Alex wrote:
>Joanna wrote:
>Somebody realized, oh, twenty years ago, that ALL of Piaget's testing
>and foundational work on the development of children's learning was
>based on experiments on boys. Now Piaget was a smart and creative
>scientist, but it never occurred to him that limiting his testing to boys
>was, indeed, a limit. That is not a reflection of Piaget; it is a
>reflection of the Scientific Model that you worship and whose
>assumptions, I am arguing, must be questioned.
>
>
>
>Why is this a reflection of the scientific model? The scientific model here is
>that the truth of any theory is determined by experiment. I don't see how
>Piaget's assumption that tests done only on boys should apply to girls says
>anything about the scientific method. If an assumption is in dispute, it can
>be checked with experiment.
>
It is a reflection on the scientific model because the assumptions were
not questioned by scientists but by a political movement. The assumption
was not even articulated as an assumption: "it went without saying that
the male is the universal subject" it is codified in our language, we
speak of mankind, etc.
Joanna
>
>
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