at least ignored.131
130 RGS, 152-153.
131 RGS, 154.
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Later research proved that cells that are in a greater state of starvation are likely to become aggregation centers, and these cells do not need to be pacemakers (though Keller notes they might continue to be regarded as such).132 But the force of the pacemaker concept was intriguing to Keller, and it provided her with a rather simple example of a dogmatic insistence on a process that posits a “single central governor”.133 Keller views a commitment to pacemaker concepts as indicative of a preference for theories that express the domination of one thing or process over another thing or process. Furthermore, Keller’s work emphasizes the extent to which science may (unwittingly) select for individuals who are more comfortable with adversarial or domination/subordination relationships than those who are not. As Keller explains, “I suggest that a science that promises power and the exercise of dominion over nature selects for those individuals for whom power and control are central concerns.”134 (Women, too, can fall into this group.) On this view, a warning given is that a science that promises control of and dominion over nature – allegedly the rhetoric of the received view – will attract individuals with a certain psychological profile.135 That profile contains a preference for theories, approaches and descriptions for and about nature that reflect concepts like domination, control and aggression. The predicted result is that science will have an ideological bent toward domination and control, which can manifest in a variety of ways, from the interest in how best to kill each other, to a preference for pacemaker-type explanations, to the exclusion of seemingly heretical views like those of McClintock. In effect, science can become contaminated by domination.
132 RGS, 155.
133 RGS, 155.
134 RGS, 124.
135 Of course, there are significant debates regarding the type, extent and cause of the (real or perceived) differences in males and females with regard to domination, control and separateness.
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Caring Labor and Science: To further illustrate how far this point can be taken, consider the view of Hilary Rose as found in her article, “Hand, Brain and Heart: A Feminist Epistemology for the Natural Sciences”, where she outlines a plan to “transform science”.136 What is overlooked in science, according to Rose, is reproduction and the “caring labor” traditionally done by women.137 Rose begins by asserting that science needs to be changed, claiming that the “trouble with science and technology from a feminist perspective is that they are integral not only to a system of capitalist domination but also to one of patriarchal domination.”138 Rose proposes that a “feminist knowledge of the natural world [would offer] an emancipatory
rather than an exterminatory science.”139 Here, Rose gives her motivation for proposing a feminist science, which is to rid science of its patriarchal domination and to emancipate women. Much of Rose’s criticism of current science is that it is focused on domination, such as in our warfare development or technological research that has resulted in the destruction of nature with pesticides and genetic tampering. One might suppose that Rose would prefer that science be focused on what she would take to be more “caring” (viz., feminine or feminist) goals, perhaps projects such as ending world hunger, curing diseases of third world countries, or destroying all nuclear weapons. These pursuits are exemplary of a “caring” aspect to one’s research, and do not promote the domination of one group over another, which Rose associates with goals that
are contrary to feminism. Regardless of how one imports Rose’s critique into our scientific practice, she clearly has in mind that issues of domination permeate our scientific landscape, at least as science has been advertised.
136 Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 1983, vol. 9, no. 1, 73-90. [Hereafter in text as Rose.]
137 Rose, 73.
138 Rose, 74.
139 Rose, 75.
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It is reasonable to see Keller’s work, as well as Rose’s critiques of science, as warnings about the role of domination in our ideology and rhetoric of science, as well as the dangers involved in actually practicing science with a preference for domination. Keller’s work, as it relates to McClintock, also gives us an example of how ideological views become a part of actual scientific practice: both McClintock and the community that initially rejected her view carried their ideological views into the laboratory.
3.4 Keller’s Contributions Before summarizing what I believe to be the most beneficial and crucial elements of Keller’s work as it relates to the project of enriching objectivity, the open questions left by her view should be addressed. First, Keller does not give us an adequate cautionary note about how dynamic objectivity can run amuck. That is, the danger with getting so involved with one’s object of study is that one might lose sight of what is a feature of the object and what is a feature that one desires to be true. “Loving” one’s object of study may result in too much involvement on the part of the researcher – which is probably acceptable only if the involvement has a benign effect on the very process under study, and determining whether the affect is benign is a question for investigation. Keller fails to give us a clear mechanism for dealing with the threats to scientific objectivity that have been bothering feminists all along, and threats we should all be nervous about, such as the negative role of bias, interests, values and preference that we might find embedded in our research and theories. How do we know our scientific theories aren’t merely reflections of our biases, desires, religious beliefs, and the like? Keller has not drawn for us an adequate picture for how dynamic objectivity deals with this problem better than its alternative. One solution to this problem will be discussed in Chapter Five, where I will outline a view of intersubjective criticism that makes possible the simultaneous practice of something like dynamic objectivity among individual scientists but additionally makes
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possible the revelation and assessment of ideological views that underlie various scientific programs and theories. Second, although women still comprise the majority of primary caretakers for children (either in the form of biological mothers or childcare professionals), Keller probably has to refine her use of object-relations theory as an explanation for what she takes to be the differences between masculine and feminine behavior in light of the changes that have occurred in the way people parent their children since the original publication of Reflections on Gender and Science in 1985. Though they are not the majority, co- parenting households may well provide information that is crucial to further understanding the psychological development of children. Third, Keller fails to address the issue of how she knows the dynamic approach to objectivity will be more reliable than the static approach. She does give anecdotal evidence to show that dynamic objectivity can have success, and as well argues that the static approach to objectivity prevents real or deep knowledge of one’s object of study. However, I suppose one could demand that she prove – by way of investigation – that the results of dynamic objectivity are more reliable or complete than those of alternate approaches to objectivity. This is a problem she shares with any feminist claim that a specific scientific method is likely to be more successful than any other.140 I suspect the real problem here is not that these claims are unproven, but that they are beside the main point: feminists should not seek to tell us which precise approach to data to use when solving scientific problems, but rather which philosophical view of science and objectivity will be most effective in dealing both with our desire to produce true or correct scientific theories and our (feminist) desire to eliminate any masculine bias
140 Again, see Helen Longino, SSK, 204-209, for a more detailed critique of Keller’s work. Here Longino highlights a tension between Keller’s insistence on “interactionist” models and her endorsement of pluralism in science. The puzzle here is that Keller endorses both dynamic objectivity and the pluralism she takes to be constitutive of “healthy science”, which she claims is one that allows for “diverse conceptions of mind and nature”.
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in science. In addition, a more comprehensive enrichment of objectivity will have to be able to reveal and assess not just masculine assumptions in science, but broader personal and cultural influences as well. I think portions of Keller’s view help with just this task, but that her endorsement of dynamic objectivity ultimately fails to give us an adequate mechanism for addressing the influence of cultural and/or personal interests and values in science. Keller’s discussions regarding what kind of objectivity is best for science conclude with the view that dynamic objectivity can lead us to a deeper understanding of our objects of study. This is allegedly because we become engaged with or connected to our objects of study rather than separate from and dominant over them. How does this fit with a larger philosophical view of science and objectivity that seeks to produce true or correct scientific theories and our (feminist) desire to eliminate any masculine bias in science? For one thing, Keller’s work emphasizes the extent to which certain theoretical interpretations and the selection of theories as good or correct in science are influenced by ideologies. The McClintock case presents one example of how a broad philosophical view can be expressed in a specific scientific project. An awareness of the philosophical or ideological views that might be playing a role in our scientific practice – especially in our justification of certain theories and descriptions of nature – should at least cause us to do some self-reflection, which is precisely what Keller (and others) recommend:
Rather than abandon the quintessentially human effort to understand the world in rational terms, we need to refine that effort. To do this, we need to add to the familiar methods of rational and empirical inquiry the additional process of critical self-reflection . . . attending to the features of the scientific project that belie its universality.141
141 Evelyn Fox Keller, “Feminism and Science”, as printed in Evelyn Fox Keller and Helen Longino, eds., Feminism & Science (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 32. Incidentally, it is in
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Most of Chapter Four of this paper is devoted to examining the suggestion that if
researchers reflect on what they are doing in science – and do so in a way sensitive to
the role ideology and philosophy play in science – then they are bound to improve upon
the extent to which science is objective. This self-reflection and an examination of our
interests and values becomes necessary once we are convinced that there is something
we cannot discover without it, namely the very ideological views that get expressed –
unwittingly, perhaps – in our specific scientific programs.
In addition, Keller’s worries about dogma, and her insistence that alternatives to
dogmatic views be properly treated, means that scientific objectivity will have to be
defined socially, not just on an individual level; the social nature of science will be
addressed in Chapter Five. Indeed, had the practice of science been isolated to
individuals merely working in lonely, vacuous arenas, McClintock would never have
been vindicated. The social nature of science allows that many different views exist in
the community and though dominant views may overshadow others, those alternate
views do exist. In fact, the history of science shows that challenges to dogma frequently
result in scientific progress.142
Finally, Keller’s preference for dynamic objectivity raises questions about whether there are any rules for individual epistemic or scientific practice other than going with
the flow of your own approach. While I think that ultimately her views do not give us a
this paper that Keller advises against giving up on the notion objectivity. Here Keller outlines further arguments against MacKinnon’s view that objectivity is a myth.
142 It is not clear which views will be challenged, though in Chapter Five the process of intersubjective criticism is supposed to make sense of some of this. What gets challenged will probably depend on what is viewed as questionable or problematic by researchers who do not share the views of those who endorse what is being challenged.
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way to assess the role of cultural and personal interests and values in science, she has certainly been influential in raising the question of whether individual scientists should be adhering to certain approaches – such as being connected to their objects of study – other that the ones she thinks are typically emphasized in scientific training.
Keller’s view places requirements on individual scientists by suggesting that dynamic objectivity, as well as (individual) self-reflection, increases the objectivity of our scientific practice and theories. In the next chapter, I’ll examine a more robust account of the role of critical self-reflection in securing or increasing objectivity in science.
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Chapter 4
Sandra Harding’s Strong Objectivity
Sandra Harding gives us many warnings about the shortcomings of objectivity as it
plays a role in the received view of science, and she proposes some solutions to these
problems. In her papers “Strong Objectivity: A Response to the New Objectivity
Question”143 and “Rethinking Standpoint Epistemology: What is ‘Strong
Objectivity’?”144, Sandra Harding argues that the traditional use of objectivity is far too
weak to achieve the maximally objective research that is the desired outcome of scientific
endeavors, where we hope that the views we accept are less false or less distorted than
those we discard.
4.1 Weak Objectivity
Harding depicts objectivity as characterized by the received view of science as a method for achieving the goals of what she calls “objectivism”, where objectivism is understood to be an endorsement of the conception of objectivity as neutrality with regard social and political preferences or biases.145 She calls this kind of objectivity
143 As printed in Janet Kourany, The Gender of Science (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2002), 340-351. [Hereafter in text as Response.]
144 As printed in Evelyn Fox Keller and Helen Longino, eds., Feminism and Science (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 235-248. Originally printed in Linda Alcoff and Elizabeth Potter, eds., Feminist Epistemologies (New York: Routledge, 1993). [Hereafter in text as SO.]
145 Response, 342.
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“weak objectivity”, and thinks that this is what is mandated by the received view of
science. So, based on objectivism, when social and political views seep into science, it is
because scientists are not remaining neutral with regard to social and political values.146
According to Harding, when political forces from outside science attempt to use science to further specific interests, weak objectivity works fairly well, though imperfectly.147 She thinks of this method of objectivity as weak because it is only able to
deal with the influence of cultural or personal interests or values (or, as she sometimes
calls them, assumptions) that are imposed on science from outside the scientific
community. The story of Lysenko provides a good case for putting Harding’s views
about weak objectivity into context.
The Lysenko Incident: T.D. Lysenko was a proponent of the idea that Mendelian
genetics posed a threat to the Soviet people. He argued in favor of Lamarkism, or the
view that organisms (in particular agricultural ones) could be transformed by deliberate
environmental manipulation and grafting. On this view, heredity is purely a
physiological process that is the result of an organism’s interaction with its
environment.148 Perhaps the most contentious claim made by those in support of
Lamarkism was that gene theory was purely metaphysical, and genes themselves only
theoretical or mystical.149
146 In SQF, 26, Harding calls this view feminist empiricism. In addition, see SO, 237ff, for her admission that this is a description of something more like naïve empiricism, and quite unlike many more sophisticated versions of feminist empiricism.
147 Response, 342.
148 Levins & Lewontin, 166, 167.
149 Levins & Lewontin, 168.
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The need of the Soviets to produce more and better wheat, as well the land’s general
unsuitability for growing winter or spring wheat, led to the practical implementation of
Lamarkism in Soviet agriculture in the 1930s through the 1960s.150 A process of chilling
the seeds of winter wheat and then planting them in the spring to avoid the cold, hard
freeze of winter, as well as the drought of late summer, is known as vernalization. The
idea was that the breed or type of wheat was not as important as the conditions under
which it was grown; change in the conditions could change the wheat itself. On the basis
of a small experiment run by Lysenko’s father, who soaked forty-eight kilos of winter
wheat, grew it beside spring wheat and claimed to have reaped a better harvest from the
vernalized winter wheat, Lysenko’s ideas were promoted and accepted by the Soviet government. 151
Though there was never a scientific basis for the far-reaching claim that Lysenko and
his supporters made – and, in fact, they completely dismissed genetics as a factor in the
heredity of phenotypes – many Soviets embraced these ideas in the hopes that they could
revitalize the Soviet agricultural system. Lysenko’s process of vernalization was
eventually shown to be a failure, even though Lysenko had been given much attention
and power by the Soviets before his theory’s ultimate demise.152
The method of weak objectivity seems to handle the influence of Lysenko’s ideology
on what he and his supporters considered science. Consider this interpretation of the
story: These researchers violated the norms of objectivism, because they did not remain
150 Levins & Lewontin, 164. Also, see Levins & Lewontin, 171-174, for details regarding the harsh and unpredictable climate of most of Russia, which appear to make it difficult to grow nearly everything.
151William Broad and Nicholas Wade, Betrayers of the Truth (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1982), 186. [Hereafter in text as B&W.]
152 B&W, 191.
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neutral with regard to their own social and political beliefs, and in fact had been
influenced by their Marxist political views, especially views regarding the relationship
and interaction between objects and their surroundings.153 So, one way to view the end
of this story is to think that researchers within the scientific community employed the
method of weak objectivity to disprove the claims of Lysenko, and indeed, to illuminate
the facts about Mendelian genetics.
4.2 Strong Objectivity
Harding thinks that because objectivism and the method of weak objectivity can be
somewhat useful in uncovering the inappropriate role of ideology in science, especially in
cases like the Lysenko affair, we become overly (and wrongly) confident about our ability to be neutral with regard to social and political values, as well as about how well objectivism serves us in the first place. Harding thinks we are mistaken on both counts.
This is because she thinks there is a different threat to science that results in ideology being a driving force behind a scientific theory, and this threat comes from within the scientific community. Harding argues that this happens when widely held and shared cultural beliefs shape the whole of normal science. She thinks that the procedures of objectivism, and the method of weak objectivity, are too weak to deal with this problem, which can be best highlighted with the following example.
153 Levins & Lewontin, 195. See this section also for their argument regarding why we should see the Marxism of Lysenko as “naïve”, “anti-intellectual” and “simplistic”, and not representative of a philosophically sophisticated version of Marxism.
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Reproductive Models and “Sperm Sagas”: Consider the model of conception that
was standard science in the Western world until around 1980.154 As early as 1795, the
role of the egg in conception was seen as merely passive, while the sperm were seen as
being the active, aggressive participants in conception.155 As one research group notes, in
textbook descriptions of conception, and in the formal model of conception used by
biologists prior to 1980, the egg was always depicted as passively waiting or
“slumbering” until awakened by the active sperm that itself triggers the beginnings of
human life. The romanticized, storybook language of the textbooks is also worth note:
invariably, these stories of conception sound like “sperm sagas”, where the valiant sperm
hero fights inhospitable conditions, overcomes his competition, and finally wins the
patiently waiting damsel.156
By continually depicting the sperm as the active, controlling player in conception, the
role of the egg in facilitating cell growth was completely overlooked. Indeed, if the egg is merely passive and cannot facilitate conception, then failure to initiate conception would most likely be blamed on variances in sperm (perhaps they aren’t valiant enough) or perhaps on a sperm’s “rejection” of the egg (perhaps the sperm don’t think this particular ovum damsel is worth saving). Assuming the egg is completely passive leads to scientific questions, problems and research programs that focus around the assumption
154 The Biology and Gender Study Group: Athena Beldecos, Sarah Bailey, Scott Gilbert, Karen Hicks, Lori Krenschaft, Nancy Niemczyk, Rebecca Rosenberg, Stephanie Schaertel, and Andrew Wedel, “The Importance of the Feminist Critique for Contemporary Cell Biology”, as printed in Janet Kourany, The Gender of Science (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc., 2002), 192-203. Originally printed in Hypatia vol. 3, no. 1 (Spring 1988), 61-76. [Hereafter in text as BGSG.]
155 BGSG, 195.
156 See BGSG, 193-195 for excerpts from various older textbooks.
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that the female reproductive organisms are passive and the male organisms active or
aggressive.
Though these stories and models may capture some of what happens in conception,
the problem is that taken as they are, these stories are false. For one thing, the egg is not
passive, and in fact the sperm does not penetrate the egg in the way traditionally depicted
in the sperm saga models. Rather, using scanning electron microscopy, it was discovered
that tiny microvilli on the outside of the egg actually grasp the sperm and draw it into the
cell; the sperm does not penetrate the egg on its own.157 Moreover, there are secretions
produced in the female reproductive tract that facilitate conception, and enzymes produced by the sperm to assist with conception do not work unless they are in the presence of certain other female secretions.158 The entire conception process, contrary to
the once-standard view, is much more of a harmonious partnership than the sperm saga
stories imply. Indeed, the sperm sagas completely miss the presence of certain features
of the egg and various enzymes that must be present in order for conception to
commence.
However, many feminist critics of science note that the sperm sagas did represent what were at the time widely shared views about the passivity of everything female and the aggressive or active natures of things male. What is relevant for Harding’s view is that these stories were challenged from outside the prevailing view: the recognition that our description of conception may not be complete or correct stemmed, in part, from
157 BGSG, 195.
158 BGSG, 195-196.
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feminist critiques of cell and molecular biology.159 For one thing, feminists claimed that the concept of females (and female “things”) as passive did not cohere with their own experiences (i.e., they weren’t passive), and for another, feminists were simply insulted by the idea that everything female should be properly seen as passive rather than aggressive or active. Hence their critiques prompted questions about the widespread cultural assumptions underlying so much of the theoretical and experimental work of reproductive biologists. Researchers then began to utilize new instrumentation, notably the electron microscope, to explore the physical traits of the egg and sperm, and used such instrumentation to really examine the prevailing assumptions about the egg. Their findings did not fit with the prevailing view, and this led to subsequent changes to the biological models of human conception.
The Inadequacy of Weak Objectivity: Harding thinks that the method of weak objectivity would be inadequate for bringing about the kind of change found at the end of the sperm saga case, and that in general, weak objectivity is inadequate for ensuring that science is moving toward less false theories about the social and natural world. This is because the method of weak objectivity does not give us a mechanism for uncovering interest, value and bias when they are so widespread that they become constitutive of normal science, and therefore appear invisible to those in the scientific community. The method of weak objectivity cannot systematically, as Harding puts it, “identify and eliminate from the results of research those social values, interests and agendas that are shared by the entire scientific community or virtually all of it.”160
159 BGSG, 196.
160 SO, 238.
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The sperm saga case exemplifies the role of interests and values (sexist ones) as they
play a widespread role in science in just the way Harding has in mind here, as do studies
about race and intelligence, where race is at least a complicated enough concept to first
question whether it is a biologically definitive concept before using such a concept in
theorizing. But like the sperm sagas, research projects into race and intelligence are
made to seem reasonable (even scientific) only in light of widespread cultural
assumptions about race.161
Moreover, Harding thinks that the method of weak objectivity actually gets in the way
of uncovering deeply rooted bias because it fosters a separation between thinking and
feeling, so that scientists continue to be accustomed to not asking questions about their
feelings regarding their own politics or ethics as they (might) relate to their own practice
of science. The method of weak objectivity, on Harding’s view, permits scientists to
remain blind to their own widespread beliefs, in part because objectivism tells them they
have to keep politics, ethics and other biases out of their research altogether.
As well, objectivism, under which weak objectivity makes sense, calls for the
elimination of all cultural and personal values and interests, and not the revelation and
assessment of such factors. So, the method of weak objectivity does not provide a
mechanism for determining interests and values that enlarge our understandings of the
social and natural world and those that limit it.162
Because of the inability of the method of weak objectivity to help us examine widely
shared cultural assumptions, as well as the problems with objectivism regarding the
161 In addition, the adherence or preference for master molecule or hierarchical structures, discussed in Chapter Three of this work, would serve as an example of another widespread cultural bias.
162 Response, 345.
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insistence on a science that is completely neutral with regard to interests and values,
Harding suggests an alternative conception of science, rejecting objectivism, and proposes an alternate method of objectivity, rejecting the method of weak objectivity.
Harding does not think we can expect science to be completely free of all social and political values, and is therefore in agreement with Quine163 and Kuhn164 that objectivism, or the idea that science can be done absent values and interests, is incorrect.
However, she does think that science should not be comprised of questions and views chosen on the basis of mere political or cultural ideology. Hence, she calls for a method to determine just what kind of role ideology is playing in our science, which she thinks can then facilitate discussions about those ideologies. The result she hopes for is that once engaged in this process, we will have cause to be more confident that whatever our ultimately accepted scientific views are, they are less false or less distorted than the alternatives.
The Need for Strong Objectivity: Harding calls the method of questioning deeply rooted cultural assumptions “strong objectivity”. Harding thinks that the method of strong objectivity will allow us to uncover values and interests “that first constitute scientific problems, and then select central concepts, hypotheses to be tested, and research designs.”165
What she has in mind supposes a collapse of the contexts of discovery and justification, claiming that what is considered ‘science’ comprises both the activities in
163 SQF, 36-37.
164 SQF, 197-210.
165 Response, 345.
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discovery and justification, and that sometimes it is hard to see where one stops and the
other starts. On this view of science, some of the activities usually reserved for the
justification process would now be aimed at things that typically occur in discovery. As
Harding explains, “values and interests within a research community are to be added to
the phenomena to be analyzed with scientific rationality.”166
In addition, the method of strong objectivity calls for the need to put the knower on
the same “critical, causal plane as the objects of knowledge”167, and Harding thinks that
theorizing from the perspectives of marginalized persons can do this. In essence, she is
suggesting that we ask about our research problems, programs and methods, “How would
this look to a marginalized person?” Another way to think about this exercise is this:
Harding is asking us to think about how a particular scientific project – its questions,
methods and results – might look to someone who is either not a beneficiary of such
research or does not share many of the same cultural assumptions as the majority of the
researchers engaged in such a project.
That is, simply looking at the knower from the knower’s perspective is not enough;
scientists endorsing the sperm sagas did not imagine anything to be amiss with their
insistence on the passivity of the egg (indeed, they took their assumptions about the passivity of females as evidence for the passivity of the egg) precisely because their own perspectives and experiences did not clash with the view of female-as-passive.
But feminists recognized that these sagas and the characterizations of all that is female as passive didn’t cohere with (all or most of) women’s experiences; indeed, feminists do
166 Response, 350.
167 SO, 244.
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not see themselves as passive, and do not in fact act passively most of the time, so the
female-as-passive view does not cohere with their experiences. At the very least,
feminists critics were insulted by the insistence on the passivity of everything female in
nature, including the female reproductive system. So, in answer to the question, “How would the sperm sagas look to marginalized people?” – and where women are marginalized group being reflected upon – the sperm sagas look suspiciously sexist.
For Harding, it is the scrutiny prompted by a view from the marginalized perspective,
characteristic of the method of strong objectivity, which facilitates the emergence or
visibility of ideas, questions and theories that one would not have from the prevailing
perspective. Note that the method of strong objectivity, then, could be thought of as a
method for discovering certain ideas, rather than a claim that the world will always look
different for marginalized persons. So, it might be that the method of strong objectivity
does not always reveal anything new or different than the prevailing view – but
employing the method makes discovering something new or different from outside the
prevailing cultural views a possibility.
The Synthroid Case: Harding views the method of strong objectivity as necessary
for uncovering the role of widespread cultural biases as seen in the cases of the sperm
sagas or race and intelligence studies. But there is another case in which widespread
cultural assumptions are not the culprit behind ideology-driven science, but where I think
strong objectivity can be useful (and is, perhaps, necessary).
Consider the story of the Synthroid controversy. In 1987, Boots Pharmaceuticals
(now a subsidiary of Knoll Pharmaceuticals) contracted with a researcher at the
University of California – San Francisco to determine whether their own brand name
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thyroid drug, Synthroid, was “biologically equivalent” to less expensive generic
alternatives.168 The researcher, Betty Dong, had already published research indicating that certain serum levels in patients’ blood varied when generic products were used, and did not when the brand name drug, Synthroid, was used. Her initial research appeared to be very useful to Boots/Knoll, and they hired Dr. Dong to continue her research.
But what Dong found after further research was that far from being inferior to
Synthroid, the generic alternatives were quite adequate when compared to Synthroid; no
difference was found when comparing Synthroid to the cheaper generic alternatives. Of
course, Boots/Knoll did not take the news well, and threatened to sue Dr. Dong if she
published her findings in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) as
planned for April 1994.169 Eventually, however, Dong’s research was published in JAMA
in 1997, nearly a decade after the start of her research, and a full seven years after she
obtained her results. In that time, Boots/Knoll managed to keep the market for Synthroid
to itself.
Aside from the legal issues surrounding the Synthroid controversy – Knoll settled a
lawsuit out of court for $98 million for overcharging people for seven years – there are
scientific problems here, as well. In what follows, I’ll argue that Harding’s method of
strong objectivity can address just these problems.
For one thing, on the received view, the identity of the researcher is not supposed to
play a role in the research being done; researchers are allegedly trained to disallow their
168 There are many good sources for this historical account. Here, I’ve used the account as found in Frank J. Ascione, Duane M. Kirking, Caroline A. Gaither, and Lynda S. Welage, Journal of American Pharmaceutical Association, “Historical Overview of Generic Medication Policy”, July/August 2001; 41: 567-577. The story of the Synthroid controversy is on p. 572. [Hereafter in text as JAPhA.]
169 JAPhA, 572.
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interests and values to enter into their scientific practice. By disallowing discussion about the choice of researcher – because it doesn’t “matter” to real science – Boots/Knoll was able to choose someone whom they thought might find in their favor and apparently not raise any suspicion within the scientific community; it is common practice for for- profit companies to choose and pay their own researchers. That is, they chose Betty
Dong for a reason unrelated to her scientific skills, namely that her initial research appeared to show that Synthroid was biologically superior to the generic alternatives.
Indeed, most pharmaceutical companies do choose and pay their own researchers, and
then (through the use of professional sales and marketing personnel) provide the results
to scientists and doctors who in turn are supposed to recommend these drugs to patients.
The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) organization has
produced a 10-page document outlining their “Code on Interactions Regarding
Healthcare Professionals”, which details the kinds and amounts of gifts and meals that
sales representatives are permitted to give to doctors. “Modest” meals and “educational” seminars are permitted and all persons working within the pharmaceutical field are
“strongly encouraged” to abide by this code of ethics. Of course, while the document stresses that “[t]his Code is to reinforce our intention that our interactions with healthcare
professionals are to benefit patients and to enhance the practice of medicine”, it fails to
mention that representatives from pharmaceutical companies must have as their first
priority – out of self-preservation – the increase in sales of the product(s) they represent.
That is, the pharmaceutical companies fail to either recognize or admit that their
“intention” to simultaneously benefit patients and to sell more drugs is somewhat suspect,
especially when these two goals may often conflict.
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In addition, in December 2000, the American Medical Association (AMA) adopted a
policy regarding the conflict of interest that arises when physicians are hired to research
certain biomedical drugs, pieces of equipment or devices, etc. 170 This document
specifically states that any payment for such research must be publicly announced and commensurate with the effort put forth by the doctor and at fair market value, along with
several other requirements. However, such precautions seem to be inadequate for dealing
with the close relationship between researchers and the companies who fund their
research, and the outlines for ethical behavior do little to ensure that those with financial
interests (and the financial power to fulfill those interests) do not get to influence what
goes on in scientific research and analysis.
This entire system displays an institutionalized failure to even follow the demands of
weak objectivity (and objectivism), but this failure has actually become part and parcel of
normal science in the field of pharmaceutical research and development. So, there is not
a widespread cultural bias operating in this bit of history, for in fact, our culture seems to
prefer research done by disinterested third parties. However, the acceptance of such
questionable research methods is so ingrained in the scientists working on
pharmaceuticals that they have become unquestioned methods – and even these dubious
methods have become accepted protocol as outlined in the ethical guidelines of both the
PhRMA and the AMA.
The flow of information from interested first parties to consumers seems antithetical
to the goals of strong objectivity (and even, in my mind, to those of weak objectivity) and
this system would have to be eliminated by Harding’s insistence that we critically
170 Journal of the American Medical Association, 2002; 287: 78-84. (Policy Statement, no author listed.)
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scrutinize the identities of the researchers, their backgrounds, where their financing
comes from, etc. That is, when researches asked themselves, “How would this research
look to a poor person?”, they might well answer, “It looks like we’re searching for and/or
finding these results to make money”, or something like this.
So, if we employed the method of strong objectivity, the very choice of the researcher
would become part of the scrutiny scientists are required to give to the data. If the
method of strong objectivity was taken to an extreme, I suppose we could even require that persons with a real interest in how the data turns out, such as pharmaceutical
companies, be disallowed from choosing or financing the scientists who conduct the
research these firms require; that is, we would no longer deem research of this sort
“scientific”. Instead, these choices could be relegated to disinterested third parties that
exist for the sole purpose of ensuring that objectivity is maximized.171
Interestingly, the individuals funding Dr. Dong’s research surely believed their
funding gave them the right to withhold scientific information for a full seven years, and
they did not hesitate to nearly ruin Dr. Dong’s career with legal action they could well
afford to take. I’m not sure that Harding’s strong objectivity can correct for this, since
these individuals are not, strictly speaking, scientists, nor are their goals the same as those
of an honest researcher.
Consider how well this worked: During the seven years in which only a few
individuals knew the truth about Synthroid, the public “scientific” or “objective” view
about Synthroid was that it was superior to the generic alternatives. Doctors prescribed
Synthroid (and not the generic drugs) precisely because the data they had been given,
171 In researching the Synthroid case, I found that many drug tests are not done in the double-blind fashion so highly touted by scientists as the factor that makes their research objective.
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usually by the pharmaceutical representatives, indicated that preliminary research showed
Synthroid to be more effective than the generic alternatives. In essence, the scientific view was that Synthroid was better than the generic alternatives.
But this view turned out to be not very scientific at all. The blatant interference of
Boots/Knoll in the publication of the truth about Synthroid points to the need for scientists to examine the non-empirical factors that may be playing a role in their practice, in precisely the way suggested by Harding. Extra-empirical factors that give a group or individual the power to make their view (look) “true” are the very ones that need to be examined by the scientific researchers themselves.
Of course, under our current system of scientific review, there are some practical problems one would encounter in trying to do this. For starters, Boots/Knoll had legal power over JAMA that effectively quashed the ability of a respected journal to print the truth. Second, there is not severe enough punishment for those who violate the standards that allegedly characterize “science”; deliberately violating the standards of scientific research has not precluded Knoll Pharmaceuticals from engaging in other research that is currently being used as the basis for scientific “knowledge”.
These practical matters are somewhat less complex than the philosophical issue
lingering in this story, and it regards the issue of individual versus community
knowledge. Note that long before JAMA published its paper exposing the fact that
Synthroid is not superior to its generic equals, some individuals knew that the claims of
Boots/Knoll were incorrect (or at least suspect). One might argue that the ultimate fact that the generic drugs were as acceptable as Synthroid didn’t become real “science” until
it became public and accepted by the greater scientific community. The role of the
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community, then, seems central to whether or not something gets counted as scientific; until it had the stamp of community approval, the facts about Synthroid were not part of
the science we now accept. The practical problems outlined above, as well as the issue
regarding individual versus community knowledge, will be addressed in Chapter Five.
The Synthroid case appears to be one that Harding thinks could be handled by mere
insistence on the necessity for the separation of discovery and justification that is characteristic of the familiar (though false) story we’ve been told about science (much
like the Lysenko affair was handled). But I’ve tried to show that when a scientific
community ignores its own failure to see (what seem to be obvious) inappropriate or
questionable research methods, and then allows those methods to become sanctioned
practices, it is only the method of strong objectivity that can uncover this.
That is, this is a case in which the method of weak objectivity (and the mandate of objectivism) is not being followed, but there is an ideology that it is being followed.
Thus, the interests of the pharmaceutical companies have become part of normal science
so that it does not even look like there is a problem. It is these cases, in addition to the
cases that resemble the sperm sagas, which require the method of strong objectivity.
4.3 Summary Harding’s view of strong objectivity retains much of what seems useful about what she thinks of as weak objectivity, namely that it attempts to weed out those aspects of our reasoning that seem inappropriately guided by ideology or social and political interests. But Harding thinks that, far from being too strong, the traditional concept of objectivity is too weak. Harding takes traditional or weak objectivity to be something like value- neutrality, where what we strive for is to have no values in science. She thinks this doesn’t happen in actual practice, though we (mistakenly) perpetuate an ideal of
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objectivity that science is value-neutral. This, she thinks, obscures the influence of values in science, and prevents us from being able to make good decisions about just which values and interests are good for science and which distort our views of the world. Instead of striving for value-neutrality, Harding advocates the idea that critical analysis of the subjects of science is necessary for increasing the extent to which science is objective, in the sense of being less false or less distorted than the alternatives. Harding is recommending that the individual scientist be considered part of the “object of knowledge from the perspective of the scientific method”, and therefore should ask self- reflective questions about their own assumptions, biases and values.172 As well, the projects selected should be questioned, especially in regard to whom it will benefit. For Harding, the maximization of objectivity involves more than just following the rigors of the scientific method, repeating observations, etc. Harding’s recommendation that we need to scrutinize the researcher in much the same way we do the research is founded in the view that objectivity is mitigated by our cultural and personal interests and/or values. While we cannot function without some ideology or other – and hence cannot truly practice “value-neutral” science – we should be able to have a mechanism for maximizing the extent to which our theories about the social and natural world are driven by something other than (arbitrary) ideology. Harding thinks that this same mechanism – strong objectivity – will prevent the “might makes right” science she finds objectionable, because it will expose views that are accepted by some dominant group, but in fact not well supported by evidence, other accepted theories, or in the face of contradictory evidence. In addition, Harding’s views highlight the need for the dominant group to be challenged by those who do not share some of their views, though it is open for debate whether strong objectivity can do just this task. Consider that values, biases and/or
172 SO, 244.
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underlying world-views play a powerful role in generating the very scrutiny that is required for a scientific theory, hypothesis or description to become accepted. This scrutiny usually comes from what scientists think of as peer review. However, peers often have the same values and perspectives, so the kind of criticism that like-minded individuals will launch at any given theory might not be as illuminating as those that come from outside a community with shared values. And this is a point Harding does appreciate, but fails to make clear how strong objectivity – the requirement of being self-reflective – can accomplish this. Peer review done from within the dominant group is not likely to shed light on any serious issues or underlying assumptions that others (with values that are relevantly different from the dominant group) may find objectionable – it is just difficult (if not impossible, in some cases) to police one’s own biases and prejudices. Indeed, it was feminists who exposed sexist medical research, and anti-feminists who brought feminist errors to light; historically scientists have not been very adept at (or even interested in) being able to see how their own interests or biases or values may be playing a role in the science they practice. (As suggested by the Synthroid case, they often make the false claim, though with the honest belief, that they are correcting for their own biases or values even when we’ve seen they are have not done so.) Certainly one way, and the way Harding seems to suggest, to engage in the method of strong objectivity is for individual scientists to place themselves in the shoes of those who are marginalized. This requires them to reflect on how their own research programs or questions or theories might look to someone who is culturally different than they are, or to someone who is socially, economically or politically marginalized. On this view, a white female researcher may ask what her program might look like to a poor black person, and a black American male researcher might ask what his research might look like to a third-world inhabitant, etc. While this self-reflection may not reveal any troubling social or cultural issues in the research (i.e., we have reason to think that not all
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scientific research programs are problematic in this way), Harding thinks it has the potential to do so in cases where there are underlying social and cultural interests or values playing a role in science. But Harding is realistic about the ability of our current scientific community to carry out the demand for engaging strong objectivity, since, as she points out, natural scientists are not trained to be (nor are they interested in being) self-reflective in the way the method of strong objectivity requires. Furthermore, she claims researchers will be hostile to the idea that factors they see as “outside science” will now have to be adjudicated along with science-as-usual.173 In addition to some of these problems, Harding’s call for scientists to deliberately employ the method of strong objectivity relies heavily on the behavior of the individual. That is, the method of strong objectivity is expected to operate at the level of each individual scientist who must (if engaged in the method) put him/herself in the position of someone with different cultural views, and then theorize about his/her own work from this perspective. However, another possibility is that the method of strong objectivity could operate at the level of a scientific community that itself is comprised of individuals who vary widely with regard to political and religious views, social and ethical values, cultural and economic backgrounds, etc. The result of this might be that the method of strong
objectivity would happen rather organically, instead of as a result of deliberation on the part in individual scientists. It is not that the individual scientists are not crucial for employing the method of strong objectivity, but rather that placing emphasis on the structure and composition of a community can more readily facilitate the method of strong objectivity than merely focusing attention on individual scientists. Helen Longino
173 Response, 351.
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emphasizes this possibility, and I’ll discuss her suggestions for enriching our concept of objectivity in the following chapter. Overall, Harding’s view provides yet another clue regarding the importance of looking at not just individual scientists, but at the communities in which they practice for ways to enrich and fortify our concept of objectivity. When Harding talks about the need to eliminate “might makes right” science, she is talking about the kind of might or power that comes from membership in a particular group – individuals who share the same beliefs and values get their power from their combined efforts. In order to ensure that science is being properly policed, then, we have to look at the epistemic value of a properly constituted community, one that seeks to ensure that its theories and descriptions of the natural and social world are not primarily driven by interests or values.
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Chapter 5
Helen Longino: Science as Social
In general terms, the central problem regarding objectivity in science as seen by
Harding is that under (what she considers) traditional conceptions of objectivity, we are unable to reveal and assess the role of cultural and personal interests and values in
science. If the role being played by cultural and personal interests and values is judged to be bad for science, or if the role being played is deemed inappropriately large, then, it is argued, we need to have a way to eliminate or mitigate this role, thus increasing the extent to which science is objective. Harding recognizes that one way to reveal and
assess interests and values in science is to examine them from an alternate point of view,
and she claims that current conceptions of objectivity are inadequate for this task.
This is the same problem as seen by Helen Longino, who attempts to solve this
problem not by paying attention to what individual scientists are doing – though this is certainly part of the process – but by how the scientific community is comprised and behaves. Longino claims that science is social, in the sense that doing science requires the interaction of individuals. I will address Longino’s claims regarding the social nature of science, and then show how she takes this to be relevant to increasing the objectivity of science.
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5.1 Science as a Social Practice
The idea that scientific practice is social and that a community generates scientific knowledge is central to Longino’s views about objectivity. Longino’s claim that science is social involves both a weaker and stronger claim. The stronger claim is that science is necessarily social and that individuals can only have scientific knowledge derivative of what a scientific community already knows. The weaker claim is that science is social only contingently; that the extensive, on-going education, technical skill and reliance on the expertise of others needed to do modern science make science primarily and practically (though not necessarily) a social endeavor.
In what follows, I’ll give some reasons Longino is motivated to think of science as necessarily social, and others to show why one might only want to characterize science as contingently social. Then, her view of how the social nature of science helps to increase the objectivity of science will be presented. Ultimately I will argue that her views about objectivity can still be useful and informative even if we do not agree that science is necessarily social.
Science as Necessarily Social: Longino makes some important (though rather obvious) points about the social nature of science. For one thing, she notes that scientists rely on each other for ideas, instruments, and specific experimental methods, as well as for the general acceptance of each other’s views about the natural world. In addition, the education required for becoming a scientist means that one has been initiated into a community that has its own procedures and traditions. Finally, she notes that the very
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existence of the scientific community relies heavily on our greater society valuing what
scientists do.174
As she sees it, scientific knowledge arises from a process that requires the attention,
critiques and modifications suggested by other individuals.175 Furthermore, she notes
that scientific knowledge is a special kind of knowledge that cannot rightly be called
“scientific” unless it arises from the kind of complex social interactions that characterize
the scientific community, and points to peer review as evidence for the social nature of
science. Peer review is supposed to be the “gatekeeper” that determines which research
will be funded, which papers are published in professional journals, and in general what
gets to count as scientific knowledge.176, 177
Though these points may seem obvious, they serve as the basis for Longino’s stronger claim regarding the social nature of science. Longino insists that science is necessarily a
social practice, as well as that scientific knowledge can only be attributed to a community
of knowers. On her view, individuals can have scientific knowledge, but only because
they are part of a larger scientific community that has such knowledge.
Individual knowers, on Longino’s view, are not like devices that merely respond to
stimuli. Motion-sensitive security lights are built to respond to motion by switching on a
light. But we would not want to allow that the security lights “know” when motion
174 SSK, 67.
175 SSK, 68.
176 SSK, 68-69.
177 Elsewhere, Longino gives a comprehensive account of social knowledge that she thinks will be applicable to most or all types of knowledge, though she does not think her account has to be universalizable to all forms of knowledge. In addition, Longino claims that “identifying some form of knowledge that is not social . . . has no implications for [her central arguments about the social nature of knowledge].” See The Fate of Knowledge. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002), 209-211. [Hereafter in text as Fate.]
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occurs; this attribution is something we reserve for creatures that are more complex than
mere devices. Human beings are the kinds of creatures who can do more than register
information or respond to stimuli. We are thinking beings who can reflect on things and decide the accuracy, justification and relevance of the various ideas and conclusions that
arise in our minds from our interaction with the world.
In addition, humans can engage in critical reflection of their thoughts and ideas – they can think, “I wonder if this is correct?” – and can be sensitive to issues about what they should or should not conclude from various observations. Moreover, they can reason about how best to organize their observations into meaningful theories about the world.
But the norms about what humans should or should not conclude, or how best to organize observations, are generated purely from what individuals think. In addition,
Longino thinks that gaining scientific knowledge seems to require meeting norms that may not be typical of other kinds of knowledge. The norms of science – how experiments are to be done, what is considered proper reasoning, how observations should be recorded, the appropriate terms and language of science, the proper technical tools or mathematics of science, etc. – emerged from a social practice of science, and individuals will be required to satisfy certain norms and rules which are (or have been) determined by the scientific community. On this view, individuals can’t (and don’t) establish the norms of science by themselves; rather, groups of scientists interacting have produced the norms regarding what counts as scientifically acceptable practice.
Specifically, Longino thinks that there are two features of science for which the
normative constraints of these features come from the interaction of scientists, and not
from individual scientists: scientific observation and reasoning. She proposes that both
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scientific observation and reasoning involve the interaction among different voices and are therefore social in this sense.178
Scientific Observation: Longino claims that the observations of science are ordered and organized with regard to certain socially determined goals. So, when chemistry students are asked to observe the laboratory conditions in the initial phase of an experiment, the typical and acceptable observations will regard things like relative humidity, room temperature or light conditions, but not things like the number of students in the laboratory or the height of the lab assistant. Students learning to perform experiments must abide by certain norms of scientific observation. These norms, which pertain to the appropriate ways to record observations and specific rules regarding what counts as observed results, are not, argues Longino, the result of individual efforts.
Rather, they arise from the social interactions among scientists, which result in some kind of consensus about the norms of observation. Also, scientists must negotiate to determine what counts as a competent experiment.179 As Longino explains,
The ordering [of observation] rests on a consensus as to the centrality of certain categories (the speed of a reaction versus the color of its product), the boundaries of concepts and classes (just what counts as an acid), the ontological and organizational commitments of a model or theory, and so on. Observation is . . . an organized sensory encounter that registers what is perceived in relation to categories, concepts and classes that are socially produced. Both ordering and organization are (dependent on) social processes.180
In addition, Longino claims that science requires observations to be evident or accessible to others. She thinks that this requires something like the repeatability of an
178 Fate, 99.
179 Fate, 101.
180 Fate, 100.
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experiments, where even when experiments are not repeated (as most are not), the
presumption is that another observer in a similar experiment would perceive similar results.181
Of course, Longino notes that it is usually only in controversial cases that the
scientific community requires public repetition of an experiment – in effect saying,
“Show us so that we can judge” – but she claims that the fact that we require repeatability
of observation in controversial cases demonstrates the supposition that if pressed, we could do the same in non-controversial cases.182 Longino claims that when different perceivers “ascertain intersubjective invariance (or its absence)” of an observation,
something like legitimacy is afforded those observations.183 This, says Longino, confers
upon those observations a kind of “status” that is required for an observation to count as
scientific. She claims that, “There is no way but the interaction of multiple perspectives
to ascertain the observational status of individual perceptions.”184 So, on this view,
observations must be repeatable so that others can see them, and then grant to them the legitimacy or status of scientific observations. Before turning to a case that illustrates how observations must meet certain requirements, which themselves are socially determined, Longino gives us additional reasons she sees scientific knowledge as necessarily social.
Scientific Reasoning: The second feature of science that Longino takes to be social is
that of scientific reasoning. Primarily, Longino focuses on justificatory practices, such as
181 Fate, 101.
182 Fate, 102.
183 Fate, 102.
184 Fate, 103.
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reasoning about the plausibility or usefulness or accuracy of various ideas and theories.
She characterizes justificatory reasoning as a “practice of challenge and response”, where
challenges to a claim are met with the reasons to believe or accept it. In turn, these
reasons can then be challenged – “on grounds of truth and of relevance” – that provokes
more scientific reasoning.185 On this view, justificatory reasoning is set within a context
of individuals who must interact with each other, and is not properly construed as
“interaction between an individual and the object of her cogitations.”186
This is to say, I think, that the process of justifying and selecting scientific theories is
not done by individuals working alone, because Longino favors a view that treats the
process of justification as involving answering challenges – and challenges to individual
ideas and theories do not come only from the individual, but from the community in
which individuals practice science. On this view, theories are justified (in part) by their
ability to handle counter-examples and challenges presented by other scientists, not just
their ability to handle the challenges that come to the minds of the individual proponents
of such theories or views. On Longino’s view, justificatory reasoning is done within a
social context, and the greater scientific community imposes norms on scientists
regarding what will count toward justification or as proper scientific reasoning.
Consider that when mistakes in justificatory reasoning are made, it is often the
scientific community that imposes sanctions for those mistakes, in the form of publicly
renouncing or revising certain views, claims or theories.187 Different perspectives
185 Fate, 103.
186 Fate, 103-104.
187 Longino’s mentions the story of cold fusion, which was once claimed to have been achieved, then denounced when its proponents could not replicate their experiment.
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introduce a kind of force onto our own scientific world, where individuals become disciplined or sanctioned into abiding by certain norms of reasoning, which themselves
have been established by particular social groups.188
By endorsing the view that science is necessarily social, Longino is not denying that
individual contributions have been crucial for the development of scientific knowledge
but that what makes the brilliant scientific ideas of individual scientists knowledge is that
their ideas have survived the scrutiny and critique of others. Longino notes that Galileo,
Newton, Darwin and Einstein were all brilliant, but says that
. . . what made their brilliant ideas knowledge were the processes of critical reception. Comparing the fate of their ideas with those of a thinker of arguably equal intellectual power, Freud, demonstrates this. The (justificatory) activities of knowledge construction as distinct from belief formation (a generative process) are the activities of individuals in interaction, of individuals in certain relations (of criticism and response) with others.189
Longino sees scientific knowledge as requiring reasoning that requires a kind of
validation that must (for Longino) come from the greater scientific community, not
merely from the self-validation of one’s own ideas.
The Sperm Sagas Revisited: To illustrate the social nature of scientific observation
and reasoning, consider again the sperm saga case. Scientists advocating a view of human conception that did not incorporate the idea of the passivity of the ova had to show, by observable data, ova are not passive. They had to show – in the sense of showing others – that the sperm saga accounts had mischaracterized the role of the ovum in conception, and that in fact, several observable features of conception showed the
188 Fate, 105.
189 Fate, 122.
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ovum to be involved in conception. This “showing” of data likely involved the presentation of what could be viewed under the electron microscope (the microvilli that are viewed to assist the sperm in the penetration of the ovum wall), as well as the presentation of the observable evidence to show the presence of certain female enzymes that facilitate conception.
In addition, the observations claimed to be evidence for the ovum-as-active view of conception had to conform to certain scientific norms regarding what counts as proper observation. So, for example, the use of the electron microscope required the validation of the scientific community, who confer upon our observational methods the proper status. On this view, observations are granted the right status by the scientific community based on their interactions and (sometimes confrontational) conversations with one another.
Finally, the revisions to the sperm saga (or ovum-as-passive) accounts of conception were only accepted once they met certain challenges. Arguably, the sperm saga accounts of conception would still be alive today were it not for the fact that intellectual negotiation between scientists resulted in their demise. Note that in this case, it was not just the efforts of individual scientists working alone to revise the conception models that changed how we think about conception – though Longino wouldn’t deny the importance of such contributions – but additional validation was needed from the scientific community, validation that Longino sees as resulting from the meeting of challenges.
Based primarily on the considerations regarding the social nature of both scientific observation and scientific reasoning, Longino claims that science is necessarily social.
This is a strong claim because it denies that individuals can have scientific knowledge
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that the scientific community does not have. On her view, scientific knowledge can not
be understood in terms of individual intellectual processes, because this alone will not
involve the social interaction among others that gives us the normative constraints on
observation and reasoning in science. So, she explicitly rejects the idea that science is the
“accumulation of individuals’ knowledges (sic).”190
Science as Contingently Social: The weaker claim about the social nature of science is that it is only contingently social. This view stems from the fact that modern science requires extensive, on-going education, technical skill, and reliance on the expertise of others (among other things) and is therefore primarily and practically (though not necessarily) a social endeavor. This weaker claim does not deny that in principle individuals could attain scientific knowledge on their own – outside the scientific community – but emphasizes the practical unlikelihood that current scientific practice could be done in this fashion.
What motivates the view that science is contingently social can, I think, be found in the Barbara McClintock story as told in Chapter Two. Consider this characterization of
her story: For years before the scientific community validated her views about genetic
transposition, McClintock knew her view was correct. She was not using terribly
complicated research methods – she mainly planted maize and observed what was happening to its offspring – and her initial experiments even predated the Watson and
Crick work in genetics (so she was not relying on their work). And, when she presented
her repeatable (and therefore proper) observations, the general scientific community still
did not understand her position, and many labeled her crazy. But still, knowing that she
190 SSK, 231.
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was right all along, McClintock seemed to have scientific knowledge of something that,
at that time, was not known by the scientific community.
What is troubling for those endorsing this interpretation of the McClintock story is
that Longino’s strong claim denies that we can (rightly) say that McClintock had scientific knowledge prior the date when the rest of the scientific community accepted it.
(Even more puzzling is pinning down that date: we would have to say it was some time
after the publishing of her second of two disastrous papers, 1956, and some time before
she won the Nobel Prize in 1983. But saying precisely when her views reached the status
and obtained the validation that Longino views as necessary for conferring upon her
scientific knowledge is difficult.) Ultimately, one might see as counterintuitive the view
that McClintock did not have scientific knowledge prior to the general acceptance of her
views, and might therefore reject the claim that science is necessarily social.
What I will argue in the following section is that the role that the social aspect of
science plays is crucial for Longino’s views regarding how to increase the objectivity of
science, but that we need not think of science as necessarily social in order to make
Longino’s views on objectivity work. That is, I will suggest that even if one wanted to
hold that there could be cases in which individuals working outside a scientific
community could have scientific knowledge – and Longino would deny this could be
characterized as such – I think that this possibility does not do much harm to Longino’s overall view about the link between the social aspect of science and objectivity. I think that all that is required for her views about objectivity (and how to maximize it) to work is the claim that science (and scientific knowledge) is primarily social. That is, as long as we view the practice of science as a social enough endeavor, (and I do not think that this
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is a terribly contentious point), then the attentiveness toward the composition and behavior of the scientific community (and not merely on the individuals within the
community) will not seem an unreasonable step. And this is the step Longino takes, for
she thinks attention to the community of scientists can offer us an alternative process for
increasing the objectivity of scientific knowledge.
5.2 The Social Aspect of Science and Increasing Objectivity
Longino thinks that the social account of science solves the problem of having to
control for the role of background assumptions, which are the assumptions we have that
encode our cultural and personal interests and values.191 She thinks that if left
unchecked, these interests and values will corrode or threaten the objectivity of science.
If we think of science as merely a group of individuals producing knowledge – and if we
ignore the substantive social component of scientific knowledge – then we run the risk of not being able to control for or minimize the influence of (inappropriate) individual subjective preferences. 192 On this view, increasing objectivity becomes a task for
scientific communities, not (simply) a task for individuals, because Longino sees
intersubjective criticism as central to the process of increasing objectivity – and
intersubjective criticism cannot take place in a community of one person. The
philosophical shift occurs in focusing on science as a social practice carried out by
individuals working in concert, not individuals working independently of their
colleagues.
191 SSK, 216.
192 SSK, 216.
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In the following discussion, then, I will show how Longino sees objectivity as being
increased, and why the social aspect of science is important for this, but will suggest that
viewing science as contingently social does not corrupt this conception of objectivity.
Why Focus on the Community? In the previous chapter, I’ve highlighted Harding’s
claims regarding how individual researchers can behave in order to increase the extent to
which the science they produce is objective. Keller, too, suggests that the behavior of
individual scientists – whether they are statically or dynamically objective in their
approach to research – can correct for inappropriate behavior or commitments in science.
These views offer revisions for objectivity that rely heavily on how individuals think and
behave as researchers. What is lacking in these accounts that can be provided by
focusing on the community of knowers?
In general, reliance on individuals to procure objectivity only goes so far, as it is stalled or impeded by the difficulty researchers often have in recognizing their own assumptions, values and interests as they operate in science. Specifically, as some cases from the history of science have revealed, researchers are often completely unaware of the interests, values or biases that are playing a role in how they view the evidence, what theories they produce, and what questions interest them in the first place.
So, asking individual scientists to scrutinize and critique the social and cultural values and interests that may be playing a role in their own scientific practice is risky business, since they may or may not be able to perceive these roles, even with genuine effort.
One’s “situation” – one’s own cultural and social positions that come with various biases, interests and/or values – may be the very thing that precludes one from being able to perceive and critique one’s own position, especially when so many of these interests or
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values must seem invisible or perfectly reasonable against the backdrop of others who are like-minded.
I am not suggesting (nor is Longino) that it is impossible for some individuals to recognize and assess their own cultural and personal interests and values adequately some of the time. Rather, I am suggesting that relying solely on the individual’s perception of his/her own interests and values does not seem like the most reliable way – nor is it the only way – to make sure that science does not become reflective merely of what we think ought to be the case. So, what is lacking in an account of objectivity that is based on individual researchers is a kind of insurance policy against an individual’s blindness to his or her own social and cultural values and interests.
So, who is able to perceive and then scrutinize and criticize the cultural and personal interests and values when individuals are blind to their own? The answer Longino gives is: others who practice in the scientific community but who differ with regard to some of their social and cultural interests, values, preferences, biases, etc. That is, she thinks that while individuals will struggle to perceive or be aware of their own interests and values as they play a role in science, scrutiny and criticism from the point of view of others – specifically others who do not share some relevant interests or values – will more readily reveal the interests and values in science. Ultimately, Longino claims that a community of all scientists produces scientific knowledge, and what becomes scientific knowledge has “been produced collectively through the clashing and meshing of a variety of points of view.”193
193 SSK, 69. Emphasis mine.
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The intersubjective criticism engaged in between those with some different interests
and values is what allows our interests and values to be “articulated and subjected to
criticism from the scientific community.”194 Once this happens, she thinks that the role
played by these interests and values can be “defended, modified or abandoned in
response to [community] criticism.”195
Note that Longino is not saying that all values or preferences or interests in science are
bad or threaten objectivity, but that in order for objectivity to be increased, those values,
preferences or interests need to be made public and scrutinized. The result will not be
that all values or interests will be thrown out of science, but that by making public the
problems with certain assumptions we will be less likely to endorse theories and
descriptions of the natural world that rely too heavily on false or questionable
assumptions, interests or values.
This process – the intersubjective criticism and subsequent response to such criticism
– is what Longino thinks increases objectivity in science.196 On this view, then, we
should not look (merely) to the views and practices of individuals (though the actions of
individuals might get us part of the way to objectivity), nor at the theories and
descriptions they produce, to assess the level of objectivity of their work. Rather, we
should look at how a scientific community interacts as well as how it is comprised, which together are thought to provide a process for increasing the objectivity of science.
194 SSK, 73.
195 SSK, 74.
196 Sensitive to the practical limitations of criticism, Longino allows that it cannot go on indefinitely, nor should it proceed if it becomes “repetitive and fixed”, or does not develop into a fruitful research program. (SSK, 79)
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In order for this process to work, individual scientists are not required to be self-
reflective – although I don’t think Longino would think this is bad for science – because
this isn’t the main or only activity that increases or secures some level of objectivity. As
Longino explains in her most recent work, The Fate of Knowledge, “The social account
builds reflexivity in, but does not leave it up to individual self-examination (which is
often blind to the deepest assumptions). Awareness of values and presuppositions is
imposed on inquirers through interactions with those who do not share them.”197 Instead,
Longino suggests, each scientist should practice according to the shared standards of his or her own field, and as long as the community is properly constituted, (some) cultural and personal interests or values that play a role in the resultant hypotheses, experiments or theories will be revealed and adjudicated by others in any given field.
Longino doesn’t suggest that all interests and values will be revealed, nor does she think that even a properly constituted community is infallible, so this is an imperfect process, and is largely why she thinks of objectivity as being a matter of degree. Also, some interests and values may be judged by the community to be benign, or perhaps helpful, and therefore will not be eliminated once revealed.
In addition, Longino does say that some values and interests will be shared by the entire cultural community, and will therefore be invisible. These widely held views will
“not become visible until individuals who do not share the community’s assumptions can provide alternative explanations . . . without those assumptions.”198
197 Fate, 165. Here, Longino is specifically referring to the reflexivity recommended by Harding.
198 SSK, 80.
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In order to see how Longino’s suggested process might work, consider again the sperm saga case: The scientific community tolerated the publication of textbooks that misrepresented the process of conception.199 Then, in an article written by Gerald and
Heide Schatten in 1980, the mistakes of the textbook accounts of conception were revealed, and the Schattens highlighted the particularly sexist assumptions that seemed to permeate the accounts of conception.200 More generally, the feminist-oriented critiques of science have questioned the extent to which science does reflect sexist assumptions, interests and/or values – this isn’t to say that all charges of sexism are warranted, but that feminists are the ones raising these issues to the level of public scrutiny, which in turn requires the attention of and interaction between the scientific community.201
Longino would see it as no accident that a more diverse community – one that does not share the same assumptions and values about gender, in this case – was the community from which questions arose about what we now know to be questionable scientific results. And the on-going debate about the extent to which science is sexist serves as an example of what happens in science when divergent viewpoints are forced to face each other in public scientific debate.
199 Note: There is some debate regarding the time-line attributed to the changes in the conception stories. For example, Paul R. Gross, “Bashful Eggs, Macho Sperm and Tonypandy” argues that scientists knew ova are not passive as early as 1919. He further argues that feminists have inappropriately characterized the position of biologists with regard to the passivity of ova. However, note that even if Gross is correct, he does not explain how misrepresentations of conception – which he claims were known to be wrong by mainstream science – found their way into mainstream textbooks, nor does he explain why these went unchallenged until the breakthrough work of biologists in 1980. In addition, Gross cannot explain the enduring quality of so many metaphorical ways of speaking about anything female that rely so heavily on (false or questionable) stereotypes of women. Gross’s essay is published in Noreta Koertge, ed., A House Built on Sand: Exposing Postmodernist Myths About Science (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998).
200 Schatten and Schatten, “The Energetic Egg” The Sciences 23 (5): 28-34. Note that the article was written for laypeople.
201 The article written by Gross, and the book published by Koertge (see footnote 199), provide evidence of just this occurrence, whereby a community becomes engaged in discussion (argument) about the challenges to certain claims, critiques and observations.
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It is the interaction of scientists – when they engage in scientific debate and intersubjective criticism – that Longino thinks will increase the objectivity of science.
This is because she thinks that when scientists engage in intersubjective criticism, they are more likely to expose the cultural and/or personal interests and values that (might) underlie scientific research and theories. And, once these interests and values are revealed, she thinks the scientific community will then have to reflect upon what do with them – eliminate, modify or encourage them.
I have suggested that Longino’s process for increasing objectivity can be accomplished without endorsing the view that science is necessarily social. I think that as long as we view science as primarily social, we will give appropriate emphasis to the interaction that individual scientists must have with each other. We could, perhaps, allow that individuals can (under some extremely unusual circumstances, given the very social nature of modern science) have scientific knowledge. But this alone does not seem to undermine Longino’s claim that intersubjective criticism can increase the objectivity of scientific knowledge.
What I’m suggesting also results in a kind of liberation of objectivity: though
Longino wants to characterize objectivity as arising out of social processes, why not place objectivity on a continuum of individual and communal efforts, both of which might seek to reveal and assess the cultural and/or personal interests and values of scientists? So, on this view, we might deem projects or research done outside or without intersubjective criticism as less objective than those projects that have undergone such criticism. In addition, on this view we can still make sense of the idea that some
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individuals are less likely to produce objective ideas or results than others; that is, we can make sense of ideologues who seem to produce highly questionable scientific results.
I am not suggesting that critical self-reflection will get us very far with regard to objectivity – scientists are already supposed to be doing this and there is (arguably) room for improvement. This improvement comes, I think, in the form of the intersubjective criticism advocated by Longino, and in thinking of objectivity as something to apply (not only to individuals but) to communities – how much intersubjective criticism is permitted or encouraged by a community is some indication of the level of objectivity of the science produced by such a community.
*****
There are a few key elements to this process that are left somewhat vague by Longino, but I will here try to provide some structure to three of these elements. One has to do with the diversity or composition of those engaging in the “transformative criticism”
Longino views as necessary for increasing the objectivity of science. Second, more needs to be said about cases where intersubjective criticism does not clearly lead to straightforward explanations of natural phenomena, that is, where the requisite community response is not entirely made clear even after the “clashing and meshing” of divergent viewpoints. This isn’t a problem Longino needs to solve, but attention to this aspect of her view will clarify her position for the reader. Finally, since so much of what has been exposed in science as either fraudulent or biased has come from outside the scientific community, the reader should note the saliency of the critique of science from outside its direct membership. I will take each of these points in turn.
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5.3 Diversity
It is clear that Longino intends for the scientific community to be comprised of
individuals who do not all share the same cultural and personal interests and values; she
intends for a properly constituted scientific community to be diverse. This diversity is
thought to increase the depth and scope of the criticism occurring in any scientific
community.202
The revelation of the sexism apparent in the sperm saga accounts of human conception was brought about in part by the critique from the feminist point of view. (Indeed, the feminist critiques of science were once primarily focused on finding and eliminating sexist assumptions or values in science.203) The lack of diversity among scientists was
part of the problem identified by these feminist critics, who claimed that the mostly-male
composition of the field of science204 had contributed to the incorrect descriptions of and
theories about conception, and part of the reason sexist assumptions were allowed to
prevail. Once feminists came into the picture, these assumptions and values were
revealed and challenged. The historical account of the developments in reproductive
biology illustrate how divergent views had an effect on science and serves an example of
the “clashing and meshing” of views Longino envisions for the maximization of
objectivity in science.
202 SSK, 79.
203 See Harding’s SQF, Chapter Four, for a brief overview of the feminist literature focused on revealing sexism and androcentrism in science (specifically biology and social science). See also Longino’s discussion regarding research into sex differences and the often sexist assumptions that underlie such research, SSK, Chapter Six.
204 Much attention was given to biology, medicine and anthropology, though (alleged) sexism in other sciences has been addressed, as well.
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However, Longino does not fully address the (rather complex) issue of the extent and type of diversity required by her view, though she very strongly endorses is: “[T]he
greater the number of different points of view included in a given community, the more
likely it is that its scientific practice will be objective.”205 Her focus, of course, is on
issues of gender, though racial and economic diversity is another type of diversity
regularly endorsed by feminists.
In societies where features like gender, economic and racial differences give rise to
various distinct experiences, viewpoints, interests and values, one would likely require
the scientific community to be diverse with regard to these features. But surely there are
other, perhaps not so obvious, features of individuals that might matter to us, and others still that won’t matter enough to be relevant to the requirement of diversity in the
scientific community. And, once we decide what types of diversity are most relevant or
important, we are still left having to decide how much diversity is enough to ensure the
type of intersubjective criticism that Longino thinks will increase the objectivity of
science.
In addition, and related to this point, Longino needs to make clear how the
intersubjective criticism she envisions in the scientific community is different from the
kind of intersubjective criticism already claimed to be part of the scientific process.
Longino’s view builds in a much greater diversity than what she currently thinks marks
science. So, on her view, a community that is not properly constituted cannot engage in
the kind of transformative criticism required for increasing objectivity. What this means is our current scientific community may not be diverse enough to engage in real
205 SSK, 80.
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intersubjective criticism, or the kind that increases objectivity in the way imagined by
Longino. Again, the diversity of the community is a key element in ensuring that
Longino’s process of intersubjective criticism is distinct from what we already have.
The project of exploring what kind of and how much diversity is necessary for
Longino’s view to work is currently under debate. In order to more fully understand what must be fulfilled for a scientific community to count as diverse – and many feminist philosophers of science call for just this – more work needs to be done in this area. I view Longino’s view as having provided (yet another) reason for undertaking the project of determining how much and what kind of diversity we want in science (as well as in other areas in which we think diversity matters), and not as a view that completes this task for us. That is, I view Longino’s (probably deliberate) vagueness on the issue of diversity as indicative of her recognition that her own project gives rise to additional projects that should be undertaken, but that are not solved within the context of her social view of knowledge.
Finally, note that Longino’s call for diversity leads to a peculiar consequence if not clarified. Suppose a scientific community became relatively homogenous with regard to the tolerance of each member, so that the community contained no or few racists or sexists. Taken at face value, Longino’s recommendations placed within this hypothetical socially tolerant community seem to suggest that we incorporate racist and sexist views into our community in order to comply with her call for diversity, and hence achieve greater objectivity in science.
This seems odd. It is one thing to say that we need to hear from voices currently being ignored, but another to say that, should we achieve the tolerant society that feminists aim
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for, we need to recruit sexist and racist views to enhance the objectivity of science. That is, there is supposed to be epistemic value in diversity because hearing from various different voices is supposed to increase the breadth and scope of our intersubjective criticism. But does this mean we should not strive for tolerance, since this will eliminate
(at least one kind of) diversity with regard to social and political values of race and gender?
Longino’s answer to this puzzle is that the differences relevant to diversity do not have to be culturally or politically important differences, but that it so happens in our society that some of the differences that generate different perspectives are culturally and/or politically important. She claims that as long as we are talking about beings whose perspectives are limited in some way, the increasing of objectivity will require critical interaction among different perspectives.206
But this still does not fully explain how feminists (and others) can simultaneously work to achieve a tolerant society, and also be required to have some racists and sexists on hand so that we can engage in objectivity-increasing intersubjective criticism of the sort outlined by Longino. Longino’s call for diversity might make sense given our current intolerant social and scientific community, but remains problematic against the feminist efforts to eliminate some kinds of ideologies.
5.4 Response to Criticism
A second key element to Longino’s view is her appreciation for the complexities involved in finding good, reliable scientific theories and projects within the critiques and
206 Personal correspondence, July 23, 2003. Emphasis mine.
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debates surrounding various research programs. Here I’d like to highlight what happens
when intersubjective criticism seems to not be immediately or straightforwardly
transformative in the way suggested by the sperm saga accounts. That is, revealing
cultural and personal interests and values has epistemic value because it is supposed to
allow us to better understand our theories, and can also inform our theory choice, but
what about cases where criticism does not lead to clear-cut answers about which theories
or descriptions to choose?
Consider first some straightforward cases. Paul Broca’s now infamous attempts to
show that brain size correlated roughly with race and intelligence serve as one
straightforward case in which a conclusion – that Broca was wrong – seems clearly
indicated by the results of the scrutiny of his research. Simply put, Broca believed that
more intelligent humans had larger (i.e., heavier) brains than persons of average or
below-average intelligence. Furthermore, he believed that non-whites had smaller brains
than whites, and women smaller brains than men.207 This was a simple theory that
suggested fairly straightforward experiments, namely to weigh the brains of various
persons – of known race and intelligence – and see what is suggested by the results.
This is precisely what Broca did, though he ran into so many large brains belonging to
non-whites and women, and so many small brains belonging to men of prominence
(though he couldn’t know it at the time, Broca’s own brain was only a bit over
average208), that he had to use vast amounts of creativity to explain away the results that were not congruent with his theory. Today we can see that his theories were driven by
207 Gould, 115.
208 Gould, 124.
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his own values regarding the racial superiority of whites. The epistemic value here is that, instead of trying to account for the anomalies in brain size with ad hoc excuses, we can conclude that the theory is not a reliable predictive tool (i.e., men of intelligence do not, on average, have heavier brains than others), or simply that the theory is wrong. So, exposing the bias of the sort evident in the Broca case leads to theory revocation or rejection.
In addition, exposing bias can show how improper metaphors or assumptions about gender can inhibit our imagination. This is best illustrated in the sperm sagas, where reliance on the metaphor of the “slumbering” ovum, and on stereotypes about the passivity of anything female or feminine, were inhibiting the imagination of individuals trying to devise proper models for conception.
But there is an additional result to intersubjective criticism that is not so straightforward. In the following discussion, I’ll outline a case from anthropology in which intersubjective criticism has led to inconclusive results. This case shows how intersubjective criticism, and the revealing cultural or personal interests or values, sometimes only leads us to be agnostic about certain theories. But in addition, this case will show that, even when we must be agnostic about certain theories, revealing the assumptions and values operating among theories can suggest and inform future research projects.
Man-the-Hunter Story / Woman-the-Gatherer Story Debates: There is a debate regarding the development of tool use in human history and it centers around whether the
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driving factor in tool development was due to the hunting practices of early male
hominids, or to the gathering practices of early female hominids.209, 210, 211
The man-the-hunter story is deemed androcentric or male-centered, because it focuses on the activity of males while largely ignoring the role of females. This account explains, among other things, tool development by pointing to the needs of early hunters for appropriate survival methods, one of which was to use objects as weapons. These weapons were used, it is supposed, for both defense against aggressive animals and to hunt (kill) animals. The man-the-hunter accounts essentially argue that males developed and refined tools largely as a response to the need for more effective hunting methods.212
An example of the kind of evidence used to support the man-the-hunter theories is
existence of hunting spears that are 400,000 years old, discovered by a team led by
German archaeologist Hartmut Thieme.213 Advocates of man-the-hunter stories might point to this kind of finding as evidence for the view that hunters designed and refined their weapons in order to kill large game from a distance by throwing the spear. And, if they can effectively prove that the 400,000 year-old hunting spear pre-dated any other found tools, they might conclude that hunting practices (done by men) initiated tool development.
209 SSK, 107.
210 For the original papers published based on the 1966 Man-the-Hunter symposium, see Richard B. Lee and Irven Devore, eds., Man the Hunter (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1966).
211 In both the man-the-hunter and woman-the-gatherer accounts, conclusions are drawn that go beyond the development of tools, as these accounts are often used to explain brain development, social arrangements, etc.
212 SSK, 107.
213 Hartmut Thieme, “Lower Paleolithic Hunting Spears from Germany” Nature 385 (February 27, 1997), 807.
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The gynocentric woman-the-gatherer explanations for tool development downplay the
role of hunting and emphasize the (presumably) larger role played by those who foraged
for food, namely women. On this account, early hominid women used tools to dig for,
carry and prepare food, and probably to defend themselves from animals they might
encounter while foraging. This account views women as having been the primary
innovators of tool use and refinement.214
Evidence for this view is largely based on the supposition that tool use developed
much earlier than stone implementations, and consisted of sticks and reeds used to dig,
carry and prepare foods.215 But these organic materials would likely not leave physical evidence for archaeologists to find. So, as Longino emphasizes, woman-the-gatherer proponents rely heavily on the model of gathering behavior among hunter/gatherers as evidence for what they take to be the likely use of tools by women.216
The settling of this debate, however, is not the subject Longino (nor I) want to
address. Rather, it is the fact that this debate can be seen as having come to something of
a stalemate. Longino claims that none of the available data has decided this debate, and
that even how we interpret the available data will depend upon whether we work in the
man-the-hunter or woman-the-gatherer “framework”.217 Suppose that Longino is correct
about this indecision – how does intersubjective criticism help us in this situation?
214 SSK, 107-108. For more comprehensive information on the woman-the-gatherer accounts, see Nancy Tanner and Adrienne Zihlman, “Women in Evolution, Part I” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society I, no. 3: 585-608.
215 SSK, 108.
216 SSK, 109.
217 SSK, 109.
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I think intersubjective criticism – the interplay between the man-the-hunter and
woman-the-gatherer proponents – that led to this kind of impasse has been effective in making public and clear just how background assumptions, biases, values and interests can shape the way we understand or explain empirical evidence. It also takes away the invisibility of these assumptions, so that once we see the underlying assumptions of both views, we will properly take the agnostic position and choose neither the man-the-hunter nor the woman-the-gatherer account. So, here the epistemic value to revealing bias is just that we are led to remain doubtful that either theory is correct.
As for the extent to which objectivity is increased in cases that resemble the stalemate reached in the tool development debate, Longino explains that perhaps “less gender- centric accounts of human evolution may eventually supersede both of these current contending stories.”218 Here, the epistemic value is also found in the future research
programs that might be necessary to settle these kinds of debates. For example, one might search for evidence of a “less gender-centric” account of human nature. The point
is that once the stalemate is revealed, and once one understands the values and interests
that are supporting these theories, one has a better idea of what to look for or what lines
of reasoning to pursue in order to explain tool (and human) development.
In addition, this case – and others that are similar in complexity or lack of resolution
even with intersubjective criticism – suggests that we should not focus only on individual
theories or bits of scientific knowledge as the things that should be measured as more or
less objective, and focus instead on the extent to which our methods of inquiry permit transformative criticism. Longino uses this characterization only once in her thesis, but I
218 SSK, 111.
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think it is crucial to her view. That is, she says that “a method of inquiry is objective to the degree that it permits transformative criticism”219, so she is not merely focused on the results of inquiry – though she clearly has this in mind, too – but also on how inquiry is allowed to occur. It isn’t that transformative criticism will reveal to us all the appropriate explanations for natural phenomena, but that having a community regularly engaged in this process will give rise to a greater level of objectivity than a method of inquiry that is blind to or deliberately dismissive of alternate viewpoints or underlying social and cultural interests, preferences, and values.
Intersubjective criticism will also reveal when it is appropriate for a community to remain agnostic with regard to certain natural phenomena they seek to explain; uncovering our cultural and personal interests and values helps us get to agnosticism about some theories. In addition, intersubjective criticism that leads a scientific community to an agnostic position will suggest other areas of research in attempts to settle the very debates that have reached a stalemate.
What I’m arguing here is that Longino’s view ought not be seen as providing a mechanical device for churning out theories that are more objective that what we would have otherwise. That is, intersubjective criticism is not going to guarantee that debates can be readily settled, nor that we will know what to do once we have uncovered cultural and personal interests and values that underlie some of our science. Rather, Longino’s suggested process at least allows us a mechanism for revealing social and cultural interests that are currently not being revealed by mainstream or traditional conceptions of objectivity – indeed, some conceptions of objectivity even deny that interests and values should play a role in science, and therefore fail to see their role in science. (Many
219 SSK, 76.
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scientists may well believe that they are able to check their ideologies at the laboratory
door.)
This mechanism – for revealing and engaging in debate about interests and values,
preferences and biases – is sorely needed. That is, as Longino argues, values and
interests do play a role in science, but what kind of role they play is up to us. However,
we cannot make educated, rational decisions about the role of values and interests in science if we are ignorant or dismissive of them.
5.5 Criticism From Outside Science
The preceding discussion gives rise to a question, then, about exactly where
transformative criticism comes from. Longino has argued for, and I’ve tried to defend,
the view that some amount of diversity of the scientific community is needed to bring to
light interests and values in science that may not be perceived by like-minded individuals.
In addition, the examples provided here have largely been taken from the history of
science, whereby racial and gender assumptions have been questioned from within the
scientific community.
However, it is curious to note how little attention Longino pays to the types of
criticisms that could be and are launched from outside the scientific community, criticism
that probably has the potential to reveal some interesting information about the values
and interests that underlie science. That is, the scientific community largely remains
insulated from critiques of non-scientists who lack the education and experience to
engage in technical or scientific debates, and are therefore usually ignored. This is
something that should be addressed.
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Longino suspects (and is, I think, mainly correct in thinking) that divergent viewpoints
in science will lead to the kind of intersubjective criticism that will refine and improve
science. But when an entire scientific community has been educated, trained, and mentored to think about itself in a certain way, even great amounts of (certain, not-yet-
defined, kinds of) diversity may still make some values and interests of scientists
invisible to anyone except those working outside of science.
Indeed, many of the feminist theories about science have come from philosophy, and they offer perspectives on specific research programs that may not be the same
perspectives offered by practicing scientists. Journalists also offer critiques of how
science is used or abused, what politics or religious beliefs are driving certain research
programs, or what financial interests are operating in science. These are valuable
resources for scientists who may either fail to see these interests and values, or be
reluctant to admit just what is driving their research.
What I am suggesting is that if a method of inquiry is to really allow for
transformative criticism, then it cannot be allowed to insulate itself from critiques that
come from outside of science. I am not suggesting that philosophers or journalists should
be considered part of the scientific community – they aren’t – but that a conception of
objectivity that relies on the intersubjective criticism of a properly constituted community
of knowers should at least include some provision for the role of critique from outside the
scientific community.220 I do not think that Longino’s process for increasing objectivity
in science disallows the intervention of criticism from outside science; I just think it
should include the outside critique as one additional feature that serves to make
intersubjective criticism more meaningful.
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5.6 Summary
Given the complexities and difficulties of requiring individuals to engage in critical
self-reflection, Helen Longino conceives of objectivity as being on a continuum based on
what the community of researchers is doing, not based on how individual scientists
behave or think. Her work provides both a philosophical and practical basis for the view
that objectivity can be increased through closer attention to the constitution of the
scientific community, as well as how that community interacts. Longino emphasizes the extent to which the role of social and cultural interests, biases and values can be assessed
given a fuller understanding of the scientific community, and claims that the composition
and behavior of the community contributes to the extent to which a community can
engage in transformative criticism. Ensuring that this criticism can take place is what
Longino thinks can increase the objectivity in science.
I have emphasized that Longino’s view gives us one reason to engage in critical
analysis of the kind and extent of diversity we need (or want) in our scientific communities. In addition, I have suggested that Longino’s suggestions for increasing objectivity in science, and her social account of scientific knowledge, should not be thought of as a kind of mechanical process for churning out objective theories, but rather
that her view gives us at least one way to reveal and then assess the interests and values
that underlie so much of science. Finally, I have suggested that criticism from outside the
scientific community may well be revealing of interests and values in a way that cannot
be revealed by members of the scientific community.
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Chapter 6
Conclusion
The feminist critiques of science began as a collection of projects devoted to exposing and eliminating sexist and/or androcentric bias in science, but later broadened into projects that offered both critique and revision of the philosophy of science. These revisions include examinations of scientific objectivity, especially in light of accounts from the history of science that illustrate the extent to which scientists are imperfect objective observers, as well as to which our science itself is imperfectly objective.
In addition, the concept of objectivity has been utilized in the philosophy of science
(as well as in epistemology) as a way to discuss and explore the various types of cultural and personal influences that operate in science. The concept has also served as the focus of debates about just how much neutrality we can or should expect in science.
What has been presented here is an analysis of some central feminist critiques and suggested revisions for objectivity, which themselves are intended to enrich how we think about objectivity. In general, none of these views advocate the value-neutrality commonly associated with objectivity, and they all underscore the idea that cultural and/or personal interests and values do play a role in science, and that science cannot be otherwise.
But within these views of objectivity are some startling and thought provoking claims, not all of which seem reasonable (or even particularly useful) after careful consideration.
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In what follows, I will review the more radical positions taken by MacKinnon, Keller,
Harding and Longino, and argue that, taken at face value, these claims are problematic in various ways. In addition, I will show that there are insights in these views that we can accept without having to endorse the more extreme portions of their views.
MacKinnon’s “Split Realities”: In Chapter 2, I emphasized Catherine MacKinnon’s worries about how gender politics can corrupt scientific objectivity. I suggested that her view is best seen as a warning about what is wrong with an unexamined version of objectivity. But why treat her view merely as a warning, and not as something more?
Here, I will argue that MacKinnon’s more radical claim about reality, objectivity and our perception of reality (which she repeats in various places) makes it difficult to treat her view as anything but a warning.
The trouble with MacKinnon’s view of objectivity, as I see it, arises from her suggestion that gender inequality creates a “split” reality between males and females. I hinted at this radical claim when I emphasized her ambivalence about objectivity, as well as her claim that “there are (at least) two object realms of social meaning”.221 Elsewhere, in a discussion regarding the difficulty of adjudicating rape cases, MacKinnon goes so far as to suggest that
[t]he deeper problem is the rape law’s assumption that a single, objective state of affairs existed, one that merely needs to be determined by evidence, when so many rapes involve honest men and violated women. When the reality is split, is the woman raped but not by a rapist? Under these conditions, the law is designed to conclude that a rape did not occur.222 [emphasis mine]
221 See page 41 of this document.
222 TFTS, 183.
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This statement is placed within a debate about how best to determine the facts
surrounding rape cases, and does not explicitly address issues common to the philosophy
or practice of science. But statements MacKinnon makes to the effect that realities are
split, and her doubt about the existence of a “single, objective state of affairs”, leads one
to conclude that MacKinnon does not think that males and females live in the same
world, and in fact have distinct realities.223
The problem with MacKinnon’s suggestion that there are distinct realities for males
and females is that accepting this claim leads to the corruption of concepts such as
accuracy, truth or even rational argument. This is because if males and females inhabit
distinct realities – if their worlds are literally different – then there is no sense that can be
made of conflict between male and female views. Debates between males and females
cannot be settled on the basis of evidence or how the world is, since the world is, on this view, different for both of them: there is no reality common to both genders which could provide the basis for a rational resolution to such debate.
Without the possibility of there being common truth-makers for our claims about the social and natural worlds, it is difficult to see how rational debate can exist. Nor does it seem possible to make sense of the concept of objectivity, since what is objective for females won’t be what is objective for males. The concept of objectivity, then, loses its importance and usefulness on the split reality view.
Once one is unable to point to facts and rational connections between theories about those facts to settle disagreements between inhabitants of different worlds, the only arbiter between competing theories is, I think, brute force. But this is a strange thing for
223 MacKinnon isn’t alone in this claim. See Kim Lane Scheppele, “The Reasonable Woman”, The Responsive Community, Rights and Responsibilities 1(4), 1991, 36ff.
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MacKinnon endorse, given what she says about the corruptive nature of power; I suspect
MacKinnon finds objectionable the idea that force or power is the only thing that can
settle disagreements that arise between individuals who do not share the same realities. It
is also a peculiar view to endorse since so much of MacKinnon’s work relies heavily on rational argumentation about facts and evidence. Presumably, MacKinnon does not want to give up entirely the possibility that feminists can rationally argue their points, even
with individuals (males or non-feminists) who may disagree with them.
MacKinnon’s hyperbolic way of speaking may be effective in calling attention to the
differences in male and female experiences of the world, and in emphasizing the extent to
which what we perceive in or think about the world may be drastically different than
what others perceive. But treating as true the radical claim about males and females
living in different realities inhibits our progress toward rational debate about various
scientific and social issues. It also exaggerates the differences between male and female
experiences of the social and natural world, for we have some reason to think that a great
deal of the world is experienced similarly regardless of gender. Finally, the feminist
projects of enriching objectivity – projects which are supposed to be beneficial to all of
us, both male and female – make little sense if what is objective for females isn’t
objective for males or if males and females cannot experience, and therefore talk about,
the same (or most of the same224) reality.
I don’t think we have good reason to conclude from either gender inequality or gender
differences that males and females inhabit distinct realities in the strong way (sometimes)
suggested by MacKinnon. This is why I’ve argued that we not accept the split reality
224 Of course, not everything females experience will be experienced by males, and vice versa, but admitting (perhaps vast) differences in experiences hardly substantiates the positing of distinct realities.
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view, and instead appreciate that the angle from which we perceive the world – which
exists apart from what we think about it – effects what we learn or believe or know about
the social and natural world. We should reject MacKinnon’s more radical claim
regarding “split realities”, but instead view her emphasis on the influence of power
(social, political, intellectual or economic) on what we call objective knowledge as her
contribution to the project of enriching the concept of objectivity.
Keller’s Endorsement of Dynamic Objectivity: In Chapter 3, I suggested that
Keller’s views about domination – as she characterizes it in terms of “master molecule”
models, for example – serve as a cautionary note for feminists working on issues in the
philosophy of science. As well, I think Keller correctly claims that we should be
interested in the philosophical or ideological views that may be expressed in a specific scientific project. Finally, her study and description of Barbara McClintock’s work does serve to show how an approach unique to her field yielded scientific success, even though it initially flew in the face of accepted views.
But Keller’s overall endorsement of dynamic objectivity is, I think, undermined by the history of science. One thing that historians of science reveal when they recount scientific discoveries or advances is that the methods and approaches to research, if anything, vary widely. It is difficult to imagine a single, unified way to characterize the approaches to objects of study – the individual, idiosyncratic ways of implementing the scientific method – as utilized by the great (or even competent) scientists of historical record.
In fact, no matter how unique the approach to scientific research, whether one empathizes with nature or seeks to control or destroy it, it seems there is always the
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possibility to understand nature. I doubt Keller would deny that even static objectivity has been successful in producing reliable, useful and accurate scientific theories and descriptions of the social and natural world, since she characterizes (nearly all of) modern science as largely having endorsed an image of science that rests on the view that the criteria of objectivity are distance from and control over nature. As long as we see modern science as having been largely successful in producing good, useful and/or accurate science (our planes do fly, after all), it is difficult to see why Keller thinks that one, single alternate approach – the dynamic approach – can be reliably and predictably much more successful than any other approach.
Endorsing one particular approach to objectivity as leading to fuller understandings of nature seems to assume that the path to scientific success is simpler, more straightforward and less variant than what is suggested by the history of science. Oddly enough, Keller herself seems to recognize – though perhaps doesn’t fully appreciate its significance – the extent to which reliable, good or accurate scientific claims have arisen from a
“multiplicity” of research styles and approaches. She states:
Fortunately, however, the practice of science is in fact quite different from its ideological prescriptions. Scientists differ greatly in their approaches to their subjects and in their styles of work. These differences reflect the different ways they think about nature and themselves; individual scientist give widely varying meanings to the pursuit of objectivity, paralleling the wide range of meanings attributable to autonomy. Indeed such differences are essential to the vitality of the scientific enterprise. They are also responsible for a basis thesis of this book: actual science is more faithfully described by the multiplicity of styles and approaches that constitute its practice than by its dominant rhetoric or ideology.225
225 RGS, 125.
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There are a number of things in this passage that seem at odds with what Keller says in
other places regarding the need for scientists to engage in dynamic objectivity, and the
pejorative way in which she describes and characterizes static objectivity. Furthermore,
the McClintock story is not presented by Keller as one alternative to research, but as an
“exemplar” of dynamic objectivity in practice, which Keller thinks will undermine the
commitment to masculinity she thinks is typical of modern science. So, one wonders,
which is it? Is dynamic objectivity the preferable approach, or should be seek to have a
multiplicity of approaches in science, as she indicates above?
Keller does not bother to explain away the apparent tension between her call for dynamic objectivity and her endorsement of multiple approaches to research; I think this is because she is incorrect in thinking that one particular approach will provide a recipe for scientific success, especially given what we know from the history of science and if we accept that modern science has at least been modestly (some think extremely) successful in producing reliable, accurate claims and theories about the social and natural world. Though Keller gives us reason to think dynamic objectivity can lead to good science, this is not the same thing as having provided an argument for the view that it is preferable to all other approaches.
In addition to the problem of endorsing a particular approach to objectivity, earlier I mentioned an additional issue within Keller’s view that, I think, forces us to be skeptical about the merits of dynamic objectivity. This has to do with how one polices one’s own desires and influence when one is (simultaneously) supposed to behave in a close, connected, “loving” relation to one’s object of study.226 It seems the closeness one has to
226 See Page 69 of this paper.
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one’s object of study may, in fact, be corruptive of the actual process under study. For
example, consider the primatologist who lives with primates, comes to empathize with
and love them, but in doing so becomes so involved that the primate community’s
behavior itself becomes affected by (or infected with) the behavior of the primatologist.
In general, a close, connected, loving researcher does not seem uniquely or especially
qualified in policing his/her own desires and interests.
In fact, the main problem with Keller’s attempt to revise how we characterize
objectivity is that she does not offer us a mechanism for revealing and assessing cultural
and personal values and interests where they might underlie our scientific theories and
descriptions. Being able to perceive cases where ideology or preference underlies
science, and then making judgments about the appropriateness of such influence, is a
major part of what is (or should be) involved in increasing the degree to which science is
objective. The fact that Keller’s views about objectivity are not aimed at this end means
that her views cannot assist us in discovering and adjudicating the values and interests in
science.
But this is acceptable as long as we place Keller’s more useful claims in the larger
scheme of feminist projects devoted to finding ways to reveal and assess the interests and
values in science, and do not take her view as having provided this. Keller’s views remind us of the power that ideology can have on scientific projects and as well may prompt us to question dogmatic views. Her attention to the role of dogma in science (for example, as illustrated by her own research into cellular mold aggregation227) also serves
to remind us that metaphors and models in science, while useful, may also serve to inhibit
227 See Page 66-67 of this paper.
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our imagination, and that adherence to certain ideologies may cause us to be blind to
inconvenient facts.
Harding & Longino: The Individual and the Community: In Chapter 4, I outlined
Sandra Harding’s case for the role of the individual in engaging in critical self-reflection
of the sort that would, in various cases, reveal cultural and personal interests and values.
I also argued that Harding was mistaken in thinking that individuals would be particularly
adept at this, since even with genuine efforts to perceive them, we are often blind to our
own cultural and personal preferences, assumptions, values and interests.
In addition, I suspect that Harding is somewhat naïve about the ability of socially privileged individuals to see things from the perspective of marginalized persons,
something she recommends as part of the strong reflexivity she thinks characterizes
strong objectivity. In the literature of feminist standpoint epistemology, one thing that is
emphasized is that people who are marginalized because of their gender, race and/or class
are (sometimes) in the position to be aware of facts that are invisible to those not in these
marginalized positions. On this view, for example, poor people in general may be more
aware (and suspicious) of the importance and influence of money while wealthy
individuals may take for granted the money they have and therefore overlook the
influence of finances on scientific projects. But if we accept that marginalized persons
have experiences that give them perspectives not had by the dominant group, it is hard to
see how sincere trying on the part of the dominant group could result in their being able
to know how things might look to those who are marginalized. That is, how is a wealthy
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person supposed to know how a scientific research project might look to a poor person,
when he/she has no experience of what it is like to be poor?228
Of course, there are general aspects of poverty that might be readily obvious to those who are not poor, and cases where non-marginalized persons may make fairly good guesses regarding how marginalized persons might perceive certain research projects or conclusions. However, if we take seriously the claim made by Harding and other standpoint theorists that marginalized persons have valuable perceptions of the social and natural world that are formed from their social positions (and experiences), then it is difficult to see how individuals who lack those experiences could imagine or conjecture about what research projects or conclusions might look like to marginalized persons.
This is a slightly different problem than just our usual unawareness of our own ideology or prejudices. Asking or requiring that scientists consider how their research projects or results may look to marginalized persons (or even someone who is not a beneficiary of such research) presupposes that the experiences of marginalized persons
(or persons who are not beneficiaries of research) could be, with some effort, correctly imagined by scientists, most of whom will be, because of education and intellectual ability, privileged. I am skeptical of the ability of individuals to reflect on their own ideological views from the perspective of individuals with whom they may have little contact and about whom they may have little knowledge.
The exercise in self-reflection and the practice of putting oneself in the shoes of a marginalized person and then theorizing from this assumed social position does not, I
228 Of course, we are often told by privileged (usually white) middle-class people what poor or marginalized people “really” need or want, but this is not the same thing as what they actually need or want.
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think, go far enough in providing us a way to reliably reveal our own interests or values.
This is in part why Helen Longino’s view about the social nature of science seems so
attractive: individuals may not be the most reliable or capable monitors of their own
preferences or biases. However, others who do not share all of the same cultural and
personal beliefs may be in precisely the right position from which to scrutinize our
theories and descriptions in science.
Emphasizing the social interactions of scientists, especially their negotiations regarding which theories and descriptions seem most reasonable as well as their debates
about the appropriateness of certain values and interests in science, seems a good way to
overcome the blindness that individuals may have to their own values and interests. But
one of Longino’s most startling and radical claims is that scientific knowledge cannot be
attributed to an individual working alone or outside of science, since on her view
scientific knowledge is the result of the social interaction of scientists.
In Chapter 5, I outlined Longino’s two main reasons for construing scientific
knowledge as necessarily social: one concerned the publicity and replicability for review by others of scientific observations, and the other had to do with scientific reasoning being characterized by meeting certain challenges raised by the scientific community.
Longino thinks of science as necessarily social, in both the constitutive sense (it is not a collection of what individuals know, but what the scientific community has come to know together), and in the generative sense (it is created through a process of critical analysis and modification done by a scientific community).229
229 SSK, 68.
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But I’ve suggested that there are problems with what I identified as Longino’s
stronger claim about the social nature of science, namely that it is necessarily, and not
contingently, social. By restricting scientific knowledge of the individual as dependent upon the “validation” of the community, Longino cannot adequately explain, for example, what was had by Barbara McClintock prior to the community’s validation of her theory of genetic transposition, since on Longino’s view she cannot have had scientific knowledge of it. Of course, I am inclined to say that even prior to the community’s validation of her views, McClintock “knew” that genetic transposition was correct, and that this knowledge was scientific, and to deny this just seems counter- intuitive.
Aside from this sort of “she-knew-it-before-the-rest-did” types of revolutions in science (a number of which are recounted in Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions), there is also the possibility that areas of scientific research could become less social and more individually driven. I am thinking of areas of computer science, for example, where coding and programming can be done in a highly individual fashion, and success with mechanisms for controlling (or, in the case of viruses, corrupting) data do not seem to (always) require the validation that Longino claims is required for achieving scientific knowledge. Either the program works as planned or it does not work, and the norms that drive this can be, I think, highly individual, and need not be validated by the community of computer scientists. Though it is certainly true that computer scientists want to show each other their capabilities, and that they learn languages and techniques from each other, it does not seem that scientific knowledge about a particular program, its design
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and intricacies, requires input from a larger community in the strong sense suggested by
Longino’s view.
I also see as possible (though perhaps not probable) that individual scientists working
in various fields of natural science may, in the way so many discoveries have happened,
stumble onto a miraculous phenomenon that itself triggers a kind of scientific knowledge.
Though perhaps not as fully formed and adjudicated as publicly scrutinized scientific
theories and descriptions, I think we should be able to attribute to individual scientists
knowledge of phenomena they study that itself has not been explicitly approved or
checked by the scientific community.
Of course, the claim that science is contingently social, though a weaker claim than
what Longino endorses, is itself significant, since contingent facts about scientific
practice have a binding and determinant effect on how science works and what counts as scientific. That is, most (if not all) of modern science in fact requires so much social
interaction that it would be difficult to over-emphasize the large role played by social
interactions in science, except to state explicitly that individuals cannot have scientific
knowledge without community approval. This is what I find objectionable about
Longino’s stronger claim: that individual scientific knowledge is forbidden without the validation of a larger scientific community.
Furthermore, Longino’s view regarding how to increase objectivity in science – which is one of the central themes of her overall view of science – does not require that we characterize science or scientific knowledge as necessarily social. Displacing the necessarily social characterization with a contingently social one does nothing to corrupt or weaken Longino’s claim that objectivity is increased through intersubjective criticism.
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In addition, it allows us to make sense of both the idea that individuals can be more or
less objective – surely some people are better at setting aside their own beliefs or at
reflecting on their own biases than others – and the idea that community scientific
practice can be more or less objective. Hence, I’ve suggested that we not accept
Longino’s stronger, more radical claim about the social nature of science, and instead
accept the view that science and scientific knowledge is contingently social.
Summary
Catherine MacKinnon’s contribution to this project is her warning about the role of
social power on what we call objective, as well as on the ability of powerful individuals
and groups to make their views look objective when they are not. For those who agree
that male domination permeates our social structure, one way to solve the problem is to
challenge the underlying sexist and androcentric interests and values that permeate science. In order for these interests and values to be revealed, however, the powerful must not be permitted to protect their views from outsiders or critics.
The work of Evelyn Fox Keller illustrates how ideology can inform a particular scientific project, as well as how metaphors or models in science can be predisposed to endorse dominant structures or hierarchical structures where there may be other equally good characterizations. While Keller’s endorsement of dynamic objectivity faces some
unresolved tension with her view that multiple styles of and approaches to scientific
research are good for science, ultimately Keller claims that self-reflection on the part of
scientists is needed to more fully reveal the interests, ideologies and values of its
participants.
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Another theorist who calls for the critical self-reflection on the part of scientists is
Sandra Harding, who argues for strong objectivity, whereby individual scientists are called upon to ask themselves how their problem choices, research programs and accepted theories might look to individuals who are marginalized or who do not share the same worldview. Harding’s views raise questions about the social positions of researchers as being relevant to their science, and she suggests that analyzing who is doing science will allow us to reveal and then assess the role of cultural and personal interests and values in science.
I suggested that Harding’s view seems to downplay the significant difficulty that individuals have in seeing past their own views, assumptions and ideologies, and hence might not be the best candidates for revealing their own interests and values. Helen
Longino’s view builds in the kind of critique that Harding hopes will come from self- reflection, but does not require that this be done by the individual, though Longino does not rule this out. Rather, Longino’s view advocates a scientific community that is diverse enough to allow for intersubjective criticism, criticism that stems from various (and not only similar) cultural and personal backgrounds. She views as inadequate the kind of intersubjective criticism that is supposed to be carried out by current peer review projects, mainly because she thinks our community of scientists is not oriented toward diversity, nor does it appropriately respond to criticism. That is, Longino requires that the scientific community permit transformative criticism if it wants to be engaged in an increasingly more objective enterprise.
None of these views taken individually can tell us all we need to know about objectivity from the feminist perspective. However, taken collectively they provide a
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consciousness about what features of science and objectivity are important to the feminist program – not necessarily what features of feminism are important to science.230
230 Sandra Harding makes this point quite aptly in the title to her book, The Science Question in Feminism (and not The Feminist Question in Science), to indicate that feminists do not always need to be in the business of saying why or how feminism is good for or useful to science, but rather how science affects the interests of feminism.
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