Four Types of Feminist Empiricism

Miriam Solomon, Chair and Professor of Philosophy, Temple University 

“Feminist empiricism” is a general term for a range of positions in philosophy of science that aim to combine empirical methods with the insights of feminism. This talk will give an overview of feminist empiricist work in the natural and social sciences in order to showcase four different ways in which feminist critique can improve scientific work. The relationship between the different feminist empiricisms and feminist standpoint theory will also be discussed.

Bio:

Miriam Solomon is Professor of Philosophy and Department Chair in the Department of Philosophy at Temple University. She is also an Affiliated Professor of Women’s Studies. Professor Solomon is a graduate of Cambridge University (BA in Natural Sciences, 1979) and Harvard University (Ph.D. in Philosophy, 1986). She is the author of Social Empiricism (MIT Press, 2001), editor of several special journal issues, and author of papers in epistemology, philosophy of science, philosophy of medicine and biomedical ethics. Her research interests are in philosophy of science, philosophy of medicine, history of science, epistemology, gender and science, and biomedical ethics. She is currently completing a book on evidence-based medicine, medical consensus conferences, narrative medicine and translational medicine, titled Making Medical Knowledge, to be published by Oxford University Press (UK).