Shall Science Undergo a Sex Change Operation?

Prediction and control. Objectivity and detachment. Precise measurement. Reliable, repeatable, and exact. These terms express the familiar canons of science.

They also sound like values, if you were to ask any wife, that husbands admire. These canons of science are, in fact, a value system of the masculine kind. What would science be like if it were based on female values?

Such a sex change for science is exactly the premise of the book, Lifting the Veil: The Feminine Face of Science (Shambhala). The author, Linda Jean Shepherd, Ph.D., is a biochemist. She describes an alternative science that is gaining adherents daily. It proposes a set of values most readers can recognize and appreciate, although not usually in the context of science:

Feeling: Science should be motivated by love. The intellect can think up many projects and experiments, but feeling is required to determine what's worth doing. A passionate knower will have a deeper connection with nature and more profound insights.

Receptivity. Research should involve listening to nature. Nature is not an inert machine. Listening reveals that nature speaks and has its own intentions. It will share its best secrets only to the lovingly attentive observer.

Subjectivity. A researcher should be prepared to discover oneself in one's experiments. The ideal of objectivity was a false god, as quantum physics has shown, and disguises the role of the seer in the seen. There is a personal confession contained in all statements of truth.

Multiplicity. Scientists must respect contradictions, paradox and the overlapping interconnections among diverse areas of life. Simple either/or, yes/no, linear explanations are insufficient to adequately express the complexity of life.

Nurturing. Scientists need to nurture and be nurtured. Nature needs nurturing and not just critical observation to reveal new truths.

Cooperation. Scientists must learn to act in harmony with each other and with nature. Competition with peers and domination over nature as a standard of excellence has only compounded the negative side-effects of technology.

Intuition. Scientists must learn to value intuition. Knowing from within is the most direct and intimate path for understanding nature. It is through the inner connection with life that we'll experience our oneness with nature.

Relatedness. Scientists must develop a vision of wholeness and see how everything connects with everything else. The scientist is not an island and the enterprise of science is not a world apart. Both are interconnected with the rest of life, affect the rest and are affected by it. This sense of interconnectedness is the basis of spirituality.

In these eight principles Dr. Shepherd gives us the vision of the feminine face of science. Feminist thinking is perhaps today's most powerful force for social change. Seeing this force reflected in thoughts on science reveals how the feminist philosophy is both quite radical and yet as strangely familiar as common sense and decency. It would sound even more familiar were I to express these principles less abstractly and more in terms of a personal story like Dr. Shepherd uses to flesh out her ideas. The personalized approach expresses the feminist value of embodied knowledge--knowledge as it is actually lived by particular individuals. Here's my story:

When I was pursuing my doctoral research at U.C.L.A. on memory and forgetting, a female undergraduate research assistant actually conducted my experiments. One day she asked me why I bothered with them at all. "You already know the results you want to get. You aren't interested in the students or their experience here, you're just interested in the statistics that will give you a Ph.D.." It was embarrassing to see myself through the eyes of this young woman, but when I opened my heart to what she was feeling, and allowed my thoughts to follow along, I came up with a new approach to research.

Upon arriving at Princeton University with my new Ph.D., I invited students to join me in a collaborative research effort on learning to remember dreams. I fully shared with them my thoughts on the subject and invited their suggestions. We all kept dream journals, discussed our experiences, and collaborated on data processing. The publication of our findings in a scholarly journal was a landmark study using what I called a "humanistic methodology."

When I first visited A.R.E. in Virginia Beach to join the newly formed research advisory committee in 1972, I had a dream, while sleeping at Charles Thomas Cayce's farmhouse, where a group of research participants and I begin a dance that generates an illuminating fountain of sparks. That dream of the "research dance" sparked many more "humanistic" experiments over the ensuing twenty-plus years. One that has involved some of our readers was the concept of the "Home Study Research Project." A.R.E. members experiment in their lives with a given hypothesis, report their experiences, and the published compilation of their data becomes helpful and informative to the general public. Here we have the essence of the scientific enterprise recast into a collaborative, community orientation where everyone plays both scientist and research subject roles, exploring issues of common interest. The first home study research project I created was on dreams, and participants demonstrated that they could use their dreams, without professional assistance, to make meaningful discoveries and changes in their lives. That project evolved into the Sundance Community Dream Journal, which in turn played a significant role in the creation of the Association for the Study of Dreams, an organization that nurtures both laypeople and professionals. Most recently, an A.R.E. home study project gave birth to In the Presence of Angels: Stories from New Research on Angelic Influences (A.R.E. Press), compiled by Robert C. Smith.