Objectivity in Science and its Feminist Critique

Objectivity in Science and its Feminist Critique Rajiv Roy Associate Professor Department of English S. A. Jaipuria College Kolkata INDIA “The scientist is not the purely dispassionate observer he idealizes, but a sentient being for whom the very ambition of objectivity carries with it a wealth of subjective meanings.” —Evelyn Fox Keller, Reflection on Gender and Science (1985) “Objectivity fears subjectivity, the core self.” —Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison, Objectivity (2007) The first part of this essay looks at the basic principles or ideas governing the concept of objectivity in science. The second part deals with its feminist critique. I Modern science is characterized primarily by its products and/or processes, which derive their social worth and legitimacy from a relentless claim on what is commonly professed as objectivity. Practitioners of modern science will thus, typically, want to maintain either that (a) science is objective in the sense that its products—theories, laws, experimental results and observations—are accurately representative of the world ‘out there’ without being coloured in any way by human subjectivity; or (b) that science is objective in the sense that, or to the extent that, the methods and processes adopted by it are neither determined by social norms or ethical concerns, nor by the individual prejudices of the practising scientist. Though product objectivists differ somewhat from process objectivists in their understanding of scientific objectivity, objectivity in science either way becomes a metaphor for ‘truth’ premised upon a more or less fixed set of knowledge claims.1 These claims can be broadly organised under the following heads: (i) Subject/object dichotomy: The statements, methods and results of science are not influenced by knowing subjects or knowers. (ii) Aperspectivity: The statements, methods and results of science are ascertained through a ‘view from nowhere’, which transcends or abstracts from the knowers’ particular perspectival locations. (iii) Detachment: The statements, methods and results of science are obtained through strict adherence to emotional detachment. (iv) Value-neutrality: The statements, methods and results of science have no value commitments. (v) Control: The statements, methods and results of science are obtained under controlled laboratory conditions. (vi) External guidance: The statements, methods and results of science are dictated by the way things really are ‘out there’, not by the whims, fancies or prejudices of any individual knower. Objectivity presupposes that there is a real, external world, independent of knowers, which can be described accurately. The practitioners of objectivity exercise detachment, valueneutrality and control, to attain aperspectivity and be led by external guidance. It is by virtue of this exercise that modern science claims for itself an overarching authority over all forms of valid knowledge or ‘truth’. The scientific method becomes, in this sense, fundamentally unitary and objective. It comes to overlook completely or negate the authority of the knowing subject in traditional epistemology, and replaces it with a definitive system of propositions and procedures which guarantees in a precise manner the 1 Anderson, Elizabeth, "Feminist Epistemology and Philosophy of Science." The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. (Fall 2015 Edition). Ed. Edward N. Zalta. <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2015/entries/feminism-epistemology/>. My scheme of analysis closely follows Anderson’s line. comprehension of objective reality. Everything that lies beyond this universe of objective facts is dismissed as non-scientific or mythical or ideological, and science in its essence becomes completely the opposite of myth or ideology. The roots of this perspective on science go back to the beginnings of modern science in the seventeenth century. Francis Bacon’s2 search for a new methodology capable of ridding the human mind of false notions or ‘idols’ that obstruct the understanding of truth, has in it, the seeds of modern scientific objectivity. Condillac’s3, Holbach’s4 or Helvétius’s5 opposition to ‘prejudices’; Comte’s6rejection of theology and metaphysics; Durkheim’s7 hostility to methodological individualism and ‘pre-notions of progress’; and finally, the Vienna Circle’s deployment of ‘logical analysis’ against ‘the nonsensical propositions of metaphysics’, are the major landmarks in this binaristic standpoint on science8: that as opposed to the obscurantism of non-scientific discourses, science produces—through the objective method of detached, aperspectival and value-neutral observation and controlled experiment— objective knowledge, which is the opposite of subjective ideas, ideals or ideologies. II Feminist theorists have persistently critiqued the basic assumptions of the aforementioned binary-driven model of absolute scientific objectivity. Susan Bordo, in her brilliant 1987 book, The Flight to Objectivity, draws the general critical and theoretical landscape of the feminist points of view on this subject. Bordo points out that the “Cartesian dream of a unified system of absolute knowledge, the ideal of a perfectly ‘mirrored’ nature” has now turned into a “nightmare”.9 She claims that our faith in the “objectivist, mechanist presuppositions of modern science” has been completely undermined, and goes on to give a long and scary account of the failure of this science: 2 Francis Bacon (1561–1626). Étienne Bonnot de Condillac (1714-1780). 4 Baron d'Holbach (1723-1789). 5 Claude Adrien Helvétius (1715-1771). 6 Auguste Comte (1798-1857). 7 David Émile Durkheim (1858-1917). 8 Larraine, Jorge. The Concept of Ideology. London: Hutchinson of London, 1979, p. 190. 9 Bordo, Susan. The Flight to Objectivity: Essays in Cartesianism and Culture. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1987, p. 1-4. 3 Regularly, we learn from the media of the carcinogenic properties of substances once thought to be benign or even life-saving. Ecological and industrial disasters prove to be the result of measures initially believed to serve human progress. Conventional assumptions and definitions of “life” and “personhood” are challenged by technological advances that overstep each other with such rapidity that we cannot avoid questioning the very possibility of a conceptual grasp of such notions. Long-standing traditions in scientific and ethical rationality have been exposed as harbouring class, racial, and sexual biases. Surrounded by “isms” and barraged by openly competing frameworks of explanation, students exhibit an anxiety psychologically akin to the contemporary philosophical insecurity described so well by Richard Rorty: Can we ever know anything at all, they wonder, if all knowledge is a matter of human construction and social convention? Feminists argue that the dichotomy between ‘subject’ and ‘object’, which constitutes the standard model of objectivity in modern science, becomes ontologically untenable when the objects of inquiry are the knowers themselves. The sharp subject/object or knower/known distinction, which is implicit in the alleged perception of the chimerical ‘thing-in-itself’, overlooks the crucial role of a knower’s self-understanding in the constitution of the knowing self. The subject/object dichotomy therefore precludes, by implication, the possibility that some human characteristics, such as gender, are socially constructed. Ironically, as Sally Haslanger contends,10 this binaristic model of knowledge may often end up producing the very projective error that scientific objectivity is supposedly designed to avoid: letting subjective beliefs and attitudes distort the true essence of the objects of study. Going further, Luce Irigaray and Edith Oberle famously argue, that the scientific subject, far from being negated or removed, often find itself reproduced “in a totalized way, closed off.”11 The apparent absence of the “subjective (nominative case)” in the sciences, “or the distanciation of a subject who is nevertheless surreptitiously there” then becomes an exercise of “absolute power” bordering on “terrorism”: …an absolute power floating in the air, of an authoritative judgement; everywhere, yet imperceptible, of a tribunal, which in its extreme case has neither judge, nor prosecutor, nor accused. But the judicial system is in place. There is a truth there to which one must submit without appeal, against which one can commit violations…unwillingly or unknowingly. The supreme instance which is exercised against your will. Nobody here is responsible for this terror, this terrorism and yet, these systems operate…12 10 Haslanger, Sally. “Ontology and Social Construction.” Philosophical Topics 23 (1995): 95–125. Irigaray, Luce and Edith Oberle. “Is the Subject of Science Sexed?” Cultural Critique 1 (Autumn, 1985): 73-88. 12 Ibid. 11 Feminist theorists like Donna Haraway13 and Louise Antony14 prefer a pragmatistic stand on the question of aperspectivity. They contend that a certain degree of bias—as against the unattainable ideal of a ‘view from nowhere’—is, in fact, necessary to get started with theorizing. They point out that all representations of the world, however ‘objective’ or ‘scientific’, eventually find themselves entrenched in positions, interests or biases, as scientific theories always seek legitimacy beyond the evidence offered for them. So, rather than giving up on presuppositions or biases, Antony proposes empirical analyses of scientific prejudices to distinguish the good from the bad and adopt, among them, those that are “fruitful” instead of the ones which are “misleading”. Donna Haraway similarly proposes to replace the “perverse”, “masculinist” “cannibaleye” of mainstream normative science, with the “partial perspective” of a “successor science”.15The “unregulated gluttony” of the “endlessly enhanced” vision of normal science, Haraway declares, “fucks the world to make techno-monsters.” For her: only partial perspective promises objective vision. All Western cultural narratives about objectivity are allegories of the ideologies governing the relations of what we call mind and body, distance and responsibility. Feminist objectivity is about limited location and situated knowledge, not about transcendence and splitting of subject and object. It allows us to become answerable for what we learn how to see.16 Another well-known feminist theorist, Sandra Harding, likewise proposes the adoption of a “strong” form of objectivity, which must take the location of the knower into account.17 Feminists regard the objectivist ideal of scientific detachment as particularly untrustworthy. Evelyn Fox Keller,18 for example, holds this ideal responsible for the marginalisation of women in science. She suggests that the bogey of ‘detachment’ feeds into the masculinist concept of ‘hard’ science, which excludes women (stereotyped as ‘soft’ and ‘emotional’) 13 Haraway, Donna.“Situated Knowledges”, In Simians, Cyborgs, and Women, New York: Routledge, 1991. 14 Antony, Louise, 1993, “Quine as Feminist: The Radical Import of Naturalized Epistemology”, in Antony and Witt 1993. 15 Haraway, Donna. “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective”. Feminist Studies Vol 14, No. 3 (Autumn, 1988): 575-599. 16 Ibid. 17 18 Harding, Sandra. The Science Question in Feminism. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986. Keller, Evelyn Fox. Reflections on Gender and Science, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985. from its fold. Susan Bordo, in her turn, looks at detachment as a “defensive response” to an “anxiety over separation from the organic female universe.”19 Detached scientific selfhood is thus “an aggressive intellectual ‘flight from the feminine’ into the modern scientific universe of purity, clarity, and objectivity.”20 The final destination of the progress of this scientific self is for Bordo a “‘re-birthing’ and ‘re-imaging’ of knowledge and the world as masculine.”21 Feminist theorists like Elizabeth Potter, Helen Longino, Sandra Harding and Alison Wylie reject the objectivist ideal of value-neutrality as self-deceptive, unrealistic and counterproductive. They argue that it is neither possible nor desirable to be value-neutral in science. Scientific investigations are always shaped by both individual and societal principles and any false ideal of neutrality should not prevent scientists from becoming conscious of their frames of reference or systems of values. They further argue that the claim or the ideal of value-neutrality becomes counter-productive as it starts preventing scientists from seeing how their values affect their investigations and shields them from critical scrutiny. This stance also overlooks how value judgements sometimes play a positive role in guiding the process and products of scientific inquiry. Some critics (Elizabeth Anderson, for example)22 prescribe alternative methods for avoiding the ill effects of personal opinions or political ideology, without blocking scientists off from their value judgements. Feminists are also critical of the objectivist ideal of control in the conducting of scientific experiments/studies. They point out how the stance of control often becomes a guise for the exercise of social, often specifically male, power. The privileging of control, as Carolyn Merchant23 and Dorothy Smith24 rightly argue, is in fact another way of gender-symbolizing 19 Bordo, p. 5. Ibid. 21 Ibid. 22 Anderson, Elizabeth.“Feminist Epistemology: An Interpretation and Defense.”’Hypatia 10 (1995): 50–84. Also see “Knowledge, Human Interests, and Objectivity in Feminist Epistemology.”Philosophical Topics 23 (1995): 27–58. 20 23 Merchant, Carolyn. The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution. New York: Harper and Row, 1980. 24 Smith, Dorothy. “Women's Perspective as a Radical Critique of Sociology.” Sociological Inquiry 44 (1974): 7–13. science as ‘masculine’. Further, as Mary Tiles contends,25 the fetish for controlled conditions in modern science shuts out valuable experiences, which only a loving or cooperative engagement with the objects of study can produce. The obsession with control thus leads to a one-sided view of the potentialities of the objects of study, ruling out self-governance and conservation and facilitating exploitation through the exercise of power. Finally, feminist scholars criticise the objectivist binary of external/internal guidance as misleading. They contend that the so-called ‘true nature’ of objects cannot be the sole guiding light in the development of scientific theories. Researchers typically make innumerable contingent choices, in the course of their research, regarding the methods of gathering evidence, focus of study, and interpretation of emergent data. It is therefore misleading to pretend that scientific theories are solely driven by ‘external guidance’. In fact, as theorists like Helen E. Longino26 and Lynn Hankinson Nelson27 rightly warn, overemphasis on ‘external guidance’ may obscure the other, more contingent forces affecting scientific decision-making, and protect scientists from being held accountable for their decisions. Donna Haraway and Martin Emily have, for example, drawn attention to the manner in which choices of metaphors and narration strategies affect scientific explanations.28 29 Martin shows how the decision to describe the fertilization of egg by sperm in the style of a medieval knight story, puts the sperm in an active role, and egg in a passive one, obscuring 25 Tiles, Mary.1987 “A Science of Mars or of Venus?” Philosophy 62 (1987): 293–306. 26 Longino, H. Science as Social Knowledge: Values and Objectivity in Scientific Inquiry. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990. 27 Nelson, Lynn Hankinson. Who Knows: From Quine to a Feminist Empiricism. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990. 28 Haraway, Donna. Primate Visions. New York: Routledge, 1989. Also see, Donna, Haraway. “Situated Knowledges”. Simians, Cyborgs, and Women. New York: Routledge, 1990. 29 Martin, Emily. “The Egg and the Sperm: How Science has Constructed a Romance Based on Stereotypical Male-Female Roles”. Feminism and Science. Eds. Evelyn Fox Keller and Helen Longino. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. in the process the causal role of eggs in bringing about fertilization. Haraway similarly points out how the narration of the ‘ape to hominid’ transition-story, in the form of a heroic adventure, places undue focus on the ‘heroism’ of the males of the species while relegating the females to the background as passive followers. Feminist analyses of the givens of scientific objectivity thus go a long way in revising and reconstituting our understanding of scientific research methods. They show us how a blind adherence to ‘objectivity’ may end up in the production of inherently gender-biased and faulty accounts of ‘the world out there’, which the proponents of objectivity, in mainstream science, ironically, claim to know everything about. The representation of grossly partial perspectives as ‘objective’, ‘detached’, ‘externally guided’, ‘value-neutral’ or as the fabled ‘view from nowhere’, systematically perpetuates the very mistakes that modern science professes to avoid. The feminist critiques of objectivity provide an opportunity for recognizing and correcting these errors, and prevent them from getting entrenched in scientific research methods.