Objectivity: Feminism, Values, and Science

I. Gender and the objectivity of science.

Gender, Science, and Values: The Gender and Science Reader (2001), an anthology edited by Muriel Lederman and Ingrid Bartsch, is an ambitious and needed collection addressing the role that gender plays in science and the questions this raises for a feminist science. The stated goals for this anthology are: 1) to provide a teaching tool for science studies; 2) to provide a source book for courses addressing these issues; 3) to increase familiarity for instructors across all disciplines; 4) to impact practitioners of science. The selections support these goals admirably and are suitably interdisciplinary, including selections by scientists, historians, philosophers, and science studies scholars.¹

Hugh Lacey's recent book, Is Science Value Free? Values and Scientific Understanding (1999) is, in contrast, a single-author work that investigates the relation between science and values. The question of whether science is value free is closely connected to that of gender and science, since gender itself is laden with social values and it is precisely these sorts of social values that Lacey is wondering about. Lacey acknowledges this in addressing issues of feminism in one of his key chapters.

Discussing both of these books when their goals are so different is difficult, but an overlap of subject provides motivation for doing so. Both books, in their different ways, are addressing the question of how the details of the claim that social factors, particularly gender, influence or play a role in science should be understood. They are complementary in that Lacey's analysis can be read as providing a framework from which to address the specific sorts of concerns the readings in the anthology raise. At the same time, many of those readings present a challenge to parts of Lacey's analysis. I will focus on the way the issue of the objectivity of science is raised in these works as a way of organizing the discussion.

In their introduction, the editors of The Gender and Science Reader state as a rationale the desire to disabuse scientists and others of the view that science is objective. "Scientists, in general, believe that their work is beyond cultural or social influence—that they are discovering, rather than inventing, Nature. This perception has permeated the general population such that it is difficult to convince people that science is not objective truth. Moreover, it is the self-proclaimed 'objectivity' of science, along with its elitist, gendered and racist stances (whether overt, covert, or unintentional) that create friction with social studies of science. Scientists should become aware of analyses of their disciplines based on class and race. Feminist analyses unveil the achievements and struggles of women scientists and offer suggestions for a science that is more inclusive" (Lederman and Bartsch 2001, 2-3).

Both the claim that scientists create nature rather than discover it and the related claim about objectivity are not surprising given the way in which the selections the editors have included map the influence of social factors. However, these claims are far from universally supported, even among those who do science studies of the sort presented in this anthology.² In fact, some of the pieces that the editors have included do not univocally support this claim. Most particularly, Section Three: "Analyzing Gendered Science," includes readings by Sandra Harding, Donna Haraway, and Helen Longino, all of whom have suggested alternatives to a traditional account of scientific objectivity without abandoning the idea that science is objective altogether. Readings such as these suggest that what is required is a re-examination of the notion of scientific objectivity rather than the wholesale rejection that the editors suggest.

One aspect of that re-examination would surely involve the recognition that what it means to say that science is objective is ambiguous. Sometimes the claim is about objectivity of method, that the methodology of science produces evidence that properly justifies scientific claims according to the proper standards of evidence. Objectivity might also mean that science describes the world as it really is, objectively...