Sandra G. Harding (born 1935) is an American philosopher of feminist and postcolonial theory, epistemology, research methodology, and philosophy of science.
In 2011 she was appointed a Distinguished Affiliate Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Michigan State University, East Lansing.
She was invited to contribute a chapter to UNESCO's World Social Science Report 2010 on "Standpoint Methodologies and Epistemologies: a Logic of Scientific Inquiry for People.
This kind of research process starts off from questions that arise in the daily lives of people in oppressed groups.
To answer such questions, it "studies up", examining the principles, practices and cultures of dominant institutions, from the design and management of which oppressed groups have been excluded.
In her 1986 book The Science Question in Feminism, Harding touched on the pervasiveness of rape and torture metaphors for the scientific method in the writings of Francis Bacon and others.
She was criticized by mathematicians Michael Sullivan,[9] Mary Gray,[10] and Lenore Blum,[11] and by the historian of science Ann Hibner Koblitz.
[13] Her essay on "Science is 'Good to Think With'"[14] was the lead article in the issue of the journal Social Text that also included the Sokal Hoax, which focused on her work among others.