Science and Objectivity: A Feminist Perspective (বিজ্ঞান ও বস্তুনিষ্ঠতা : একটি নারীবাদী দৃষ্টিভঙ্গি)

Abstract

Science has been an inseparable part of our daily life and scientific discoveries are always reliable to us. But have we ever questioned what makes this reliability so strong? The answer will be it’s value neutrality, pure objective form. This is where renowned feminist philosopher Sandra Harding raised her voice and declared that the idea of value neutral science is nothing but a myth, misleading agenda. Objectivity propagates ‘might makes right’ policy where feminine thoughts are neglected. According to her, objectivity in science is nothing but an institutionalized, normalized politics of male supremacy which decides the future of a research project. The demand for objectivity, the separation of observation and reporting from the researchers wishes, becomes the demand for separation of Thinking from Feeling. This promotes moral detachment in scientists which in turn can lead to work on all sorts of dangerous and harmful projects with indifference to human life. It is a widely held Androcentric assumption that had been spread through culture-wide across the culture of science. Harding calls this notion of objectivity ‘weak objectivity’ and her response to this problem is the ‘Strong Objectivity’ program that draws on feminist standpoint theory to provide a kind of logic of discovery for maximizing our ability to block ‘might makes right’ in the Sciences. It does so by delinking the neutrality ideal from objectivity which was actually shaped by knowledge-distorting interests and values. Standpoint Theory on the other hand begins from the recognition of social inequality, from the social matrix to where we belong to and supports each perspective of women and marginalised people with nature and social relations they hold in the society. Thus Standpoint Theory aims to increase the adoption of feminist projects into mainstream cultures and practices to broaden the borders of scientific culture and practice and to enrich Science from mere objective values. Although there were claims about some hidden notion of Scientific Pluralism and Naturalism in Harding’s theory of ‘strong Objectivity’, they do no harm to the intentions of standpoint theory which insists on the examination of the researcher as well as examining the object of research.