Strategies for feminist critique of science: an evaluation

Abstract

In my thesis, I have mainly argued for two claims: i) that feminist critique of science is a legitimate philosophical agenda in that its philosophical grounds are not refuted or completely discredited as its critics sometimes claim, and ii) that the best way to handle the existing androcentric bias in science is to have some kind of political guidance throughout scientific research, along with the usual epistemic norms. In order to argue for these claims, I provide a dicussion concerning the thesis of underdetermination of theories by data. I argue that the thesis of underdetermination has neither been shown to be true nor been refuted conclusively, and thus the feminist agenda that rests on it is philosophically legitimate. I argue that if underdetermin underdetermination is true, as all feminist critics of science accept in one form or another, then social assumptions that may systematically and politically. If scientific inquiry is a political one to some extent, then it must be a politically correct one. In this sense, bringing in women's perspective, which has been ignored for a long time, will be a political asset.