Ebook: Who Knows: From Quine to a Feminist Empiricism
Author: Lynn Hankinson Nelson
- Tags: History & Philosophy, Science & Math, Ethics & Morality, Philosophy, Politics & Social Sciences, Women’s Studies, Abortion & Birth Control, Feminist Theory, History, Motherhood, Women Writers, Politics & Social Sciences, Ethics, Philosophy, Humanities, New Used & Rental Textbooks, Specialty Boutique, Science & Mathematics, Agriculture, Astronomy & Astrophysics, Biology & Life Sciences, Chemistry, Earth Sciences, Environmental Studies, Mathematics, Mechanics, Physics, New Used & Rental Textbooks, Specialty Boutique, Gend
- Year: 1990
- Publisher: Temple University Press
- Language: English
- pdf
Following Quine, Nelson argues that empiricism is a theory of evidence and is distinct from empiricist accounts of science that have been built on it. She urges feminists and empiricists to work together to develop a feminist empiricism, a view of science that can account for its obvious success in explaining and predicting experience and can encompass feminist insights into relationships among gender, politics, and science.
Basing her arguments on Quine’s non-foundationalist view that theories are bridges of our own construction, the author insists, as does Quine, that the construction of these bridges is constrained by experience. She determines that individualism is inconsistent with key Quinean positions and that empiricism can survive the demise of individualism. Clearly diverging from Quine, Nelson proposes the view that the evolving network of our theories does and should incorporate political views, including those shaped by, and shaping in turn, our experiences of gender.