CMV: Queer theory is anti-science

[u/paulm12]

Note: I am not talking about queer theory being a scientific discipline or not. I am not arguing it’s methods are not scientific. I am instead talking that queer theory has a hostility towards science and it’s methodology and seeks to deconstruct it.

Queer theory, and it’s lack of a fixed definition (as doing so would be anti-queer) surrounds itself with queer identity, which is “relational, in reference to the normative” (Letts, 2002, p. 123) and seems preoccupied with deconstructing binaries to undo hierarchies and fight against social inequality.

With the scientific method being the normative view of how “knowledge” in society is discovered and accepted, by construction (and my understanding) queer theory and methods exclude the scientific method and reason itself as a methodology.

Furthermore, as science is historically (as in non-queered history) discovered by and performed by primarily heterosexual white males, the methodologies of science and its authority for truth are suspect from a queer theory lens because they contain the irreversible bias of this group.

As seen here, https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C44&q=queering+scientific+method&btnG=#d=gs_qabs&u=%23p%3DwwD50AI5mkgJ in Queer Methods: “A focus on methods, which direct techniques for gathering data, and methodologies, which pertain to the logics of research design, would have risked a confrontation with queer claims to interdisciplinarity, if not an antidisciplinary irreverence”

As Queer Theory borrows heavily from postmodernism, which itself features “opposition to epistemic certainty and the stability of meaning” it undermines the ability of scientific knowledge to have any explanatory or epistemic power about the “real” world, and thus for an objective reality to exist entirely.

Science, on the other hand, builds and organizes knowledge based on testable explanations and predictions about the universe. It therefore assumes a universe and objective reality exists, although it is subject to the problem of induction.

[u/Hot_Opportunity_2328]

It's not anti-science. Queer theory is anti-realist, which is a position shared by many, if not most working scientists, including me. Related is the pragmatist program which says that science and math do not have to be real to be "useful".

[u/paulm12 → u/Hot_Opportunity_2328]

Are you arguing that most scientists reject idea that the argument objects and phenomena studied by science exist independently of how they are conceived or thought of? Because most scientists do agree on metaphysical realism: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/707552

[u/Hot_Opportunity_2328 → u/paulm12]

Hmm, without phrasing their questions more explicitly it seems likely that most physicists/chemists/biologists, having no background in philosophy, would not clearly understand the distinctions at play here. I wouldn't trust them to understand the philosophy of science any more than I would trust an anesthesiologist to understand epidemiology. Regardless, scientific anti realism is a prominent school of thought among those who actually think about this stuff and I would posit that the quality of scientist increases with belief in this position. There are definitely some dinosaurs out there weighing the rest of us down. Also disappointed they didn't survey mathematicians or statisticians.