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Feminist Approaches to Science
This collection of papers explores the nature of contemporary science and attempts to further a view of science that is "different, better, feminist, and emancipating."
- GenresScience
212 pages, Hardcover
First published April 1, 1986
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March 4, 2026
p. 80:
The sciences have always had a utopian character. In their efforts to describe the world, to understand how it actually "works," scientists simultaneously search out the limits of possible worlds. What determines a "good" story in the natural and social sciences is partly decided by available social visions of these possible worlds. Description is determined by vision; facts and theories are perceived within stories; the worlds for which human beings contest are made of meanings. Meanings are tremendously material forces - much like food and sex. And, like food and sex, meanings are social constructions that determine the quality of people's lives.
That is why the intersection of feminist and colonial discourse in the sciences of monkeys and apes matters. Monkeys and apes have been enlisted in Western scientific story telling to determine what is meant by human: what it means to be female, to be animal, to be other than man. As white women achieved the social and symbolic power conferred by scientific degrees and the ability to watch nonhuman primates as principal investigators, rather than zoo visitors, they brought with them histories, experiences, and world views that reconstructed basic stories in primatology. They changed the facts of nature by changing the visions of possible worlds, and it has been hard, complicated work.
The sciences have always had a utopian character. In their efforts to describe the world, to understand how it actually "works," scientists simultaneously search out the limits of possible worlds. What determines a "good" story in the natural and social sciences is partly decided by available social visions of these possible worlds. Description is determined by vision; facts and theories are perceived within stories; the worlds for which human beings contest are made of meanings. Meanings are tremendously material forces - much like food and sex. And, like food and sex, meanings are social constructions that determine the quality of people's lives.
That is why the intersection of feminist and colonial discourse in the sciences of monkeys and apes matters. Monkeys and apes have been enlisted in Western scientific story telling to determine what is meant by human: what it means to be female, to be animal, to be other than man. As white women achieved the social and symbolic power conferred by scientific degrees and the ability to watch nonhuman primates as principal investigators, rather than zoo visitors, they brought with them histories, experiences, and world views that reconstructed basic stories in primatology. They changed the facts of nature by changing the visions of possible worlds, and it has been hard, complicated work.
Displaying 1 of 1 review