ABSTRACT
This chapter explores multiple tensions between the three bodies of inquiry: feminist, philosophical, and social studies of science. Feminist, or contextual, empiricism offers an account of knowledge as partial, fragmentary, and ultimately constituted from the interaction of opposed styles and/or points of view. Feminist, or contextual, empiricism offers an account of knowledge as partial, fragmentary, and ultimately constituted from the interaction of opposed styles and/or points of view. The chapter outlines the feminist agenda to be and the tensions in which it finds itself vis-a-vis the dominant traditions in philosophy and social studies of science. It summarize the relevant elements of the contextual empiricist account of inquiry with a view to indicating how it is possible within this account to reconcile the claim that scientific inquiry is value or ideology laden and that it is productive of knowledge. The chapter concludes by proposing that such an account goes further toward meeting the methodological needs of feminist science studies.
