Review by Choice Review
Duran makes an ambitious attempt to combine the history of the philosophy of science since the development of logical positivism under the Vienna circle at the beginning of this century, with a description of the radical critiques and feminist philosophies of science that have, at least in part, been a response to that history. The first three chapters serve as an overview of this history; although they are intended as an introduction, they presuppose some knowledge of both the philosophy of science and the thinkers who dominated the Vienna circle. A rapid survey follows of the contributions made to science studies by more than a dozen thinkers, starting with Kuhn, continuing with the sociologists of science, and ending with the central feminist theorists--Haraway, Harding, Nelson, Hubbard, and Longino. Again, to someone unfamiliar with these writers, this material may be difficult to grasp. The book concludes with an interesting section in which Duran suggests that the postmodern attempt to discredit the science produced both by positivism and by its sociological critique needs to be understood historically; and that feminist theory offers a method and theory of justification that could restore science as a worthwhile enterprise by insisting on lived experience as an alternative to ratiocinative speculation or sociological determinism. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. M. H. Chaplin; Wellesley College
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
