Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in
Book cover

Discovering Reality

Feminist Perspectives on Epistemology, Metaphysics, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science

  • Book
  • © 2003

Overview

Editors:
  1. Sandra Harding

    1. Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, University of California, Los Angeles, USA

    View editor publications

    You can also search for this editor in PubMed   Google Scholar

  2. Merrill B. Hintikka

    1. Department of Philosophy, Florida State University, USA

    View editor publications

    You can also search for this editor in PubMed   Google Scholar

  • Presents central feminist critiques and analyses of natural and social sciences and their philosophies
  • Essays focus on Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Hobbes, Rousseau, and Marx
  • Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras

Part of the book series: Synthese Library (SYLI, volume 161)

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this book

Log in via an institution
eBook USD 129.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book USD 179.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book USD 169.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Other ways to access

Licence this eBook for your library

Institutional subscriptions

Table of contents (16 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xxxix
    Download chapter PDF

  2. Woman is not a Rational Animal: On Aristotle’s Biology of Reproduction

    • Lynda Lange
    Pages 1-15

  3. Aristotle and the Politicization of the Soul

    • Elizabeth V. Spelman
    Pages 17-30

  4. The Unit of Political Analysis: Our Aristotelian Hangover

    • Judith Hicks Stiehm
    Pages 31-43

  5. Have Only Men Evolved?

    • Ruth Hubbard
    Pages 45-69

  6. Evolution and Patriarchal Myths of Scarcity and Competition

    • Michael Gross, Mary Beth Averill
    Pages 71-95

  7. Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Forerunner of a Feminist Social Science

    • Ann Palmeri
    Pages 97-119

  8. The Trivialization of the Notion of Equality

    • Louise Marcil-Lacoste
    Pages 121-137

  9. How Can Language be Sexist?

    • Merrill B. Hintikka, Jaakko Hintikka
    Pages 139-148

  10. A Paradigm of Philosophy: The Adversary Method

    • Janice Moulton
    Pages 149-164

  11. The Man of Professional Wisdom

    • Kathryn Pyne Addelson
    Pages 165-186

  12. Gender and Science

    • Evelyn Fox Keller
    Pages 187-205

  13. The Mind’s Eye

    • Evelyn Fox Keller, Christine R. Grontkowski
    Pages 207-224

  14. Individualism and the Objects of Psychology

    • Naomi Scheman
    Pages 225-244

  15. Political Philosophy and the Patriarchal Unconscious: A Psychoanalytic Perspective on Epistemology and Metaphysics

    • Jane Flax
    Pages 245-281

  16. The Feminist Standpoint: Developing the Ground for a Specifically Feminist Historical Materialism

    • Nancy C. M. Hartsock
    Pages 283-310

  17. Why has the Sex/Gender System become Visible Only Now?

    • Sandra Harding
    Pages 311-324

  18. Back Matter

    Pages 325-332
    Download chapter PDF
Back to top

Keywords

About this book

During the last decade, feminist research has attempted to add understandings of women and their social activities to what we all thought we knew about nature and social life. However, from the very beginning of this project, it has appeared to be in tension with some ofthe most fundamental insightsof the Second Women's Movement. Only recently has the nature ofthis tension become clear. Within the theories, concepts, methods and goals of inquiry we inherited from the dominant discourses we have generated an impressive collection of "facts" about women and their lives, cross-culturally and historically - and we can produce many, many more. But these do not, and cannot, add up to more than a partial and distorted understanding of the patterns of women's lives. We cannot understand women and their lives by adding facts about them to bodies of knowledge which take men, their lives, and their beliefs as the human norm. Furthermore, it is now evident that if women's livescannot be understood within the inherited inquiry frameworks, than neither can men's lives. The attempts to add understandings of women to our knowledge of nature and social life have led to the realization that there is precious little reliable knowledge to which to add them. A more fundamental project now confronts us. Wemust root out sexist distortions and perversions in epistemology, metaphysics, methodology and the philos­ ophy of science - in the "hard core" of abstract reasoning thought most immune to inftltration by social values.

Editors and Affiliations

  • Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, University of California, Los Angeles, USA

    Sandra Harding

  • Department of Philosophy, Florida State University, USA

    Merrill B. Hintikka

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: Discovering Reality

  • Book Subtitle: Feminist Perspectives on Epistemology, Metaphysics, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science

  • Editors: Sandra Harding, Merrill B. Hintikka

  • Series Title: Synthese Library

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-0101-4

  • Publisher: Springer Dordrecht

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

  • Copyright Information: Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2003

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4020-1318-8Published: 31 July 2003

  • Softcover ISBN: 978-1-4020-1319-5Published: 31 July 2003

  • eBook ISBN: 978-94-010-0101-4Published: 06 December 2012

  • Series ISSN: 0166-6991

  • Series E-ISSN: 2542-8292

  • Edition Number: 2

  • Number of Pages: XXXIX, 332

  • Topics: Epistemology, Philosophy of Science, Methodology of the Social Sciences, Modern Philosophy, Philosophy of Biology

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Back to top

Search

Navigation