What the Telescope can tell us about Postmodern Theory
What the Telescope can tell us about Postmodern Theory

Summary/Abstract: In marking epistemological shifts here, I rely on disciplinary notions and methods of historians of science, for I want to pursue the “epistemology in the making” (Daston 2009, 810): explaining what I assume by indicating certain shifts in epistemology and how those shifts can be articulated today.2 However, my intention goes beyond locating shifts and aims at mapping sites of comparison between them.By approaching history of epistemology in such manner, I want to outline some patterns of repetition which, nevertheless, go against the idea of linear and progressive historical development of ideas. In that regard, this paper explores how tensions between postmodernist radical constructivism and feminist situated epistemology resemble tensions in the 17th century around which various scientific debates emerged.Moreover, this paper seeks to point to some similarities and paradoxes these shifts reveal, as well as to present them via different interrelations that can be interpreted as bases for the emergence of another shift—feminist epistemology.

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