Background
Harding, Sandra was born on March 29, 1935 in San Francisco, California, United States.
Harding, Sandra was born on March 29, 1935 in San Francisco, California, United States.
Douglass College (BA 1956). New York University (PhD 1973).
Professor of Philosophy and Director of Women's Studies, University of Delaware.
Sandra Harding's feminist critique of theories of science is based on a view of science as an essentially social project, thereby rejecting attempts to give a guarantee for the objectivity of scientific research. One of the undeniable influences on the Production of knowledge, identified by Harding, ls gender. On various levels, she maintains, from 'he politics of education and employment to the symbolic representation of gender-categories in scientific theories, the duality of human gender is mirrored, not only the sexual categories but in other structures of duality in modem Western thought: the opposites of ‘wild’ and ‘civilized’, of ‘working class' and ‘intelligenfsia as well as those of ‘female’ and ‘male’ influence, the epistemology of the ‘male’, ‘white’, civilized’ spectator. Harding states that scientific endeavours have their own history and development. Science today Can no longer be regarded as a ‘craftsmanlike’ search for truth, but should rather be seen as a complex enterprise in an industrialized surroundlng. A critical feminist perspective can help to reveal those changes and underlying structures of scientific practice and theory. Nevertheless, Hardlng does not adhere to a postmodern rejection of the power of the concept of truth.