Hi all,
my reading of feminist texts (can't remember the author, but it was a critique of the absent body of
science within the context of the dominance of science in education research from around the
1980s) was that members of the scientific community were required to present their experiments
and findings in front of an audience of their peers (the collective 'body' of scientific
knowers/knowledge) – hence, the validity of claims were subject to direct observational scrutiny and
confirmed/refuted by observation (we know it's true because we were there and we saw it).
Since the introduction of the scholarly journal (again, the dates/specifics escape me), the body has
been removed from the process of verifying scientific research, which is why the scientific
community requires detailed descriptions of method (to replace the absent <male> body of science
embodied in the audience of peer observers/knowers). So, despite claims that actual bodies don't
matter in research that employs the scientific method – any body will do as long as the method is
rigorous and repeatable. Yet bodies in specific places engage in method – an entirely social activity
– which suggests a strange refusal of embodied knowing in science.
Furthermore, the adversarial method in philosophy (Moulton 1996) requires one person to refute the
validity/logic of the other person, rather than demonstrate the validity of their own claim. This
approach allows little space for uncertainty, alternative claims and collective work.
cheers, teena
Moulton, J. 1996, 'A paradigm of philosophy: the adversary method', in A. Garry & M. Pearsall (eds),
Women, knowledge and reality, Routledge, New York, pp. 11–25.
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