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Re: Patriarchy: Re: What Matriarchy?
Stephen Barnard (steve@megafauna.com)
Sun, 04 Aug 1996 20:18:17 -0800
Bryant wrote:
>
> In article <3202E8F0.683C@megafauna.com>,
> Stephen Barnard <steve@megafauna.com> wrote:
>
> >I'll sign up for those assumptions. The consequences that follow from
> >those assumptions are what make the keys that you hit on your keyboard
> >show up as characters on my screen. Maybe it doesn't work that way
> >outside the "Western cultural context."
>
> This alludes to my point. That WaiWais do not understand cell theory,
> evolution, or that bacteria cause disease does not make these
> observations of value only in cultures where they are widely accepted.
>
> Antibiotics kill bacteria in the gut of WaiWais, geneticists, and
> postmodernists equally well. Gravity applies to Wiccans and rationalists
> equally well. Sperm impregnates female creationists just as well as
> darwinians. That sperm exist, carry DNA, etc., is not the same sort of
> culturally relative "knowledge" as the names of bush spirits or the
> nature of godly pantheons or the acceptability of infidelity.
>
> Unlike faith-based systems of knowledge, scientific knowledge is filtered
> through hypothesis-testing, statistical analysis subjecting rigor that
> lends a degree of objectivity. Hence, atomic theory is not a
> political statement, and cell theory represents no social bias.
>
> And fluid mechanics was studied after the mechanics of solids because
> it's a tougher subject, not because fluids are "feminine" and solids
> "masculine," as one feminist's historical analysis of physics recently
> asserted.
>
> If you want to argue social Darwinism, which (unlike scientific theories)
> proscribes rather than describes, that's another kettle of fish. But
> there is no inherent, inescapable social or political message in the
> theory that DNA, not proteins, carry genes.
>
> Bryant
exactly
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