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Susan Harding's article is compelling from the perspective that she articulates a thought that has long been indoctrined into my personal perception of science. Namely, that science is not free of social context. Science does not exist outside of our political or social reality, but is a product of it. The progression of science through history, from being a discpline of the antiauthoritarian, to now being percieved as defining authoritarian, is one such example of how culture and science influence one another. Science used to be "against the system," now it is "the system."

The scientific method is not without its cultural context. Our desire for Truth is very much a part of our culture, our desire for science and reason are very much values of our cultural upbringing. Our desire to objectively know things is very much apart of our cultural upbringing.

The example of scientists being mystics has been something that I've recognized since grade school. Math is the language of the scientific religion. Science and math are belief systems that we buy into.

At the same time, Harding and Keller aren't indicating that these are "bad." It would be completely counter argument to say that one's belief system is "bad," that one's world narrative is bad, when one is trying to argue that we need to have different narratives incorporated into science.

One point that caught my particular attention out of the Harding article was this concept that there need to be cultural scientists studying natural scientists. (pg 95-96) It seems we're doing a good job of that, since one of the growing fields in any graduate-school level programs are Science and Cultural Studies departments. I wonder how much we have to thank for the feminist critic for that phenomeon?

I had no reason to doubt that brains were suitable for a woman. And as I had my father's kind of mind -- which was also his mother's -- I learned that the mind is not sex-typed. -- Margaret Mead