Helena Sheehan (born 1944) is an American philosopher, historian of science, philosophy, culture and politics.
Sheehan is professor emeritus at Dublin City University, where she taught media studies and history of ideas in the School of Communications.
She has given many conference papers and public lectures in universities and other bodies in USA, USSR, GDR, Mexico, Canada, Ireland, UK, France, Germany, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Greece and South Africa.
Born in the United States in 1944, Sheehan describes her childhood as Catholic and conservative, She began her university studies and taught primary school as a nun.
She argues that Marx and Engels shared fundamentally the same view on the philosophy of science[4] and written critically of Lysenkoism and Stalin's impact on scientific development, while stressing the necessity of understanding such trends in full socio-historical context.
""Marxism has made the strongest claims of any intellectual tradition before or since about the socio-historical character of science, yet always affirmed its cognitive achievements.
Science was seen as inextricably enmeshed with economic systems, technological developments, political movements, philosophical theories, cultural trends, ethical norms, ideological positions, indeed all that was human.
"[8]"What went wrong was that the proper procedures for coming to terms with such complex issues were short-circuited by grasping for easy slogans and simplistic solutions and imposing them by administrative fiat.
No more the larger-than-life murals of workers and soldiers and peasants marching into the future shaping the world with the labour of their hands and hearts and minds.