I don’t know if we’ve decided on something/anything official for Book Club, but I figured this could be a thread where we all post what we’re reading now or have recently finished. If this is helpful, I can post something similar each week. If it is not helpful, no worries.
Been reading Red, Black, and Objective: Science, Sociology, and Anarchism by Sal Restivo about power and science.
If you’ve taken a feminist philosophy of science course, a lot of the groundwork that the book tries to lay for you will have already been laid. But there’s a lot in here that it found very helpful. It’s a book about the folly of achieving scientific objectivity through cold reason, one of those myths that serves only the ruling class.
The book describes Friedrich Nietzsche’s gay science in a way that had never really been explained to it before, and makes it infinitely more compelling. If mathematics is dead, if science is dead, perhaps what we should pursue is a passionately joyous wisdom that shirks the myth of the cold light of reason altogether. One that truly affirms the life and passion with which we analyze a given problem, and through a comprehensive understanding of those passions we can truly understand the subject.
it thinks a lot of vegans, esp. marginalized vegans, at some point became acquainted with the death of science but there’s not really a clear alternative. You see how science is biased, and when it contradicts the status quo is when it’s at its least influential. So you leave behind bourgeoisie philosophy and science.
But then what?
Certainly some of the most valuable stuff it’s learned has been by listening to those who had the most reason to be outraged. Maybe that’s the right direction.