Where Worlds Collide

It’s another one of those Real Peer Review things. Sadly the original Real Peer Review was forced to close down after threats to expose the academic behind the account. The new one is a group account run by different people, with the blessing of the original anonymous academic.

In this one, a paper that tries to argue that Chemisty is sexist. As before, I’m not linking to the original to spare the author.

Feminist science criticism has mostly focused on the theories of the life sciences, while the few studies about gender and the physical sciences locate gender in the practice, and not in the theories, of these fields. Arguably, the reason for this asymmetry is that the conceptual and methodological tools developed by (feminist) science studies are not suited to analyze the hard sciences for gender-related values in their content. My central claim is that a conceptual, rather than an empirical, analysis is needed; one should be looking for general metaphysical principles which serve as the conceptual foundation for the scientific theory, and which, in other contexts, constitute the philosophical foundations of a worldview that legitimates social inequalities. This position is not being advocated anywhere in the philosophy of science, but its elements are to be found in Helen Longino’s theory of science, and in the social epistemology and ontology of Georg Lukács.

It goes on

4. Marxist and feminist standpoint theory

In order to establish the claim that certain values found in the theories of the physical sciences are gendered, an alternative epistemological framework is needed. Traditionally, the alternative to empiricism as a theory of knowledge is Marxist epistemology, also known as standpoint theory. The writings of Marx provide grounds for the claim that the two main classes in capitalism (the bourgeoisie and the proletariat) have distinctive viewpoints on reality. The systematic philosophical elaboration of this view is to be found in the work of Georg Lukács. Feminist standpoint theory was developed by means of analogy between the position of women under patriarchy and the position of the proletariat under capitalism. This section examines Marxist and feminist standpoint theory for their potential to conceptualize social ideologies in the physical sciences.

If you’re being generous, you could consider this a case of an academic who’s gone so deep into theory they’ve lost the ability to recognise where their theory doesn”t apply, making the same mistake frequently made by economists and evolutionary biologists. A case of the Richard Dawkins?

But you could argue that things like this are actively harmful. When there’s a movement to get more women involved in STEM fields and challenge harmful stereotypes like “Girls can’t do maths”, do attempts to undermine the theoretical basis of science itself in the name of feminism really help?

Or am I not allowed to criticise such things because I’m a “straight white male”.