The women's movements around the world and intellectual feminism work on the terrain of the postmodern. Now what what do I mean by this mysterious statement? I mean that we are at a particular historical moment, which we can think of as coming after or an attempt to forge a transition out of the last 300 years of the modern West. Post-modernism I'm talking about here as a historical moment, when the legitimacy of fundamental assumptions of the modern West End of the elites who insist on these assumptions are being widely questioned science. It's ethic its rationality. It's functions are part of what is being questioned. feminism here joins The post-colonial discussions, but they have to criticize racism and imperialism. It joins the discussions of ecological disaster and environmental misuse. the joins discussions of how to create participatory democracy in countries it joins discussions of how to defeat the increasing militarism in the west as well as in other countries. And it joins the suspicions of the links between the assumptions of Western thought and the these these projects that have that can be seen especially in modern science feminists feminism. The women's movements are part of all these other movements and the concerns of these other movements are also part of feminism. So at this this particular moment in history, we are both part of our past of this Enlightenment movement that has produced science with its great advances as well as its great problems, but we're also attempting to reshape that science as we reshape this world and it's in this context that I want to talk today about why the physics that we have today is a bad model not only for the social sciences as a long tradition in philosophy and social theory has argued but also for the sciences that we should want that is the physics we have is a bad model which put it most paradigmatic lie for physics. It's a bad model for the Sciences we should want. Now the feminist criticisms of the Sciences have had five different focuses and let me just very briefly here review them. First of all, they're the criticisms of sexism in the social structure of Science Why have there been not so few women in The Sciences for in fact there have been many, but why have there been so few in the direction of the scientific Enterprise has Secondly, there have been criticisms of the Miss uses and abuses of the sciences and their Technologies with respect to women in particular one obvious place this this criticism has one obvious focus of this criticism has been on reproductive Technologies. Why is it that the society is willing to teach take such higher risks on women's bodies than it is on men's but issues of reproductive technology and reproductive systems are not the only concern there's also issues of workplace Technologies domestic Technologies and so forth. A third Focus has been on sexist and Andrew eccentric bias in biology and in the social sciences notice. I did not say the Natural Sciences in biology and the social sciences and I'm sure all of you are familiar with some part of this work. You've heard that not only man the hunter but woman The Gatherer made important contributions to the dawn of human history, you've heard that woman's moral voice is not deviant or inferior, but simply different and equally important that woman's biology is not inferior or pathological but simply different that woman's role in history and in social life has been important even though it's been not so visible as the men's lives on which the social sciences in history have focused and so forth. So that's the third focus of the feminist criticisms of the Sciences. The fourth is on the sexual meanings that scientific activity and nature have been given from the the come familiar metaphor of Mother Nature images of rape and bacon and his his peers the idea that nature is other somehow it is that there's there's humankind and there's this threatening other that is a female nature the idea that the scientist is the husband of a chaste nature feminist historians of science such as Carol and Merchants in her book The Death of Nature and Evelyn Keller in her collection called Reflections on gender and science have been particularly eloquent in talking about how these sexual metaphors distort our understandings of Nature and of research processes as well as being politically detrimental to woman's situation. So 1/4 Focus has been on They sexual codes these ways in which sexual politics have been used as moral and political resources to gain approval for Sciences particularly for new sciences and V Focus has been on the meta theories of science. The science is of science. So to speak on epistemology and the various theories of how science works and how it's located in society and here the argument has been that the in a very broad way that the addition of woman's voice of a voice that originates in women's lives increases the objectivity of our understanding not only of Nature and social life, but of how science itself works the addition of a woman's voice allows us to identify more comprehensive problematics and more rigorous procedures. We learn to control for gender. The gender is a variable not only out. In social life, but also in the culture in the way the culture thinks different cultures think of gender in different ways and consequently see the world in different ways through through gender. So this has been a fifth focus of these criticisms and I'm not going to talk about those specifically further today. What I do want to say next is that it might appear after I've gone through this this list. That the Natural Sciences can manage to escape these criticisms that they are immune to them after all every right-minded person can agree that women to should have equity in the in the social structure of science that there's these Miss uses and abuses of the sciences and their Technologies should no longer occur. Perhaps they can even agree that there's been a great deal of bias in biology and social science results of research and that this should be ended. They should they can agree that the sexual meanings are certainly damaging to the social sciences these the sexual meanings of Nature and inquiry and that woman's voice can be important in the social sciences and biology in defining what should count as a scientific problem and what should count as adequate evidence for or against any particular hypothesis. What we need to do. In fact is construct a more realistic and less fantastic notion of objectivity. That is I think the notion of objectivity has a glorious intellectual and political history and I'm not willing to give it up. I don't think quite see why we should give all the good terms to the bad boys as one of my friends says so I mean, I'm here to colonize to Imperial eyes objectivity something we're all very used to in the west here when I say this in Sweden is I did a week ago they laugh in a different way. And what the way I want to do that is to talk about six false, but very common beliefs that obstruct our ability to reconstruct the notion of objectivity in useful ways. My argument is that these false but common beliefs are extraneous ones. They're extra ones the fact that we hold these beliefs blocks our ability to see how the feminist criticisms apply to the Natural Sciences. If we remove these false beliefs that I'm going to talk about We're led to ask different kinds of questions that will in ones that will enable us to think in a more realistic way about the sciences that we could have and about the notion of objectivity. So these beliefs are something like the belief the old belief that the world rests on the back of an elephant. Once that belief was removed then a whole series of other questions about the universe could be asked but as long as this extraneous belief stood there it was difficult to see why one should ask any further questions or what. In fact, they would be so I'm going to talk about six false beliefs obstruct our ability to understand the natural sciences and in particular make it difficult to see how feminism has anything to say to the logic of research and the logic of explanation in the Natural Sciences. Now, I'm going to if I had if I really spent all the time I'd like to on all six you'd be here for far longer than you want to be here. So I am going to talk about the first three quite briefly and then spend more time on the last three. Okay, the first false belief is this one the Natural Sciences are not about people. That's not the false part. The Natural Sciences are not about people feminism is about people so feminism must be irrelevant to the logic in the content of the Natural Sciences. Okay, this is this is the belief that I think is false this whole statement now, let me just suggest I'm not going to as I say go into long Arguments for these first three, but I'd be happy to talk about the more later. Let me just suggest why we should regard that as a false belief. And as one we should remove one that obstructs our ability to understand the Sciences. We could think first of all how evolutionary theory is about animals and plants not just about humans. But it's common to understand now that that 19th century Theory projected capitalist economic relations on to Nature. It projected onto nature competition the self-interest of species the war of all against all species seeking niches in which they could do business the survival of the fittest and so forth without in fact talking about the economic order in Europe of the 19th century that particular the metaphors the model that that theory used was one which seemed reasonable to people who were experiencing late 19th century capitalism. Okay, so that even though evolutionary theory was not about people exactly I mean those parts of it that were concerned with, you know, why giraffes had long necks and so forth nevertheless, It had a great deal to do with the social order the social order got inside that theory in some kinds of mysterious ways. I mean, I appreciate in hackings insistence this morning that interest theories are not everything that we want to know don't provide everything that we want to know about the sciences and the importance of these borders between internal and external accounts of this of the sciences. And I think this is a case of one of those borders. Okay, but the I think we look a little further will see that there are many there are more borders there more more of science on these borders than one might have thought we could also recollect as the new historians of science are telling us that it was not only the mediaeval or ancient astronomy and physics which projected onto the heavens the hopes and fears in the case of Medieval World characteristic of Those church and state societies. It was also the new Sciences of the 17th century the new astronomy the new physics were Incorporated powerful. We could say early Democratic and Bourgeois Tendencies into their the ways. They conceptualize the world. They decentered our species in the universe said we were just located on this insignificant planet in an insignificant gallery Galaxy. They were anti aristocratic. They said there's no essential higher or lower locations in nature, but the parts of nature is simply moved by external forces one isn't born to royalty. So to speak was the clear implication of this they were anti-religious. They said that anyone has Galileo put it anyone can see through my telescope. Anyone, so appropriately trained can use experimental method. So even though copernican astronomy and Newtonian physics were not about people in some obvious way. They nevertheless managed to incorporate a story about the heavens that had that had a great deal of social meaning. It was not just a series of meaningless facts, but theories that were infused with the hopes and aspirations of the Epic Carolyn Merchant the as a who I mentioned a moment ago who wrote a book called The Death of nature. And Evelyn Keller is collection of papers called Reflections on gender and Science in both of these they talk as I indicated earlier about the role important role that sexual metaphor has played in the development of modern science. That is they see these these Notions of dominating Mother Nature by the good husband scientist these if we were to put it in the most blatantly, which is a feminist terms today. We talked about marital rape, right how they work in a white developing using Notions of marital rape. The husband is scientist forcing nature to his to his wishes how these metaphors were. In fact extremely useful just like the metaphor of nature as a machine. So to this metaphor the these rape and violence and domination metaphors that carried sexual overtones, not only sexual overtones, but certainly sexual overtones such are It for a new way that those who would know nature should relate to Nature. They should take more vigorous interventionist actions ones that had been forbidden by the earlier organicist Notions Carolyn Merchant has a wonderful chapter in her book on how mining getting or has out of the Earth was regarded as morally repugnant at the time because it was seen as violating the body of Mother Earth and ministers preached against it. I mean, we wouldn't think those kinds of thoughts today obviously about mining but in a world where Mother Nature where I mean, there's a much more literal understanding of nature as she and and within an organicist scheme nature new experimental method carried these bad moral connotations and a great deal of effort had to be used to overcome them. So moral and political resources are frequently used by new Sciences to gain approval for their practices. The metaphor is overtly disappear. They're no longer cited, but perhaps that's only because I wonder if perhaps Mary has so we'll say something about it later on in these days. I think that that may be because they don't have to be mentioned so often when they're familiar, we no longer have to appeal to tell people to treat nature as a machine because we all assumed nature is a machine in certain ways and similarly. We don't have to exhort people to go out and dominate nature because that's what modern science the modern world does. So I'm going to move more briefly through the next two, but here's one belief that I think we can stand to get rid of that just because the Natural Sciences are not overtly about people feminism can have nothing to say to them. I've been arguing here. The feminism can be relevant to the logic of research and the content the logic of explanation in the content of the Natural Sciences in some more. What should I say? Direct ways than that than it is to the social sciences. Okay, II belief that we can get rid of is that science is only a method or it's only a set of quantitative statements. It's nothing else. And therefore if feminism has no alternatives to scientific method then it has nothing to say to Natural Science or to the philosophy of science now in hacking this morning enabled me to move past this one quite quickly now because he pointed out that it's very difficult among other things. It's very difficult to State what in fact scientific method is its many different things in many different sciences and the search for a single distinctive method has pretty much been given up by both philosophers and by scientists. It was not however was not too long ago that even such a notable. Theorists of science as Karl Popper was still arguing that we had to make a choice between seeing scientific method is fundamentally a matter of induction or fundamentally a matter of deduction that this is what scientific method was and I thought to myself that dogs practice induction and deduction. So there must be something more distinctive about science than the fact that it practices some combination of the two we can also see that the formal statements equals mc squared or boils laws or whatever you want that appear as a kind of what should I say Center of science from some perspectives. In fact are simply the tip of a larger iceberg in a variety of ways in the first place. They require interpretation. They're not meaningful until they've been interpreted interpreted and the kinds of metaphors. I mentioned just a few moments ago. In fact become part of the evidence for The meaningfulness the usefulness of these formal statements science and fact is many things besides a method a distinctive method or a set of quantity a set of quantitative statements or formal statements. It is cumulative traditions of knowledge for us in the modern West. It's an origin story like stories about Abraham Lincoln and George Washington tells us who we were what kind of people we are where we've come from what kind of goals we should have we're rational unlike those Savages out there. At least that's what they said. It's a metaphysics and epistemology and ethics a politics. Some people have said it's a religion Paul fire oven said it's a religion Modern Western science is a way of gaining knowledge that is compatible with liberal states, but not so much with monarchies. It's compatible with capitalism. It's compatible with protestantism with imperialism. Modern science is a social institution that has rituals and practices modern science is the reason for and the consequence of technological development. It's a major factor in production. We could ask if it's going to also be one in reproduction. It's a tool for the development of the third world and the overdevelopment for some in the first it is as the sociologist of science all restivo. Salva Steve-O has named it. It's a social problem science in the modern West is a social problem. It has consequences that we need to look at he argues just the way we look at drug abuse teenage pregnancy and poverty. It has certain consequences that are very problematic. It's also the origin and continuing generator of progressive Tendencies the disenfranchised and the developed need to understand to explain how the world works. It has science modern science lodges with in it both these regressive and these progress of Tendencies its contradictions are what makes it so interesting and what makes it so important for us to take a hand in shaping the way it will be it will be used and developed in the future. So We could say that feminism and those post modernist movements. I mentioned are also Sciences in the sense in which the term is used in Europe. That is their attempts to gain knowledge about ourselves in the natural world. That's that's how that term is understood in Europe Okay, the third false belief. That we can give up is this one? That only false beliefs have social causes that true beliefs are caused by Nature herself and that all we need to do therefore is open our eyes and rather sophisticated ways and she will impress these beliefs on are glassy mirror Minds consequently, whatever relevance feminist criticism may have to identifying the social causes of false beliefs. Feminism which is a social movement cannot generate true beliefs, or at least less false ones. So this set of beliefs I think is one that is a myth set of statements and I think we can understand science a great deal better. If we give it up many in the audience will recognize that I'm drawing here on the strong program in the sociology of knowledge. Their argument is that less false beliefs their false beliefs and less false beliefs. Let us say I'm trying to avoid that word true beliefs which scientists themselves almost never use Less false beliefs also have social causes and so we can ask questions about what social conditions in fact make possible the growth of knowledge about the natural world. For instance. We can see we can ask questions as historians have about what has made possible the development of experimental science in the modern West several sociologists and historians here who have argued that you could not get experimental science in a slaveholding society or indeed in a rigidly aristocratic Society where there's a sharp division between head laborers and hand laborers because the slaves or The Peasants do the mediate Doom handwork manual labor it slowly valued and those classes are kept intellectually cognitively ignorant on the other hand. The aristocratic group won't get their hands dirty that's regarded as something that only the lower classes do but experimental method requires both a trained intellect and the willingness to get get one's hands dirty. So it requires the development of a new social class as in fact happened in Western Europe. In the 15th and 16th centuries a class with trained into trained intellects. That was also willing to engage in actual physical experiment physical experimentation manipulation of nature with their hands in one way or another. So here's one well-understood claimed that in fact the kinds of beliefs that modern experimental science produced required certain kinds of changes in the social order that is science requires not from the social order not just funding which it does but also certain kinds of social relations. You can't do every kind of inquiry in every kind of social order the biologist Stephen Jay Gould has argued that debunking makes possible the generation of new beliefs that the criticism that feminism for instance in tow as one group engages in Is a fundamental part of the growth of knowledge itself. He says something to the effect that we need to remove the rotten apples from the barrel from the full barrel of scientific beliefs in order to make room for new ones. And so the criticism of science isn't itself part of the production of the growth of scientific knowledge. So these there are several reasons and we could go on to talk about other obvious examples where changes in the social order. In fact have contributed to the growth of knowledge in the Natural Sciences as well as in the social sciences. So here is a third belief that we should give up if we want to understand how science works. This belief that only false beliefs have social causes. The fourth belief that I think we should give up is the idea that there is something such as pure science that there is a thing which is pure science the argument here. Is that pure science exists. But the feminist criticisms are only of Technology its applications of the social structure of science. So feminism really only challenges public policy about science not science itself real science is pure science and feminism can't touch that but I think there are a number of reasons to question this idea that there is not now if there ever was such a thing as pure science and let me Begin by talking about what I see is three relationships between the sciences and their Technologies. I have a feeling that this important issue that's been so widely discussed for so long. It's going to continue to be discussed in the next couple days. First of all, obviously and uncontroversial e the science is generate information with which public policy and private Enterprise can create Technologies and applications. But secondly, the science is also used Technologies. And these Technologies carrot can carry frequently do carry political values. The telescope for instance is a highly political instrument at the time that it was invented. It moved Authority about the heavens from the church to anyone who was properly educated and look through it as Galileo said anyone can see the way the heavens are with my telescope more recently the historian of medicine Stanley Riser has talked about how diagnostic Technologies and medical research and practice. Invade bodily privacy in ways that were morally forbidden in earlier cultures. So here's another case of science Medical Science in this case using a technology which carries certain kinds of political values with it. So this is the second relationship between Science and Technology science uses Technologies with political values, but in the third place societal needs are frequently interpreted as technological ones that the science is must solve Sciences technology driven and these Technologies themselves. These definitions of problems is technological ones are themselves political acts scientific problematics are generated by technological needs here are some examples the need for better Firearms the need for better. What more efficient navigation to Africa The need for population control in the third world are very few. Third world people who would agree given a free choice with that way of defining their problem. Do they have too much population in the third world? Why don't we practice population control and the Kennedys who surely use far more natural resources in their lifestyle than the folks whose whose puppy whoosah. Reproductive patterns of the West tries to change instead they might well Define the problem as the difficulty of finding of supporting their own populations in the face of the continuing extraction both of Labor and resources to the West. So the definition the Apparently neutral definition here of need to control population. That's a the creates certain technological needs that science can solve I'm arguing is in fact, very political definition. We could also ask these kinds of questions about bio engineering about more efficient industrial production about information storage and retrieval and so forth. So what is it that so pure here? Where is Pure science in the face of all these varying complex relationships between Technologies and Sciences that bring the politics of the larger society right into science? The historian of science who was a student of Thomas kuhns Paul Foreman has argued in a recent article on the history of physics that the scientific establishment maintains a funding of 5% for quote unquote pure science in order to justify the 95% that it spends on what can clearly be identified as applied science that this proportion five to ninety five is in fact built into Federal grant guidelines. I don't know if that's true. I'll let other people talk about that later. I think the illusion that there is such a thing as pure science is today maintained by separating the scientists from engineers and applied science people the people who are going to do who are going to get the right to the title scientist separating them physically. From people who do engineering and applied science. The scientists are to be kept ignorant of the intended or possible uses of their work there to be kept ignorant of how science works. I'm not arguing that they choose this am arguing that it gets chosen for them. Thus the ignorance of individual scientists is apparently supposed to be the evidence for the purity of their work and I find this very bizarre. We can also see the pattern of Slough at sloughing off from the category science to engineering or applied science. Those fields were the applications of the scientific research become obvious medical research is just one case here, but we could look at many areas of engineering that you were originally considered a part of science proper, but when their applications and Technologies become too apparent, they get moved over to the engineering building on campus or the out of the pure science departments. And finally, there's a kind of peculiar argument here that it's very important for us as a society to spend an immense amount of social resources on Research that has no apparent social value. Now, I just want to pretend I came from Mars. Okay, you all came from Mars you came down here. There's poverty in the streets. There's endless ways in which social resources all the intelligence that goes into science and the money's could be used to improve the quality of social life for people and yet this argument for the importance of the existence of pure science argues that it's we must move these vast amount of social resources from the many to the few in order to support this Enterprise that has no apparent social value. I'm not arguing that that shouldn't be that that work shouldn't be done. I'm not arguing that everybody should do only socially important work. I would be really happy to play bridge all day. I love it. But I wouldn't think of asking for huge supplies of federal and national resources in order to entertain myself in these activities. And so I raised these I know very controversial and unrespectful questions about this what I see is a mythological belief that there is such a thing as pure science. I think it's a piece of hogwash and I know we'll have many interesting discussions in the next couple days about how other people see it but at any rate the belief itself protects, The Natural Sciences, I think from the feminist critiques in a way that they should not and that should not be happening. Looks like feminism is challenging only public policy about science, but not this mysterious thing real science. It's the pure science. Okay, V false belief. I think we can get rid of is that scientists? Natural scientists are trained to be experts not only about how nature works, but about how science works. So feminist sociologists historians and philosophers should refrain from making observations or comments about fields in which they are not experts. Speaking, of course to myself and voices. I've heard use this. This is a bully which I think is false. I think it's false that scientists are trained to be experts about how science works and I think that feminists and others should not refrain from making comments about these other fields. Now how science works is in fact in our society a different the study of how science works is in our culture a different science from how nature works. It doesn't have to be this way. But it is this way in our society that is how science works is the subject matter of the social studies of science the history philosophy and social studies of science. And this science social studies of science has rigorous scientific rules that in fact it gained originally from the Natural Sciences. And one of these rules is that we shouldn't trust the natives to provide the last word about how their society works. This is what social scientists who, you know criticize who are who think that we need explanations not just interpretations of social life. This is the way they argue and it seems to me and it seems to a lot of other people too that this should apply to science to why should science is a social institution alone be accepted from its own principle that everything in the world should be explained through causal principles not simply through the interpretations of the natives you get of course that the natives I'm referring to our scientists. Okay, the natives of science. The new social studies of science asked how the science of the day of any day this day or other days fits with the beliefs and practices of its culture. This is as as Thomas Kuhn put the point and feminism to asks this kind of scientific question. How does the science of the 17th century or the 19th century or today fit with the larger social relations between the genders the development of various racial relations class relations and so forth of the day. So if we give up this belief that scientists are trained not only to be experts about nature, but also about how science works. We can begin asking some more informative and Illuminating questions about the Sciences. First of all, first of all, the science of Sciences. Has the project of trying to locate causes of scientific activity. That are not themselves visible from the location of that activity Laboratories are poor places from which to see how science is located in the larger social order and how the social order is located in science. What happens in the laboratory begins Far Far Away in a war in Asia in shifts in the economy in religious beliefs in definitions of certain social problem as overpopulation and so forth that is a car culture sees through scientists eyes and thinks through scientists minds and the science of science tries to understand how in fact what the relationship is between what happens in the Laboratories and what happens far away at tries to trace cause Ali those relations secondly patterns in the beliefs and behaviors of individuals and of Institutions are frequently only visible. If one looks at large sweeps of History not if one looks only at the narrow little parts of history in which we ourselves live whether we're in the laboratory or outside it only in retrospect can we come to understand the relationship between for instance some of our contemporary social forms and certain decisions or accidents that happened of social relations that happened in the 1930s or the 1920s or the 1880s. So again, the laboratory is not a particularly good place to be it's not that it's a terrible place to be but it's not a particularly good place to be to understand these patterns in belief and behavior of scientific individuals and scientific institutions in the third-place scientists are insiders to science. They are natives. That's what makes them so valuable in other ways. But objective critical causal accounts. We are told are best provided provided by Outsiders Within by people who are strangers who are alien to a certain way of life in this case laboratory life and who have not been completely socialized into that way of life. So people who live in Laboratories, so to speak are too closely associated to socialized into a scientific mode of thought a scientific way of life to understand the relationship between those forms of life and larger ones forth. No one is motivated to provide causal accounts of their own activities certainly not philosophers and I'm sure nor anybody else nobody's motivated to provide causal accounts of our own irrationalities and the irrationalities of the institutions upon which we defend not only for a living but for our sense of Who We Are In the dominant groups are least motivated to do this and the direction of contemporary science is very powerful. It's a very powerful part of the society and we shouldn't be surprised the people who are in those groups though. They provide valuable information in a variety of ways are not particularly motivated to understand the unfortunate aspects of that institution V Western liberal individualism. That is so Central to modern science. Is a problem it argues that individual Minds can mirror nature that our faculties of judgment make can make totally rational choices and that our Wills have the power to bring about our choices these three beliefs obstruct our ability to see how the agent of our belief is in some respects not ourselves, but our culture it's not individuals, but the society this isn't it kind of familiar anthropological perspective that we can find patterns of belief that are not visible to the individuals who are who hold them that there are distinctive cultural beliefs that the Chinese have or that the Africans have but also that Western science has that are characteristic of this particular social order. And sixth that the kind of training scientists are given these days give them the wrong professional skills for understanding how science works. So to speak that is and my argument here is that they should be given we all should be given training in critical social theory critical social theory attempts to locate the social contexts that give meaning and power to historical actors and audiences. But the training of contemporary scientists is concerned with context stripping context ignoring how to strip away the social the the particular kind of situation in that we have that we find in order to find the universal and general laws. This is useful for understanding nature, but it's not particularly useful for understanding how science a social institution in fact works, so This is the fifth false belief that I think we can do without namely that scientists are trained not only to be experts about nature but also to be experts about how science Works they are trained to be experts about nature, but not I'm arguing about how science works and that brings me to the last one the belief that physics is the best model for all the sciences. And so that feminist social science analyses have nothing to offer the Natural Sciences. Now, we can appreciate the good reasons why physics was historically what should we say the queen of the sciences and particularly for the ruling groups in the in the west physics was the science to create a new age in early modern Europe. It was the science that helped develop Europe. It was historically located in time and in geography, but we are no longer in that space or in that time. And my argument is that we need to develop a critical social inquiry is a model for all scientific inquiry. This is not I'm not arguing that we shouldn't have physics. That's not the argument or astronomy or chemistry and so forth. But that instead we should rethink our theories of Science and of the kinds of Sciences we want for the future. The social meanings the historical contexts of the Natural Sciences turn out to be part of the evidence for their hypotheses. This is the effect of these critiques By Carolyn Merchant by Evelyn Keller by the post-colonial critiques by the environmentalist the ecologist the anti militarists and so forth the interests and the values of The Enquirer and his or her institutions about observation that are unquestioned. Function as a hidden part of the evidence for any scientific claim. Let me repeat again what I said in a different way, but I said earlier my community always sees through my eyes and thinks it's characteristic thoughts through my mind. So it's concerns are inside the science that I do. If I am a Scientist. It's concerns require critical evaluation as a process as a part of the process of evidence sorting. Now to do this to to develop a science that of Nature and social life that took a critical social science as its model would be to place the Natural Sciences in the same critical causal plane as the objects of their research. It would be to provide causal maps of how science its social locations its social projects its purposes its functions that are invisible from inside. The Laboratories shape the result of its researchers to the extent that contemporary physics the physics of my title refuses to articulate how it's historically varying social locations have shaped the picture of the world that it produces. It deteriorates our ability to understand not only how science works but also that nature itself its insistence on an invisible Enquirer that it produces claims that have no social location at all. No historical location is an attempt in the words of the historian of science Donna haraway to bring off the god trick to be nowhere at all to pretend to be nowhere at all while we can see. In fact that science like are like philosophy and every other social institution is in fact historically located and it's a problem not only be for the sciences that we have but because its refusal to do so legitimates for the other Sciences ignoring these kinds of concerns. So for these Reasons, I'm arguing that the physics of today which is not the physics we need to have is not the best model for all the Sciences in conclusion. Let me make a few comments. about objectivity about the notion of objectivity that can be developed out of the kinds of considerations. I've been raising. The points I've been raising. First of all, I want to say very clearly are not all that new. I did not think these up feminists have not thought these up. These have been around for quite a while their new. Of course in the in the way. I've articulated them as feminists points in their implications for gender issues, but my point is not that they're new but that they're not fully appreciated within the Sciences or even I think within the other post modernist movements that I mentioned and I think what we need is a transformed notion of objectivity and I want to make two sets of distinctions. first of all object to visum versus subjectivism and secondly objectivism versus objectivity Now I think the brochure for this conference, which I think is a wonderful one. But since we're all supposed to comment on it, I guess it's a text. This is a postmodernist moment. We comment on the text of the program. I think that that choice it poses. There are very familiar choice. If you don't go for traditional Notions of objectivity, then you have no choice but relativism and subjectivism. I think this is a false choice and I would argue it very briefly in this way does science reflect the real world. Does it tell one true story of a world that is ready made and out there for reflecting by are glassy mirror Minds. If not, is it only subjective and relative. This is the choice we were offered in the that fine brochure and I think we should say no to both of these choices The Sciences do not reflect the world. Although the world constrains in important ways the ways in which the view from inside different cultural projects and Justices will make it reasonable to think about the world. The problem is this metaphor of the glassy mirror mind and the world that is ready made and out there for the reflecting and the in this particular formulation. Of course, I'm borrowing from the philosopher Richard rorty and Ian hacking has discussed this to this metaphor has been useful for certain purposes, but now it distorts scientific possibilities for everyone but profit ears imperialist sexist and you can add onto that your favorite list of people you think should be a no longer involved in science. But if we give up this notion this God trick notion of objectivity that we can speak from a place that has no social location. We're not forced to subjectivism and relativism that choice is itself appears reasonable only to objectivists and let me now turn to the second distinction that I want to make one between objectivism and objectivity. And I mean the Shinto parallel one we might make between scientism and Science in which a scientist some is a kind of imitation of style of science while without in fact accomplishing what science can accomplish similarly this objectivism. This insistence on the god trick is an imitation of the style of objectivity. I would say without accomplishing what it supposedly intended to do this objectivism is false and it's politically regressive it's false because the view from nowhere the goal of value free research is a delusion provides us distorted pictures of Nature and social life not so much in their individual particularity, but in the whole picture of the world that emerges from this kind of view and of course, it's politically regressive in the kinds of ways. The many science critics have talked about scientific claims modes of thought practices and functions are interwoven. With aspects of the social order so that the increase of objectivist Sciences tends to increase also these regressive social tendencies that is more science in a socially Progressive Society will increase the social regression. It'll ring it'll increase the movement of resources from the many to the few. Now, I think it's either. I think it's very irrational. Therefore to maintain this peculiar notion of objectivity that I'm referring to is objectivism, but it's also true that subjectivism is false and it's politically regressive the issue. I've been raising is not individual scientists beliefs or individual citizens beliefs, of course individual scientists and citizens can and are can be an are sexist and racist and so forth, but in fact the methods of the Sciences are quite effective at identifying and eliminating from the direction of the Sciences Sciences, what individuals want or believe about the natural and social worlds, that's not the problem. The problem instead is the dominant cultural beliefs those beliefs that do not differ within the scientific community. Modern economic and political institutions are the problem not the beliefs of individuals in particular and I think the Sciences are totally vulnerable here their conventional recommendations about scientific method that says say separated from politics separate it from the social identity of the researchers and so forth. In fact provide no way to identify and eliminate the culture wide desires and beliefs that have shaped The Sciences and of course adding to this problem is the issue. I raised earlier the excessive individualism of modern science the blocks our ability to grasp this point. I think that a transformed notion of objectivity must recognize the necessary social location of all knowledge. And nevertheless insist that it's possible to produce less partial and less distorted beliefs to separate those out from the more partial and more distorted. But in order to do this, it requires not just a change in our beliefs as we intellectual sometimes like to think but also a change in our social practices. We must start off I think asking questions about the natural and social worlds from the lives of the disenfranchised those on the periphery those on the margins those strangers to Western culture. The Poor People's indeed developed third world countries women in the west victims of militarism and the in ecological exploitation Jews gays lesbians at those groups that have not had a hand in designing either of the social order or what will count as reasonable scientific problems. What do these people need to know? What do we need to know? about the natural and social worlds I think this requires Us in the west to reinvent ourselves as other if we're to accomplish this Tech task of locating our own Sciences in history and I want to borrow I borrow hear this notion of Reinventing ourselves as other from the brilliant zairian philosopher philosopher from Zaire Valentine mood MB who in his recent book called The Invention of Africa argues that just as European and American imperialists invented in Africa that would serve their purposes they said they discovered it So most Africans now inventor West that serves Africans purposes, the imperialist claimed to discover in Africa a primitiveness a pre logic ality and immorality that could serve as the mirror for the purportedly civilised West that they were simultaneously inventing but mood MB points out that this project can usefully developed by the other side to for Africans today a critical reading of the western experience. He says is simultaneously a way of inventing a foreign tradition in order to master its techniques and and and an ambiguous strategy for implementing other Earnest and I think that we white westerners, we those of us who are men can also can also engage in this project we can invent the very Western sciences and knowledge institutions in which we participate that in fact pay many of our salaries. As bizarre beliefs and practices of the indigenous peoples who rule the modern West we must Master their techniques as we simultaneously discover that is implement the ways in which they are other to ourselves and our agendas. If we can do this Western culture can learn things about itself about nature about social life and about others against which it is built Mighty conceptual and institutional fortresses that requires different practices not just different thoughts for this science. The physics of today is a poor model, I think. Thank you.