An Analysis Of Donna Haraway's Situational Theory Of Knowledge

With the rapid development of science,people's research and understanding of science is constantly deepening.At the same time,the issue of how science objectively reflects the world has become the focus of many scientific philosophers.They carry out a comprehensive study of science from the fields of sociology and the history of science.Donna Haraway,a famous American scientific philosopher,pays close attention to a series of important issues in the development of contemporary science and proposes situated knowledge with a keen eye.Her new interpretation of the objectivity of scientific cognitive process tries to construct a responsible science.This paper discusses Haraway s theory of the situated knowledge in three parts.The first part analyzes the theoretical background and the ideological origin of Haraway's theory of the situated knowledge.Firstly,it criticizes the traditional scientific epistemology based on the dualistic model,disintegrating the absolute objectivity and value neutrality of science.Secondly,it inherits Kuhn.s paradigm and affirms the sociality of science.It emphasizes the influence of social situation on scientific subject and scientific research process.Thirdly,it critically develops Foucault's thought and deeply explores the relationship between social background and knowledge.Finally it surpasses the ideas of feminist empiricism and feminist standpoint,so it complements feminist epistemology.The second part mainly expound Haraway's theory of the situated knowledge in the context of her theory of cyborg.Firstly,it analyzes the theory of cyborg and emphasizes its connotation of opposing binary opposition and tolerating difference.Then it explores the characteristics of the cognitive subject,the activity of the cognitive object and the embodiment of the cognitive process in the process of scientific cognition.In order to build a responsible science,Haraway advocates the self-division of the cognitive subject and emphasizes that the multiple subjects make a better explanation of the world through the combination of multiple perspectives.In essence,her thought is against essentialism,holism and rationalism.In addition,it has the characteristics of material ontology.The third part is to evaluate Haraway's situated knowledge theory from both meaning and limitation.It affirm the contribution to scientific objectivity,subjective thinking,physical and scientific relationship research and feminist development.At the same time,it also raises questions about some unresolved issues including the difficulty of view alignment,the uncontrollable cognitive process and the tendency of relativism.