Abstract
I identify several substantive parallels in the issues of interest, and methodological and conceptual frameworks employed, in the research traditions of feminist and non-feminist philosophy of biology. I also identify several substantive differences in the emphases of the two traditions, including that biological research and hypotheses focusing on sex and gender raise political and ethical issues that non-feminist philosophers of biology rarely address. I conclude that a growing interest in philosophy of science in promoting “socially responsible science”, and engaging in “socially relevant” and “socially responsible” philosophy of science, should make it possible for the traditions to more fruitfully engage one another.
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- 1.
There are exceptions. See, e.g., Hubbard (1983).
- 2.
Although the distinction is not without its problems or its critics, I use “sex” to refer to females and males (typically defined by biologists on the basis of their gametes) and “gender” to refer to non-biological characteristics associated with females and males, including women and men: characteristics construed to be “feminine” or “masculine,” including behaviors, temperaments, cognitive predispositions, roles, and so forth. Feminists drew and insisted on the distinction early on in the Second Wave of the Women’s Movement and it was brought to bear by feminist scientists and science scholars beginning in the 1970s critical of and/or attempting to “disrupt” and/or “replace” the conflation of the two in scientific theorizing in the social and biological sciences.
- 3.
I return to this issue in the concluding section.
- 4.
For example, feminists also cite commitments to uni-directional and “hierarchical” models of causal processes, represented, for example, in Francis Cricks’ “Central Dogma” and in models of hormonal effects on behavior in behavioral endocrinology, as an example of how historically-specific views of what constitutes “serious science” impact scientific reasoning. There are stronger versions of contextualism in feminist philosophy of science, including standpoint theory and arguments for the situatedness and partial perspectives of all inquirers (e.g., as advocated, respectively, in Harding 1986 and Haraway 1988).
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- 6.
I emphasize unrecognized and unwitting bias because cases in which scientists (or others) deliberately manipulate research questions, hypotheses, or tests on the basis of bias, are, from an epistemological point of view, uninteresting.
- 7.
As discussed in the next section, metaphors are abundant in the biological sciences—and some argue in science generally. One major problem arises when scientists don’t recognize the metaphors they invoke as metaphors. Altmann was specific that her notion of “budgeting” is a metaphor.
- 8.
Anderson is not the first to argue for “evaluatively-thick concepts.” She is the first to find such concepts at work in science and to provide a feminist analysis of their role and consequences.
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Hankinson-Nelson, L. (2016). Feminist and Non-feminist Philosophy of Biology: Parallels, Differences, and Prospects for Future Engagements. In: Amoretti, M., Vassallo, N. (eds) Meta-Philosophical Reflection on Feminist Philosophies of Science. Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science, vol 317. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-26348-9_4
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