GEN 365 - Feminist Philosophy of Science
This course situates modern science and modernization, including competing conceptions thereof, in their historical context including the localities from where they emerge. We analyze methodologies and epistemologies, or studies of knowledge to assess their legitimacy for the diversity of the world’s inhabitants. The course studies innovative work in feminist philosophies and technology studies which bring together original and influential philosophy of science and technology studies together with feminist and postcolonial philosophies, establishing a new field in the process.
Postmodern critiques of modernity are well-established, but criticized or rejected for their political disillusionment. These critiques of modernity have not exposed the specters of “the feminine” and “the primitive” assumed in universalist instrumental rationality characteristic of a modernization focused on the future rather than the past, one which disparages tradition and accountability to those concerned and impacted. It is the express aim of feminist philosophies and technology studies to do so.
The course is thus oriented to examine a range of methods and epistemologies in the context of social engagements. The course proceeds on the working premise that “science” simply concerns, as Sandra Harding puts is, “every culture’s institutions and systematic empirical and theoretical practices of coming to understand how the world around us works.” On this understanding, social justice and science go together.
Cross-listed with PHIL 365 and
3 credits
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