Alan G. Soble

In Defense of Bacon

Feminist science critics, in particular Sandra Harding, Carolyn Merchant, and Evelyn Fox Keller, claim that misogynous sexual metaphors played an important role in the rise of modern science. The writings of Francis Bacon have been singled out as an especially egregious instance of the use of misogynous metaphors in scientific philosophy. This paper offers a defense of Bacon.

The History of Sexual Anatomy and Self-Referential Philosophy of Science

This essay is a case study of the conceptual self-destruction that occurs in the work of a social-constructionist historian of science who embraces a radical philosophy of science. It focuses on Thomas Laqueurs treatise Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud (Harvard University Press, 1990) in arguing that a history of science committed to the social construction of science and to the central theses of Kuhnian, Duhemian, and Quinean philosophy of science is incoherent. Laqueurs text is examined in detail to make the main point; a similar phenomenon in the work of the historian of science Evelyn Fox Keller is then discussed.

Bad Apples: Feminist Politics and Feminist Scholarship

Some exceptional and surprising mistakes of scholarship made in the writings of a number of feminist academics (Ruth Bleier, Ruth Hubbard, Susan Bordo, Sandra Harding, and Rae Langton) are examined in detail. This essay offers the psychological hypothesis that these mistakes were the result of political passion and concludes with some remarks about the ability of the social sciences to study the effect of the politics of the researcher on the quality of his or her research.

Philosophy, Medicine, and Healthy Sexuality

‘Healthy sexuality’ is a chameleon concept. On the one hand, it seems that nothing could be easier to understand, or that there is nothing to be understood. The concept of ‘healthy sexuality’ does not arise naturally in our biographies. We learn at our mothers’ knees (or nearby) what is right, decent, proper sexual behavior. She uses the language of morals, not the language of health. So there is nothing to be understood. When health is mentioned at all, we are told to keep our body parts clean and we learn about venereal disease. So ‘healthy sexuality’ is easily understood in terms of soap and penicillin.