Only one sex?

rc-am rcollins at netlink.com.au
Mon Nov 29 18:21:36 PST 1999


yoshie wrote:


> Science (in the broad sense of the word, an accumulation
> of knowledge, including feminist & historical materialist knowledge) is
> necessary

huh? the assertion that science consists of "the accumulation of knowledge" would be news to most philosophers and historians of science. second, it's not at all clear to me what distinction (in the above formulation) there exists between 'science' and 'knowledge' that isn't at base a rhetorical one -- ie., does it have to do with methods, procedures of verification, or what? third, it actually does make more sense from an historical perspective to talk about the relationship between science and those various terms such as "modernity," "instrumental reason," "Western metaphysics," etc, than it does to pretend that science was used to denote knowledge (esp a supposedly better knowledge) across time and place.

otoh, it may well be that this is simply a case of leveraging a certain politics (feminism and historical materialism) onto the rhetorical terrain of science v ideology; but at the cost, i would say, of dropping certain rather important premises of those politics: for instance, the requirement to historicise, as above. is it really necessary that we convince ourselves (or others) that our politics is something other than conjunctural?

Angela _________



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