Whose science? Whose knowledge?

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

In a dozen intriguing, thought-provoking essays viewing science and its practice from a feminist perspective, Harding takes up some of themes from her earlier work The Science Question in Feminism. ``Why `Physics' Is a Bad Model for Physics'' argues that the image of ``pure'' science as value-free and distinct from applied science and technology is an illusion and, further, that science with no socially useful application could ``reasonably be seen as a make-work welfare program for the middle classes.'' ``What Is Feminist Epistemology'' explores feminist empiricism, which asserts that the problem with scientific inquiry lies not in its standards but in the fact that it fails to meet its own standards; Harding also examines the more radical feminist standpoint theories, which claim that what a culture calls ``knowledge'' is itself socially situated, that knowledge looks different from the standpoint of women's lives. ``Reinventing Ourselves as Other,'' while regarding women as science's post-modern ``other,'' approaches ``the Monster Problem: what does and should it mean to be a male feminist?'' (May)