Nancy Tuana

The National Science Foundation (NSF) in the United States, like many other funding agencies all over the globe, has made large investments in interdisciplinary research in the sciences and engineering, arguing that interdisciplinary research is an essential resource for addressing emerging problems, resulting in important social benefits. Using NSF as a case study for problem that might be relevant in other contexts as well, I argue that the NSF itself poses a significant barrier to such research in not sufficiently appreciating the value of the humanities as significant interdisciplinary partners. This essay focuses on the practices of philosophy as a highly valuable but currently under-appreciated partner in achieving the goals of interdisciplinary research. This essay advances a proposal for developing deeper and wider interdisciplinary research in the sciences through coupled ethical-epistemological research. I argue that this more robust model of interdisciplinary practice will lead to better science by providing resources for understanding the types of value decisions that are entrenched in research models and methods, offering resources for identifying the ethical implications of research decisions, and providing a lens for identifying the questions that are ignored, under-examined, and rendered invisible through scientific habit or lack of interest. In this way, we will have better science both in the traditional sense of advancing knowledge by building on and adding to our current knowledge as well as in the broader sense of science for the good of, namely, scientific research that better benefits society

Human desire usually has an object of longing or hope. The more intense the desire, the more singularly prominent its object. Sides, after all, means “heavenly body.” When people desire, they want, crave, and even covet the desired, whether the desired is ice cream, a professorship, or another’s body. What is intensely desired, even if it is not heavenly, has the status of an object with exceptional and immediate meaning and draw. When simple desire finds satisfaction, the desired’s attraction withers in its completeness, and the object fades into the ordinary environment, not unlike the disinterest we experience after we have overindulged in Chunky Monkey or the indifference to the..

This essay aims to clarify the value of developing systematic studies of ignorance as a component of any robust theory of knowledge. The author employs feminist efforts to recover and create knowledge of women's bodies in the contemporary women's health movement as a case study for cataloging different types of ignorance and shedding light on the nature of their production. She also helps us understand the ways resistance movements can be a helpful site for understanding how to identify, critique, and transform ignorance.

..". thoughtful critiques of the myriad issues between women and science." -- Belles Lettres "Outstanding collection of essays that raise the fundamental questions of gender in what we have been taught are objective sciences." -- WATERwheel ..". all of the articles are well written, informative, and convincing. Admirable editorial work makes this anthology unusually helpful for scholars and students... Highly recommended... " -- Choice Questioning the objectivity of scientific inquiry, this volume addresses the scope of gender bias in science. The contributors examine the ways in which science is affected by and reinforces sexist biases. The essays reveal science to be a cultural institution, structured by the political, social, and economic values of the culture within which it is practiced.

We begin at the site of borders, the demarcations between us, between: my body and your body, humans and nonhuman animals, habits of thought and institutional structures, nature and culture, subject and object. We find ourselves between the devil and the deep blue sea. Differences, distinctions, and borders are key to knowing and acting responsibly. Yet we are “held captive” by particular habits of understanding that police such borders with unbecoming fervor. We desire to trouble these borders with the aim of transforming habits of thought and embodied dispositions, to give rise to new appreciations of difference through the deep, ongoing play of the in-between. Ours is an ontology of the in-between...