The relevance of feminism to science rests on certain assumptions about science which, though very widely accepted, are worth mentioning explicitly. The first of these is the rejection of an extreme objectivist conception of the scientific enterprise. If one supposes, to put this at its most extreme, that scientists are involved in elaborating the Complete Truth about the world, and that there can be only one such truth, then the relevance of feminist analysis will be at most the excision of occasional episodes of indisputably bad science. But such a view of science has become increasingly untenable. Followers of Popper, for instance, though hardly noted for their concern with the extra-scientific sources of scientific hypotheses, acknowledge that these are in no way determined by the rational pursuit of scientific enquiry. And perhaps more significantly, the enormous influence of Kuhn has raised serious doubts as to whether alternative and incompatible approaches to the same domain of phenomena can properly be compared with one another for epistemological merit.
In view of these developments it is rather surprising how little attention in the philosophy of science has been devoted to systematic investigation of the kinds of extrascientific influences that might be important in determining the direction of scientific belief. It is even more surprising in light of the extent to which such analyses, specifically in terms of social and political forces, have become commonplace in the history of science.