Bastardizing Empiricism

In this video, we will be examining and taking apart so-called “feminist empiricism,” and expose it for the revolting pseudointellectual farce that it is.

Before anything, I would like to acknowledge Dr. Alan Soble, philosopher of sexuality at Drexel University who has followed and commented on Evelyn Fox Keller’s work ever since it made the long descent from biophysics to Neo-Freudian feminist epistemology in the 80s. His participation in the Science Wars was therefore imperative; he was a great asset to the scientific realists. His two essays, “Defending Bacon” and “Gender, Objectivity, and Realism,” are well worth a read; the first is a comprehensive defense of Bacon from his abusers, and the latter a comprehensive rebuttal of the entirety of Keller’s philosophy.

Note 1- I personally regard psychoanalysis, as applied to scientific rather than literary endeavours, as pseudoscience, since its primary object of study, the unconscious, is a philosophical black box. As a consequence, psychoanalytic theories are and always have been fundamentally unfalsifiable, whatever pretences to more recent strides toward empiricism its adherents claim to have made. As a consequence, psychoanalysis is at best not science and at worst pseudoscience. For a more detailed examination of this matter, see Karl Popper’s 1963 book, “Conjectures and Refutations;” his excoriation of Alfred Adler and Sigmund Freud is the stuff of legend.
Object Relations Theory, which is the psychoanalytic theory that Keller principally wields against science, is a Neo-Freudian theory that differs from its predecessors in that it views interconnectivity, and not sexual drives, as the principle motivator of human behaviour. Its emphasis on the relation between infant and mother in shaping development, therefore, is more innocent than what Freud had originally conceived (but only just! There’s a lot of talk about how our attitudes toward other are ultimately based on the arrival and subsequent retraction of our mothers’ breasts during infancy, and the psychological associations that we made during these instances. Needless to say, the evidence supporting these views is weak at best.)

Note 2- She is referencing the philosopher Richard Rorty’s book, “Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature,” where he offers a similarly relativistic outlook- one which likely influenced Keller. The tone of Rorty’s philosophy can be summarized with his definition of truth: “Truth is whatever your contemporaries let you get away with saying.” Unfortunately for him, however, his peers in the philosophy of science do not appear to have let him get away with it.

Note 3- The original misquote was by Leibniz, a great admirer of Bacon. His misquote was not intentional and not done in service of slandering Bacon, so he cannot be accused of libel. To her credit, Merchant did not use Leibniz’s misquote in “The Death of Nature” to support her case that Bacon’s conceptualization of nature was as a woman who ought to be tortured, but her case was nevertheless based in some extremely uncharitable interpretations of quotes that had to be isolated, have their meanings stretched, and organized in such a manner as to defend her thesis. It’s a highly contrived argument; for more on this, see Pesic, “Wrestling with Proteus: Francis Bacon and the ‘Torture’ of Nature,” Isis, 1999.

Note 4- Some may try to argue that the passages where Bacon refers to “shaking [Nature] to her foundations” or "hounding nature" are also examples of violent language against a female nature by the sexist Bacon. I will here have to defer to Alan Soble's paper, "In Defense of Bacon," which addresses the matter far more comprehensively and eloquently than I could in a mere half hour.

Note 5- This quote appeared in the beginning of Novum Organum, which was the text that started the scientific revolution. Other examples of Bacon saying that scientists ought to listen to and obey nature can be found in Novum Organum, Book 1, Aphorisms 1 and 129.
Note 6- It is not clear to me what Keller is babbling about here, since nuclear energy is by far our most efficient source of energy (and at present, far more productive than solar,) and also because I don’t know what “ecological” vs “pathogenic” medicine entails. I have the lurking suspicion that she doesn’t either.

Note 7- This was in the conclusion of Indiana State University’s Philosopher of Science Noretta Koertge’s response to Helen Longino’s essay embracing ideologically oriented science. The essay, which I highly recommend, is called “Feminist Values and Science.”

WORKS CITED:
Pinned to the top of the comments sections below.

ERRATA:
If you are reading this, no errors have been found yet.

My Twitter: https://twitter.com/KingCrocoduck

My Alternate Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEsywmxARiHoWOIPVQjopKw

My Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/KingCrocoduck

Видео Bastardizing Empiricism канала King Crocoduck