Science ,Technology and Society

Strong Objectivity and its critics

Sandra Harding agrees with the hermeneutic critique that the ideal of pure objectivity is impossible, but she looks forward to some other kind of objectivity - a better or "stronger" type of objectivity. On the other hand, feminist postmodernist Donna Haraway remains skeptical of universal claims of reason and the progress of science. She argues that only political solidarity across social locations can ground feminist findings, there being no independent epistemological groundings (for example Flax 1990, Haraway 1991).Goldman, Alvin 2001. "Social Epistemology."The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2001 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = < http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2001/entries/epistemology-social/>. Her focus on the bio behavioral sciences illustrates how the “social” can be shown to have an influence on observations as well as interpretations of scientific phenomena. Dr.Robert Russell reviews Haraway's feminist stand thus:” Haraway proposed a feminist rendering of ‘objectivity' which brings together two poles of the argument: the admission that all knowledge and knowing subjects are radically and historically contingent along with a “no-nonsense commitment to faithful accounts of a ‘real' world.”