Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at
http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=fcss20
Sport in Society
Cultures, Commerce, Media, Politics
ISSN: 1743-0437 (Print) 1743-0445 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/fcss20
Situated knowledges, sports and the sport science
question
Kutte Jönsson
To cite this article: Kutte Jönsson (2018): Situated knowledges, sports and the sport science question, Sport in Society, DOI: 10.1080/17430437.2018.1435000
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/17430437.2018.1435000
© 2018 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
Published online: 19 Feb 2018.
Submit your article to this journal
Article views: 187
Sport in Society, 2018
https://doi.org/10.1080/17430437.2018.1435000
Situated knowledges, sports and the sport science question
Kutte Jönsson
Department of Sport Sciences, Malmö University, Sweden
ABSTRACT
In this article, I will elaborate on the feminist scholar Donna Haraway’s understanding of the concept of situated knowledges. I believe it is a concept that can be usefully applied to sports and sport science, in that it may create stories about the intertwined relationship between sport science and the narratives of sport science – stories we can believe in.
Introduction
On 22 April 2017, a series of rallies and marches took place all over the Western world. These events, called The March of Science, were a response to what many within the science commu-nity thought of as an increased attack on evidence-based knowledge. The manifestations were also a response to what many have described as a war on science, a war not least fuelled by US President Donald Trump and his administration’s talk of ‘alternative facts’. Considering the number of protesters, there were not a few who seemed to be sincerely worried about the status of science. However, was there not something problematic about the rallies and the marches, even from a liberal perspective? In fact, was there not something unsatisfactory, or even total-itarian, about the rallies and the marches? Of course, from a strictly political point of view, it is easy to support the events that took place. However, on a deeper level, one might say that the protests also expressed a certain view on the world and on how knowledge is being produced. In fact, from that specific perspective, one might say that the protests in themselves became a narrative. Perhaps that was also the reason why I looked upon the actions as problematic when they occurred. There was something in the tone, or in the manner the protests were conducted, that I found somewhat disturbing. Not from a political standpoint but from a philosophical one. The reason is, what are we talking about when we talk about science, knowledge, narratives, facts and fiction? Is there always a clear-cut distinction between these concepts? I would say that this is not always the case, especially when it comes to a field such as sports.
In this article, I intend to explore some of the concepts by using sports as a means for such an exploration. I will not offer any definite answers but rather try to outline some of the crucial issues that follow from what I will be calling the sport science question. As I will argue, the narrative of science and science in itself become intertwined when sport © 2018 the Author(s). published by informa UK Limited, trading as taylor & Francis Group.
this is an open Access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons Attribution-noncommercial-noDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.
CONTACT Kutte Jönsson kutte.jonsson@mau.se
science is involved. Hence, if we strive for a deeper understanding of sports (as we know it), we may also have to consider the internal ambiguities that come with studying the field.
Before starting the discussion, I will present a few basic facts. Sport science can be described as the child of three major scientific parents: natural science, social sciences and the humanities. This means that in every physical movement expressed in the field that we choose to define as sport, we will find characteristics from all the scientific categories men-tioned. Limiting oneself to one category will not tell the whole picture of a certain sporting activity but only parts of it. A limitation to just one or two sides of the story may give us some aspects to dine on but will leave us with a feeling of emptiness in the end. The aspects may be relevant and true per se but leave out other (perhaps crucial or at least important) aspects of sports. Or, to be more specific: if we choose to study sports from a physiological perspective alone, we may find some truth from that particular perspective but nothing more. We have not made sense of sports. We may need something more, perhaps by bringing some other components to the table in order to understand what people are doing when they are practising sports (either as athletes or as consumers, or both). It could of course be an expression of hubris to try to find a final answer about the truth of sports. That is not my point here. I doubt that there exists such a ‘final’ truth. However, I do think that sport science is a good example of a scientific practice where science turns into a narrative (of sports), something that in turn may dismantle the rather rough distinction between facts and fiction. This does not mean that we should reject science (even in its most limited sense), but we should rather look upon science in a slightly different way from what the scientific traditions try to tell us. In doing that, I will introduce Donna Haraway’s (1988) concept of
situated knowledges and connect that concept to the field of sports and sport science.
Situated knowledges: the concept
In 1988, the American cultural philosopher and feminist scholar Donna Haraway (1988) published a paper that has ever since become something of a theoretical landmark among feminist scholars and others alike. This happened when she introduced a new concept into the scientific world: situated knowledges. Her article was something of a response to the work of another feminist scholar, Sandra Harding. In her (1986) groundbreaking book
The Science Question in Feminism, Harding carefully points out that feminists were not
the first group to have scrutinized modern science and its political, ethical and ideological implications. Harding writes (1986, 16):
Struggles against racism, colonialism, capitalism, and homophobia, as well as the counter culture movement of the 1960s and the contemporary ecology and antimilitarism movements, have all produced pointed analyses of the uses and abuses of science.
Obviously, what Harding aims at is the political side of science: how science at times is being used (or abused, even) for political purposes, which is an aspect one cannot (or should not) be unaware of. The political side of science counts. Does it mean, however, that we should blame science for that? Of course not, just as we do not blame sports for being used (and/or abused) on political grounds. Such statements are not controversial. Much deeper problems concern what science in itself (including scientific methods and theories) does to us and the world at large.
We know that scientific proofs and evidence can turn good intentions into a political and moral agenda that has virtually nothing to do with the initial intentions. We know that. Still,
SPORT IN SOCIETY 3
that does not mean that we should deny the positive impact science makes on the world. This issue is connected with the issue of objectivity as well as with the frequently albeit not always blurred distinction between facts and fiction. When the politically driven science activists rallied against the Trump administration during the Science March, it was in defence of a certain view of the distinction between facts and fiction, in favour of evidence-based facts. In most cases, I would guess, it serves us better to rely on evidence based on scientific methods rather than embracing misconceptions, religious beliefs, ideological standpoints, political views or philosophical worldviews, at least from a general point of view.
However, this does not mean that science comes without a value or a belief system. You do not have to be a postmodernist scholar to consider that certain values and worldviews influence the scientific world. In fact, denying that would probably be regarded as rather stupid, to be honest. Personally, I would fear a world totally built on what scientists think about how we should live or how we should perceive the world. To be ‘objective’ would be the same as to be totalitarian. This reasoning leads to a much bigger issue, because there
is a tension between subjectivity and objectivity that we cannot escape. The question is,
however, how these two polarized entities not only relate to each other, but also how they relate to the much bigger issue, that of truth. What can be universalized or generalized, on one hand, and what can be true only in a limited space? Moreover, does science, or its instruments, really offer the best tools in the search of truth? These, and related questions, come into play every time scientific issues are being debated. In that debate, Donna Haraway contributes with important aspects.
Haraway takes a critical view towards the common idea that science (including natural science, social sciences and humanities) is based on objectivity (at least in part). Much effort and time have been ploughed into the defence of such a view. Not least feminist scholars have objected to that, by protesting that that is not a view without bodies. A view from ‘nowhere’ may have been seen as an ideal by many scientists but does not come without a risk, because a view from nowhere may look upon the world as an object detached from a physical observer. Or, differently put, according to this view, the world becomes a terrain to conquer through scientific language. Many scientists throughout history have embodied such a masculinist position vis-à-vis the world.1 The question here, though, is the moral
impact of the narrative surrounding science on our view of the objects that are being studied (or construed).
Sports and sport science form a good example of that. Generally speaking, sports deal to a great extent with bodies: physical bodies in motion, physical bodies in pleasure and pain, physical bodies that become symbols for certain norms, ideals and values embedded in society and culture. This is an old and trivial truth. In sports, natural science, social sciences and humanities are intertwined in very concrete ways. Every sporting case can be studied from all these perspectives. Consider boxers, for example. We can understand their motions from the natural science perspective by describing how they move in the ring, from a social science perspective by discussing the social implications of acting in certain ways, while from a humanities perspective we may be forced to analyse the moral impact boxing might have on humanity at large.2 Each one of these perspectives can be divided into
subcategories that are worth analysing. This is a never-ending story. However, embedded in these scientific approaches we may also find, or even construct, a narrative for the sport in question. From a social constructionist point of view, especially, the narrative of science becomes crucial. Or, as Haraway (1988, 577) prefers to express it:
[S]ocial constructionists … maintain that the ideological doctrine of scientific world and all the philosophical verbiage about epistemology were cooked up to distract our attention from getting to know the world effectively by practicing the sciences. From this point of view, science – the real game in town – is rhetoric, a series of efforts to persuade relevant social actors that one’s manufactured knowledge is a route to a desired form of very objective power.
And she (1988, 577) continues:
[A]rtifacts and facts are parts of the powerful art of rhetoric. Practice is persuasion, and the focus is very much on practice. All knowledge is a condensed node in an agonistic power field. The strong program in the sociology of knowledge joins with the lovely and nasty tools of semiology and deconstruction to insist on the rhetorical nature of truth, including scientific truth. History is a story Western culture buffs to tell each other; science is a contestable text and a power field; the content is the form. Period.
These two quotations from Haraway’s description of social constructionist rhetoric could easily be seen as an ironic approach to the same critical views. Perhaps that is also how they should be understood. Nonetheless, what a social constructionist view aims at is the other-wise common understanding of science as a producer of objective knowledge, as knowledge without bodies. Being sceptical of ‘objective’ standards in this sense does not mean that we are being forced into a relativist position, as one might think at first. Haraway, for example, rejects both positions. In fact, what she is saying is that the opposite of objectivism does not spell relativism. Quite the contrary, objectivists and relativists reflect each other in one specific but important way: they are both totalitarian! I will soon approach the argument behind that statement. Before that, we need to say something about the purpose of science taken as a whole. In the words of Haraway (1988, 580): ‘science has been about a search for translation, convertibility, mobility of meanings, and universality’. Following this, it would mean that science (including natural science, social sciences, and humanities) is heavily dependent on how we perceive the concept of vision. Vision seems to be a crucial concept for Haraway, which always stands for some sort of particularity. No one can be ‘God’. No one is an abstraction. There is no view from ‘nowhere’, to put it simply. We may take different positions from time to time, but that does not mean that we are viewing the world from a nowhere position. There is a ‘gaze’ to consider, so to speak. Feminists talk at times of the male gaze, a vision no one really holds even if it is embodied through some ideological positions. Anti-racists may, for instance, talk about a white gaze and socialists about an upper-class gaze. These ‘gazes’ signify ‘unmarked positions’, Haraway claims (1988, 581). Based on this thought, she suggests a doctrine termed ‘feminist objectivity’, or simply
situated knowledges (1988, 581).
According to Haraway, the concept falls into two separate categories: feminist and objec-tivity. The ‘feminist’ part conveys a line of thought that does not deny the experience of certain positions in the world, while the ‘objectivity’ part means that we should not fall into the ideological pitfall of becoming relativists where everything matters equally. There are elements of objectivity also within every subject, but not only that. There is a morality to this: ‘only partial perspective promises objective vision’ (1988, 583). Haraway (1988, 583) claims:
All Western cultural narratives about objectivity are allegories of the ideologies governing the relations of what we call mind and body, distance and responsibility. Feminist objectivity is about limited location and situated knowledge, not about transcendence and splitting of subject and object. It allows us to become answerable for what we learn how to see.
SPORT IN SOCIETY 5
For the sake of the argument, let us accept Haraway’s hard statement on this. What does it mean applied to sports and sport science? That is what I will discuss in the next section.
Situated knowledges in sport science
As long as we consider sport science to be a part of the science community taken as a whole, it suffers from the very same diseases as other scientific faculties. The fact that sport science stems from different scientific traditions and disciplines does not mean that it is being transformed into something different from other sciences. This statement begs the question of what we mean by sport science. I will not dig deep into that particular question here but only stipulate, for the sake of the argument, the following definition: By sport sci-ence I mean (a) scisci-ence that is being intertwined with a set of basic disciplines with (b) the aim of creating new knowledge in relation to what we call sports. For example, someone who works within the field of sports medicine does not practise sport science per se but medical research applied to sports. A sports philosopher does not practise sports science, but practises, within the field of philosophy, philosophical investigations applied to sports. (The same goes for every other scientific discipline as well, of course). However, if these are being combined, e.g. by combining sports medicine with sports philosophy, we have reached a point where we can talk about developing a ‘new’ scientific field: sport science. In other words, it is only when the fields are being crossed that something new can evolve and be something other than the original disciplines taken alone. This is my stipulative point. Still, it is not free from objections. One could claim that even if a sports philosopher works with the tools taken from philosophy applied to sports, it becomes part of what one might call sport science. (Again, the same argument can be applied to all other academic disciplines). This objection may be perfectly valid. In some respects there is some truth to the objection. If you are part of an academic discipline, using the scientific tools that are accepted within the science community, you might say that it is sport science, albeit only a certain aspect of it. I could accept that argument; nonetheless, there is something unsatisfactory about it. Only applying certain theories, aspects or methods on some more or less randomly cho-sen field does not necessarily lead to a situation where new knowledge is being produced. Applying old philosophical ideas to sports may shed new light on certain aspects of them (and that may be good enough, so to speak), but it does not do anything more than just that. It may, to some extent, change the vision of sports (as we know it), but nothing more than that. Combined with other disciplines, something new might occur when methods and theories are being married to each other, and a new kind of knowledge may appear, although grounded in the field of sports.
However, the suggestion stipulated above does escape the fact that even new scientific fields are connected in depth to old ideas of how new knowledge about objects is produced. Nonetheless, it may very well lead to something about sports that we do not know, something that cannot be captured or visualized without the intertwining of different academic fields. In fact, one might even view sport science as an integrated part of how science has developed throughout its long history of soul- and world-searching research. Consider, for example, how ‘old’ disciplines used not to be separate disciplines at all but became such along the way of specialization of the methods at hand. Why not link sport science to that historic chain?
If, again for the sake of the argument, we accept the reason above as reasonable in its structure, we may move on to the issue of what is being the ‘situated’ part of all this. I would
suggest, following the main structure of Haraway’s argument, that sports constitute the ‘situation’ we are concerned with here, and the knowledge that may (or may not) arise from that is a direct result of the work being done within the sport science field. It is as simple as that. It means, by definition, that sport science can never be either totalized or relativized but objectively true in relation to certain situations, cultures, or time periods. Using a con-cept such as situated knowledges means that we can depart from the common, albeit false, distinction between ‘totalization’ and ‘relativism’. In the science debate, many participants have been critical of what has been seen as relativism. Although Haraway is also critical of relativism, she says that the response is not what she calls totalization, metaphorically described as the god-trick. Haraway argues:
[T]he alternative to relativism is not totalization and single vision, which is always finally the unmarked category whose power depends on systematic narrowing and obscuring. The alter-native to relativism is partial, locatable, critical knowledge sustaining the possibility of webs of connections called solidarity and shared conversations in epistemology. Relativism is a way
of being nowhere while claiming to be everywhere equally. (1988, 584, my italics) She continues:
The ‘equally’ of positioning is a denial of responsibility and critical inquiry. Relativism is the perfect twin mirror of totalization in the ideologies of objectivity; both deny the stakes in location, embodiment, and partial perspective; both make it impossible to see well. Relativism
and totalization are both ‘god tricks’ promising vision from everywhere and nowhere equally and fully, common myths in rhetorics surrounding Science. (1988, 584, my italics)
On the basis of this reasoning one might argue that from a sports perspective it is crucial – for scientific reasons – to state that the truth about sports comes with, let’s say, context. The ways we understand sports cannot, and perhaps should not, be detached from the situation. This also has moral implications, which I will return to later. First, an illustration of how the concept of situated knowledges can be applied to sports.
Situated knowledges in sports
If there is a specific science question when it comes to sports, it has always been about improving athletic performances, as long as it does not challenge the social and moral values of the sport. However, one can also easily see how certain sports have developed their own cultures and ideas when it comes to organizing their sports. In sports such as wrestling and boxing, no one questions the existence of weight classes – for the sake of fair competition, and in almost every sport (except motor sport and equestrian sports) it is considered natural to distinguish between male and female athletes. These examples (and there are of course many more) all serve the purpose of creating visibly fair competitions. There is of course a moral value to this. Fairness is usually seen as an important moral value. We strive for fairness in almost every stage of life, and most of us react against unfairness unless it serves some greater good.
Although sports competitions are supposed to serve the idea of fairness in sports, we still have not reached a point where we can say with certainty, without any doubt, that the competitions are totally fair. There are often, although not always, some arguments, some examples, that would obscure the ‘fair’ competitions. How is that possible? How can that be explained? The only way of explaining it is to say that the question is built on a cherished myth about the possibility of fairness in sports. If every runner starts the race along the same
SPORT IN SOCIETY 7
line, we might think of it as fair. That we can see with our own eyes. But we cannot see the unfair differences existing between the runners. We do not know much about their back-grounds, their genetic make-up, their psychological status, their relationships with parents, friends, coaches, sporting clubs and sponsors. If we had really been interested in fairness and equality (or fairness as equality), we would probably have found a reason to make complaints on moral grounds. But usually we do not. Usually we accept the unfairness and inequality for the sake of something else, for the sake of the competition as such, perhaps. From this follows that if you consider yourself to be an egalitarian, a real egalitarian, you cannot support sports competitions, not only because the actual races are based on unfair grounds but also because they symbolize an inequality that you would not have accepted in any other area of society or life.
The supposed meritocratic idea of fairness in sports is just one example, albeit an obvious one, of a certain narrative that comes with sports competitions as they are being presented to the world. The reality behind the scenes in which the competitions take place may reveal a different kind of story. If we had been fully enlightened of the circumstances behind the runners on the sports stage, we might have taken a different approach to the competitions as a whole. We might have considered certain competitions to be deeply unfair in terms of the differences in the athletes’ backgrounds. Those we believe to be underdogs might have been favourites, but as long as we cannot get underneath their skin and into their souls, it seems, if not impossible, at least highly difficult to know anything beyond what is being presented to us.
This scenario can illustrate more than one problem: First, a problem that concerns how the stories are being told, and second, what is the ‘real’ truth lying behind what we can see with our naked eye. In short, what we are dealing with here is how we ought to relate to the distinction between facts and fiction. For all we know, it is a frequently used distinction, not least in common language. Our tendency to distinguish between them may be an optic illu-sion, however. How can we be certain that a given situation (in sports or elsewhere) is a fac-tual construction rather than a fictional one? Is it even important to draw such distinctions, when it comes to the point? In one way, it is. Because no one wants us to be manipulated into holding what one might call false beliefs on which we will later make certain decisions about life and society. I think most if not all of us want solid grounds to stand on before we make decisions. However, it does not mean that science always provides the answer, if we recognize that science may be ideological and based on impulses, preferences or interests. It is a trivial statement, albeit important to repeat from time to time, that science is not a practice detached from certain environments. This also means that science in itself is in some respects a narrative about science. Because of that, there are aspects which science (as we know it) cannot capture. There are always aspects left to be investigated. This becomes relevant not least in relation to the understanding of sports.
What can be said about sports and athletic performances? We can look upon certain events and performances from different perspectives and from these specific perspectives draw different kinds of conclusions. This is self-evident. Imagine, for example, that some people are watching the same sporting event, or performance. Each one of them will most certainly have different perspectives on ‘the game’ depending on what they know about the sport. No one is watching the performance from nowhere. They may say that they do, but they do not. And they will most certainly see different things; they may even see different performances. Their ‘eyes’ will perhaps fall on different dimensions of the performances.
Their knowledge or perspectives (at least as long as they choose to watch the performance from ‘their’ perspective) will perhaps determine what they actually see. Suppose they wish to explain their experience to others after the performance is finished. Will it end up in more than just one or a few stories? Perhaps. One thing they will have in common, though. They will have watched the performance from an observer perspective, from an outside position, looking in at something they will not fully grasp, and this will include the former coach and the former athlete as well, those who in this example will be the ones closest to what the athlete performer performs. The different stories combined would construct a narrative, although scientifically based or based on experience. This hypothetical exam-ple hints at a much bigger philosophical issue, of course, deeply connected to the issue whether we can ever know anything about matters outside ourselves, and even that can be questioned. I will not go into that issue here. The point I want to make is another one. My point is that every perspective, most of which are based on science in one way or another, can shed some light on the performance and add dimensions to it that were not there from the beginning. When it becomes a narrative, which is certainly the case when the persons in my example start to talk about the performance, they may talk from a position where the facts about the performance are being presented, although embedded in language and culture. This, in turn, builds a narrative about not only the performance but also about the science behind the performance and the scientifically based understanding of it. What is important to say in all this is that the argument just presented is not a defence of relativism. Quite the contrary. Relativism suggests that the values of every given perspective should be equally good in order to understand what just happened. That, however, is not the case here. Perspectives can be more or less valid depending on the situation. If one of the agents in my example should claim that the performance seems to be a result of witchcraft, few would say that it sounds reasonable and important for the sake of understanding how the athletes could perform the way they did. Most people would say, for good reasons, that the scientific grounds for making such a statement are weak. The person in question may believe it to be true, but that does not mean that it is true, and as long as this person cannot present strong evidence for the case, we have no reason to take any further notice of the argument either.
What would be objectively true, then, one might ask. It is a good question. Or differ-ently put, what is fact and what is fiction? As said before, there are situations where we have reason to question the distinction altogether. As soon as something is being dressed in language (including the use of metaphors), it becomes to some extent a narrative about the performance we have just watched. Bluntly put, the story becomes the performance soon after (or during) the performance takes place. What is the story, then? Again, it may depend on the perspective. A physiologist may perceive the performing body somewhat like a machine, seeing a physiological and/or biological entity moving in certain ways, and drawing certain conclusions from how this body moves. Someone from the field of social sciences and the humanities may take on a different view and perceive the performance as part of a certain tradition grounded in a certain culture of human movement, seeing signs of a history or a philosophical worldview as old as the world itself. Then we have the per-forming athlete, perhaps taking on an inside perspective, who in the moment experiences something beyond the body and beyond traditions and signs. There is one thing, at least, that these three perspectives have in common: the situation in which they take place. Perhaps this would mean that context is all that matters. But what is the context? As mentioned before, a context does not necessarily have to be limited to a given place in a given time, but
SPORT IN SOCIETY 9
it can presumably be stretched out to cover different places and different times. This would mean that scientifically based ‘results’ taken from one place and time can be converted to other places and times in history. However, it also suggests a humble approach towards the performances taking place in the studied case.
Final remarks
In this essay, I have tried to outline certain perspectives with regard to the concept of sit-uated knowledges in relation to sports and sports sciences. What can be drawn from this? What can be made of the arguments in the essay? One, I would say, obvious aspect is that the concept of situated knowledges contains moral implications. By taking on partial per-spectives and also reflecting on the narratives that follow science (including sport science) means that we need to be humble before what is being studied when we study sports. As in the case of science at large, there are ideological as well as other sorts of interests inflicting on the methods and theories of the world. Following the idea of situated knowledges, one might even say that the view from nowhere is a blind spot on the map of science, perhaps even a dead vision that only serves those interested in being ‘gods’. Being faithful to situated knowledges is demanding, not least morally. It may mean that, when we claim to know things about others, we may not see ourselves in the studied objects or in the context in which the actions are taking place. (For example, when we are quick to morally blame users of performance enhancing drugs without reflecting on our own part of ‘the game’).
Studying sports from a partial perspective comes with a risk. What we may find is not only facts, but just another story about ourselves. That, however, also means that it seems counter-scientific to talk the enemies’ language by not reflecting on the often blurred dis-tinction between science and a certain story about science. In the end, it may be good enough to recognize the goal of dismantling sports as we know it – and create a story that we can believe in.
Notes
1. Consider, just for the sake of proving my point, the example of the Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778). For many years, Linnaeus travelled round the landscapes studying nature. During his travels, he named flowers and plants systematically. For that, he became famous in the science world. One might say that, with his vision, he discovered something previously unknown only by naming the things he saw. But that is only one way of understanding his work. One could also say that he was shrinking the world little by little, only by naming it. He dismantled the mystery, one might say. Where should we draw the line between facts and fiction in this case? It is difficult to say for sure, I imagine. In one way, the things were there, in nature, waiting to be named and forced into a certain system. On the other hand, Linnaeus created something by naming the things in nature. One might even say that Linnaeus disenchanted the world, simply by formalizing the world (of flowers and plants) into a modern taxonomic system. Bluntly put, he worked as a scientist in the natural sciences, although one can say that his work has also influenced other scientific faculties as well. His work can be looked upon from social science perspectives as well as from those of the humanities. For example, one might suggest that his work on flowers and plants has been translated into human societies, with regard to how it has become ‘normal’ to divide people into different social categories. From a humanities perspective, one might claim that we use the language taken from his studies and incorporate it into our minds and ideas. All things considered, one might say that he organized parts of the world on paper. And by doing it ‘on
paper’ one might say that he created the world, not only discovering it. This is not unique, quite the contrary. Virtually all scientists work that way. They try to make sense of a ‘chaotic’ world, sometimes for the benefit of humankind. This is, of course, not a moral problem per se. At least not always. But it does not mean that there are no problems at all. Because there are. One such problem is the conflict between subjectivity and objectivity. Should we consider Linnaeus to be an ‘objective’ scientist? Did he discover universal truths in his works? Or, was it just another example of a masculine scientist working the world for the sake of fame and power? Or, was it both?
2. This example I have borrowed from Sigmund Loland (2011) and his article ‘The normative aims of coaching: the good coach as an enlightened generalist’. Loland uses his example when discussing different aspects of sports coaching and its ideals, whereas I take on a different approach.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
References
Haraway, D. 1988. “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective.” Feminist Studies 14 (3): 575–599. doi:10.2307/3178066.
Harding, S. 1986. The Science Question in Feminism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Loland, S. 2011. “The Normative Aims of Sports Coaching: The Good Coach as an Enlightened Generalist.” In The Ethics of Sports Coaching, edited by A. Hardman and C. Jones, 15–22. London: Routledge.
