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Background
Donna Haraway, born in 1944 holds the title "Distinguished Professor Emerita". She started out her academic career almost entirely on scholarships such as the Boettcher scholarship and Fulbright scholarship. She completed her doctorate program in biology from Yale in 1972. She received many academic awards, some of the highest honors attainable such as the John Desmond Bernal Award for her scholarly work by the Society for Social Studies of Science. She is a key figure in feminist epistemology. -
A Cyborg Manifesto (continued)
This opens the door for what knowledge can be instead of what it currently just is. This allows people like Dr. Haraway to explore ideas that fundamentally challenge traditional and conventional Platonic ideas and thus blur the arbitrary lines of gender and overall humanism to eliminate phallogocentric language from science and society and eliminate any oppression or undermining of any marginalized group. Of course, her work has stirred countless debate and controversy that are still current. -
A Cyborg Manifesto
In my opinion, Dr. Haraway's essay "A Cyborg Manifesto" is one of her most important pieces of work in regards to the philosophy of science and feminist epistemology. Based on this week's assigned readings, we've explored the idea that knowledge itself as a concept is subject to humans, sociology, and other external factors. The groundwork done by Dr. Bloor in his strong program laid out the foundation for what knowledge can be instead of what it currently just is. This opens the (cont.) -
More on Her Contribution to the Philosophy of Science
While the original goal of her work was to pave more of a way for any group that may be underrepresented in science, her work opens up new epistemological questions. as she undermines the essentialist perspective to human nature, she opens up the deeply philosophical question of "what does it even mean to be human?". Her work A Cyborg Manifesto, while having faced a lot of criticism, makes very compelling arguments and lays the groundwork necessary for the philosophy of transhumanism.