A framework for the feminist anthropology of science

Philosophy of Science Colloquium
The Institute Vienna Circle holds a Philosophy of Science Colloquium with talks by our present fellows.

Date: 27/06/2024

Time: 16h45

Venue: New Institute Building (NIG), Universitätsstraße 7, 1010 Wien, HS 3F

Abstract:

In this talk, I will unpack different facets of the question of what it means to do anthropology of science as a feminist. In the first part, I will examine the tradition of feminist philosophers of science discussing the possibility of feminist science. Then, I will discuss what a critical scientific perspective entails in anthropology. Finally, I will integrate these two bodies of knowledge to explore what a feminist anthropology of science could mean in terms of its scientific practice. In the second part, I will focus on a related issue, which I call the problem of normativity – the claim that science loses its crucial feature, objectivity, when influenced by feminism (or any other worldview). Despite well-established knowledge in feminist philosophy of science and ‘values in science’ discussions, which offer resolutions to this problem, I contend that confusion persists about what a critical perspective, such as a feminist one, implies for scientific reasoning and research aims. I will argue that the problem of normativity involves two aspects, which are often confused: first, whether values play a role in the context of justification, and second, whether a critical social scientist, in order to be critical, must go beyond description. I will address both issues by relying on mainstream claims from contemporary philosophy of science and will draw conclusions from this discussion for theorizing a feminist anthropology of science.