Sandra Harding

:"This article is about the American philosopher not the Australian sociologist of the same name."Infobox_Philosopher


region = Western Philosophy
era = 20th century philosophy
color = #B0C4DE

image_caption =

name = Sandra Harding
birth = 1935
death =
school_tradition = Feminist philosophy, Post-colonialism
main_interests = Epistemology, Philosophy of Science, Standpoint theory
influences =
influenced =
notable_ideas = Strong Objectivity

Sandra Harding (born 1935) is an American philosopher of feminist and postcolonial theory, epistemology, research methodology and philosophy of science.

She has contributed to standpoint theory and to the multicultural study of science. She is the author or editor of many books on these topics, and was one of the founders of the fields of feminist epistemology and philosophy of science. Her ways of developing standpoint theory and stronger standards for objectivity ("strong objectivity") have been influential in the social sciences as well as in philosophy.

She currently is a professor at the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies. Sandra Harding earned her PhD from New York University (NYU) in 1973.

Former Director of the UCLA Center for the Study of Women (1996-2000), and co-editor of "Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society" (2000-2005), she previously taught at the University of Delaware for many years, and has been a visiting professor at the University of Amsterdam, the University of Costa Rica, and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich.

Sandra Harding has consulted to a number of international agencies on feminist and postcolonial science issues, including the Pan-American Health Organization, the United Nations Development Fund for Women, and the United Nations Commission on Science and Technology for Development. She was invited to co-author a chapter on "Science and Technology: The Gender Dimension" for the UNESCO World Science Report 1996.

During what is known now as the "Science Wars", she has been part of an on-going debate regarding claims of scientific objectivity. Critiques of her work have been made by scientists Paul R. Gross and Norman Levitt in "Higher Superstition". She gained some notoriety for referring to Newton's Laws as a "rape manual" (Harding: 1986, pg. 113).

Bibliography

* (ed.), "Can Theories be Refuted? Essays on the Duhem-Quine Thesis", 1976.
* "The Science Question in Feminism", 1986.
* with Jean F. O'Barr (ed.), "Sex and Scientific Inquiry", 1987.
* (ed.), "Feminism and Methodology: Social Science Issues", 1987.
*"Whose Science? Whose Knowledge?: Thinking from Women's Lives", 1991.
* (ed.), "The ‘Racial’ Economy of Science: Toward a Democratic Future", 1993.
* "Is Science Multicultural? Postcolonialisms, Feminisms, and Epistemologies", 1998.
* with Uma Narayan (ed.), "Decentering the Center: Philosophy for a Multicultural, Postcolonial, and Feminist World", 2000.
* with Robert Figueroa (ed.), "Science and Other Cultures: Issues in Philosophies of Science and Technology", 2003.
* with Merrill B. Hintikka (ed.), "Discovering Reality: Feminist Perspectives on Epistemology, Metaphysics, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science". Second Edition, 2006 (1983).
* "Science and Social Inequality: Feminist and Postcolonial Issues", 2006.
* "Sciences From Below: Feminisms, Postcolonialities, and Modernities", 2008.

References

* Paul R. Gross and Norman Levitt, "Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and its Quarrels with Science", Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994.

External links

* [http://www.jacweb.org/Archived_volumes/Text_articles/V15_I2_Hirsh_Olson_Harding.htm "Starting from Marginalized Lives: A Conversation with Sandra Harding"] by Sidney I. Dobrin and Thomas Kent, "JAC" 15.2, Spring 1995.
* [http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/281/5383/1599 "Women, Science, and Society"] by Sandra Harding, "Science", September 11, 1998.
* [http://www.bruinalumni.com/articles/gseis5.html 5th chapter of the Bruin Alumni Association's "Indoctrination, Not Education: Rampant Radicalism in the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies" focuses on Sandra Harding]