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Sandra Harding (born 1935), is an American philosopher of feminist and postcolonial theory, epistemology, research methodology and philosophy of science. She has contributed to standpoint theory and to the multicultural study of science. She gained some notoriety for referring to Newton's Laws as a "rape manual" (Harding: 1986, pg. 264). The full quote is:

"Isaac Newton's Principia Mathematica is a 'rape manual' because 'science is a male rape of female nature'."

She is currently a professor of Social Sciences and Comparative Education at UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, and the Director of the UCLA Center for the Study of Women. Harding previously taught at the University of Delaware for many years. She earned her PhD from New York University (NYU).

She has been part of an on-going debate regarding claims of scientific objectivity. Critiques of her work have been made by scientists Paul R. Gross and Norman Levitt in Higher Superstition.

Bibliography

• Harding, Sandra and Merrill B. Hintikka, ed. Discovering Reality: Feminist Perspectives on Epistemology, Metaphysics, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science. 1983.
• Harding, Sandra. The Science Question in Feminism. 1986.
• Harding, Sandra and Jean F. O'Barr, ed. Sex and Scientific Inquiry. 1987.
• Harding, Sandra. Whose Science? Whose Knowledge?: Thinking from Women's Lives. 1991.
• Harding, Sandra. "Science is 'Good to Think With,'" Social Text 46-47, (1996): 15-26.

References

Gross, P. & Levitt, N.: Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and its Quarrels with Science. Johns Hopkins University Press. 1994.

External links

• Starting from Marginalized Lives: A Conversation with Sandra Harding
• Who’s Sandra Harding? Where’s She Standing?

• 1935 births
• Living people
• American philosophers
• American academics
• University of California, Los Angeles faculty