Abstract

Lately, a clamor can be heard, announcing that disinterested inquiry is neither possible nor desirable, that so-called “knowledge” is nothing but an expression of power, and that the concepts of evidence, objectivity, truth, are mere “ideological humbug” (p. 93). Thus, according to Richard Rorty, the champion of relativism, to call a statement true “is just to give it a rhetorical pat on the back” (p. 7), and “there are no constraints on inquiry save conversational ones” (p. 44). Similarly, for Sandra Harding, a leading feminist, scientific work is best begun by “thinking from women's lives” (p. 116) and “the model…