Sandra Harding

thumb|Sandra Harding Sandra Harding (March 29, 1935 – March 5, 2025) was an American philosopher of feminist and postcolonial theory, epistemology, research methodology, and philosophy of science, who directed the UCLA Center for the Study of Women from 1996 to 2000. Quotes Women’s bodies are not immature or defective versions of men’s bodies, with simply a different reproductive system characterizing them, as the old, pre-1960’s accounts claimed. Even automobile designers finally got the message to create the possibility of adjusting the height and position of drivers’ seats so even small drivers, such as many white women and most people in some other ethnic groups, could see out of the front window and reach the gas or brake pedals at the same time. About Harding Harding spoke truth to power for an entire generation when she asserted, with strong arguments at hand, that knowledge produced in the margins and deeply connected to a political movement actually increases the scale and depth of scientific objectivity and related research inquiries. Such a statement appeared paradoxical for the scientific establishment at the time: how could objectivity be strengthened by being de-linked from universal claims of scientific rationality and becoming attached instead to the lived experiences of masses of marginal thinking subjects? How could this process avoid resulting in fragmentation and even – horror! – cognitive relativism? Those were the heydays of postmodernism after all, and the critique of universal concepts was perceived as a threat to the unity of the sciences. Many well-meaning fellow scientists were worried about what was happening to the cherished ideal of scientific objectivity under the tidal wave of feminism. W:Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society She is internationally acclaimed for her pioneering development of "standpoint theory," which apprehended science as a contextualized and culturally embedded undertaking, in sharp distinction to the conventional view of science as neutral and objective. Sandra's standpoint analysis challenged both Liberal analytic philosophy's tendency to think of science as value free and orthodox Marxism's approach that External links Category:1935 births Category:Philosophers from the United States Category:2025 deaths Category:Women academics from the United States Category:Women born in the 1930s Category:21st-century American women Category:University of California, Los Angeles faculty