Religion in an Age of Science by Ian Barbour
Chapter 3: Similarities and Differences
II. Objectivity and Relativism
3. Feminist Critiques
In a similar way, feminists have analyzed the presence of gender biases in both science and religion. Their critique of science occurs on several levels. They state concerns about equal access for women in science education and employment, studying overt and covert forms of
discrimination in schools and on the job. Next are criticisms of gender biases in the selection of problems for research, especially in biology and the health sciences. A more fundamental criticism is that male biases have affected scientific theories and interpretation of data. One example is the assumption by Darwin and his successors that
competition and struggle are the main forces in natural selection ("the survival of the fittest"). This assumption seems to have reflected the bias of a male-dominated culture, which valued competition. Only much later was it recognized that cooperation and symbiosis are often crucial in evolutionary survival. More blatant examples of gender bias are evident in studies on the biological basis of sex differences, such as claims that there is a neurological difference between the sexes in brain lateralization and that this accounts for the purportedly innate
superiority of males in mathematics and spatial visualization.32 Helen Longino, a philosopher of science, holds that a feminist
perspective can contribute to objectivity in science by facilitating the critique of auxiliary hypotheses and by suggesting alternative ones. For example, it has often been said that "man the hunter" was the key to the evolution of the earliest humans from primates and hominids. Male hunting would have encouraged tool use, upright posture, and mental capacities. But did not women use similar capacities as gatherers and
nurturers? Longino holds that in our culture science reflects gender- related preferences in the choice of problems, models, and concepts, which affect the content as well as the practice of science.33
Evelyn Fox Keller has described Barbara McClintock’s work on genetic transposition, which waited thirty years for recognition and eventually received a Nobel Prize. McClintock was unable to find a university job, and after she found a research post, her ideas were considered
unorthodox. The "central dogma" of molecular biology had posited a one-way transfer of information: always from DNA, never to it (except by natural selection). While most research was being done on genetic structure, McClintock was interested in function and organization and the relation of genes to cells, organisms, and developmental patterns.
Her work on transposition was finally vindicated, and the idea that the wider environment could indirectly affect genetic changes (though not directly, as Lamarck had thought) was finally accepted. Keller portrays McClintock’s painstaking attention to small variations and anomalies (such as a few corn kernels with colors different from the others), and her "feeling for the organism" -- not implying a mystic intuition but rather a sense of humility and a "listening to the material." Keller says we should not see this as "feminist science," but she thinks
McClintock’s "outsider" role and her distinctive attitudes may have given her a greater freedom to consider diverse kinds of
interrelationship.34
All of these authors seek a gender-free science within the prevailing norms of scientific objectivity. Male biases are to be rejected not simply because they are patriarchal but because they are "bad science," and they can be corrected by a greater commitment to objectivity and
openness to evidence. But some feminists go much further in advocating a new "feminist science" and in rejecting objectivity itself as a male ideology. If there can be no value neutrality in science, then one can only seek a differently gendered science, accepting the inevitability of relativism. Sandra Harding calls this "feminist postmodernism,"
describing it as skeptical about the possibility of value neutrality, rationality, and objectivity. She concludes, "It has been and should be moral and political beliefs that direct the development of both the
intellectual and social structures of science. The problematics, concepts, theories, methodologies, interpretations of experiments, and uses have been and should be selected with moral and political goals in mind, not merely cognitive ones."35
These more radical critiques arise partly from considering the dualisms that have been so pervasive in Western thought: mind/body,
reason/emotion, objectivity/subjectivity, domination/submission, impersonal/personal, power/love. In each case, the first term has been identified in our culture as male, the second as female. But precisely these first terms are taken to characterize science: mind, reason,
objectivity, domination, impersonality, power. Science is stereotypically male, and nature is referred to in female images. Bacon spoke of nature as the mind’s bride: "Make her your slave, conquer and subdue her." In a patriarchal society, the exploitation of women and nature have a common ideological root. In this interpretation, scientists share these alienating and manipulative attitudes when they make control and prediction, rather than understanding, their goal.36 Another source of radical critiques is the psychoanalytic theory claiming that a growing girl achieves selfhood by identifying with her mother, while a growing boy does so by separating from his mother -- leading men to value
separation, independence, objectivity, and power, the attitudes typical of contemporary science.37
I cannot agree with those postmodernist feminists web recommend that we should reject objectivity and accept relativism. Western thought has indeed been dualistic, and men have perhaps been particularly prone to dichotomize experience. But the answer surely is to try to avoid
dichotomies, not merely to relativize them. Nor do we want to perpetuate them in inverted form by rejecting the first term and affirming the second in each polarity. Such a move would be shortsighted, even as a temporary corrective strategy, if we seek to acknowledge the wholeness of life. We can grant that our inquiry is not free of values and interests without having to adopt an anarchic
relativism. As Keller says, "Science is neither a mirror of nature nor simply a reflection of culture." If we insist that objectivity is a product of male consciousness, we deny the possibility of a feminist voice within current science. Moreover, no clear proposal for an alternative feminist science has been spelled out.
We also need to ask what people mean by objectivity and decide which of these ideas we can affirm as valid ideals for science, whether or not they are adhered to in current practice. Two of these meanings of objectivity I would defend: (1) Data should be intersubjectively
reproducible, even though they are theory-laden, and (2) criteria should be impartial and shared by the community of inquiry, even though they are difficult to apply. But two other ideas seem to me dubious. First,
objectivity cannot mean that theories are determined only by the object, for we have said repeatedly that data are theory-laden and that we cannot separate the subject and the object in an experiment. Inquiry involves participation and interaction, not detachment. Second,
objectivity does not imply reductionism, as if the physicochemical laws of the component parts were more valid as explanations than attempts to describe the higher-level activities of integrated wholes. Holistic
thinking is not limited to women, but it appears that in our culture women may be more sensitive than men to connections, contexts, and interdependencies and more attuned to development, cooperation and symbiosis. There may be a biological basis for some of these gender differences, but they are mainly attributable to cultural patterns of socialization.
In religion, too, feminist critiques have occurred at a variety of levels.
Some authors express concern about equal access to education and employment, including the ordination of women. But the more fundamental critique is of gender biases in concepts and beliefs.
Reformers seek an equal-gendered Christianity or Judaism, and radicals believe the inherited traditions are so inherently patriarchal that they should be rejected.
The reformist feminists agree that Christianity and Judaism have been strongly patriarchal in both practice and thought. Religious leadership and images of God have been overwhelmingly male and have supported male domination in society. But the reformers argue that the essential biblical message is not patriarchal. female images of God appear in the Bible, though rarely. Isaiah asserts that God will not forget Israel: "Can a woman-forget her suckling child?" (Isa. 49:15). Individual women figure significantly in the Bible: Deborah, Esther, Ruth, and of course Mary, as well as such later saints as St. Teresa of Avila and Julian of Norwich. Jesus was not sexist, and he exhibited the virtues stereotyped as "feminine," such as love and emotion, as much as the "masculine"
virtues of courage and leadership.38 Contemporary feminists seek inclusive language, not only for brothers and sisters in the church, but for a God who is like a mother as well as like a father, as we have seen in Sallie Mcfague’s writing.
The theologian Rosemary Ruether sharply criticizes patriarchal assumptions in the Catholic tradition, but she believes the church’s essential message can be reformulated in nonsexist terms. The
mind/body dualism, in particular, came into Christian thought less from
biblical than from Neoplatonic sources, and it can be replaced with a more biblical vision of the whole person in community. Ruether brings together the central concerns of feminist theology, liberation theology, and the ecology movement. She holds that all three are opposed to dualism, hierarchy, and domination. She seeks a more participatory epistemology and an inclusive and equitable social order, combining social justice with concern for nature and nonhuman life. She has given a powerful critique of traditional Christianity without completely
rejecting it.39
The radical feminists, on the other hand, hold that the biblical tradition is incurably patriarchal and that new religious forms must be sought outside the church. The starting point must be such distinctive
experiences of women as sisterhood, pregnancy, and motherhood, as well as the experiences considered inferior in a patriarchal culture:
intuition, emotion, the body, and harmony with nature. In addition, the new approach must be based on the liberation and empowerment made possible by women’s self-definition, self-expression, support groups, and solidarity with other oppressed groups (though progress in moving beyond a white, middle-class movement has been slow). Some radical feminists have developed new religious rituals for women. Others have drawn from goddess and Earth Mother myths in early cultures to
provide female symbols of the divine. Another alternative is to symbolize the ultimate as impersonal -- as the Ground of Being, for instance -- which avoids attribution of gender.40
As in the case of proposals for a feminist science, I disagree with those radical feminists who perpetuate dualistic thinking by inverting the prevailing cultural dualisms. In both cases, the effort to eliminate what is invalid in the tradition can result in eliminating whatever is valid in it also. Absolutizing the feminine seems as dubious as absolutizing the masculine. Surely the goal should be for each of us as men and women to express all our diverse capacities, whether stereotyped in our culture as male or female -- and to symbolize the same diversity of creative characteristics in our models of God.