Helen Longino

Paper Summary:

The paper states that Helen Longino's essay "Subjects, Power, and Knowledge: Description and Prescription in Feminist Philosophies of Science" draws upon the distinctions and tensions between the normative and descriptive traditions in the theory of knowledge, trying to integrate and examine the way in which the feminist accounts of science have impacted the theory of knowledge acquisition. The paper explains that Longino's focus is mainly on the epistemology of science. The paper also states that in Longino's opinion the identification of nature as female and the scientific mind as male, and the privileging of explanatory models of control over those constructed around relations of interdependence may question the validity of the scientific method itself.

From the Paper:

"The nature of the relationship between observation, data, and theory, which represent scientific discourse have been considered arguments against unconditioned subjectivity and empiricism. The arguments rely on the fact that if the scientific knower is considered an individual who should be freed from external influences in order to produce acceptable knowledge the puzzles introduced by observation and certain evidential relations will remain unsolved."

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