On March 2, Sandra Harding, professor of Women's Studies and Education at UCLA, gave a lecture titled "Science and Technology Studies in a Postcolonial World: Recent Issues" as part of the Kirkland Project series on "Technology, Science and Democracy." Harding is a distinguished figure in the philosophy of science, and the author of several books including The Science Question in Feminism, Whose Science, Whose Knowledge?, Is Science Multicultural?, and her forthcoming Must Science Advance Inequality? In her lecture, she discussed the growing field of multicultural and postcolonial science studies, which use critical rationality to examine science itself.
In the last thirty years, said Harding, critical rationality has escaped the sciences and has expanded into the study of science itself. In other words, people have adopted the scientific method into their everyday lives, including placing the field of science itself under scrutiny. Though modern Western science is often implicated in negative social phenomena due to this scrutiny, there is no desire to get rid of science, but instead to reform it. This leads to the two fields of study which Harding discussed, the comparative ethnoscience movement and postcolonial science and technology studies.
The comparative ethnoscience movement seeks to bring the benefits of other cultures supposedly inferior sciences to the Western world. Harding said that this movement emerged when historians of science and ethnographers began giving more accurate accounts of the scientific expertise and contributions of other cultures. Westerners then began to gain appreciation for the "ethnosciences" of other cultures, such as pharmacology, medicine, navigation, or mathematical systems. The things we have learned from studying other cultures' science have often been integrated into Western science. Harding joked that you can tell that things like acupuncture have become legitimate sciences when you can get 3rd party insurance payment for them.
Harding also spoke about the emerging field of postcolonial science and technology studies, which investigates the relationship between empire and scientific development. What we commonly think of as the "European Scientific Revolution" is actually neither entirely European, truly scientific, or an actual revolution, according to this field of study. Instead, the advances in science came to Europe mostly through the Mediterranean, which gained scientific knowledge from its trade and expansion into the Middle East and Asia, and the "revolution" actually took place over three centuries. Therefore, said Harding, postcolonial science studies seek to find the causal relationships between European expansion and the flourishing of modern Western science. In truth, each phenomena was driven by the other. The needs of European explorers for navigational, agricultural and technological advances encouraged the development of sciences, while the wealth brought back from the colonies funded scientific endeavors.
Harding said that the findings of these two movements in the study of science have some major implications for the overall theory of science. First, they show that we need more research on the history of modern Western science to see where we've actually "ridden the coattails of empire." For example, we need to recognize that militaristic needs have been the greatest stimulant to knowledge over the centuries. Harding said that we also need to expand the horizons of what we consider to be "real" science and technology so they include other knowledge systems and recognize that cultural beliefs both enable and limit what we can know. We also have to develop a more accurate accounting system to evaluate the costs and benefits of scientific advancement which will ensure that science does not perpetuate or lead to inequality. Overall, Harding stressed the importance of valuing "cognitive diversity" instead of attempting to establish a unity of science.
The event was part of the Kirkland Project's 2003-2004 Series, "Technology, Science and Democracy: What's At Stake?" It was also sponsored by the Philosophy Department, Faculty for Women's Concerns, and the Women's Studies Department.
