38 Deaf Epistemologies, Identity, and Learning
note, 2005): “Science should not be turned into a master narrative which provides
the standards for its own agenda” (Tanesini, 1999, p. 117). Sensitivity to class, gender,
race, ethnicity, culture, sex, disability, age, language, and audiological status appeals
to social values. In this view, epistemology can be viewed as a “motor of change.”
As an international and human practice, science needs to deal with researchers
and subjects from a variety of local contexts (Pinxten & note, 2005). Anthropolog-
ical research has revealed a gradual transformation and hybridization of cultures
(Appadurai, 2003; Hannerz, 2003; young, 1995). Paralleling the growth of infor-
mation technology and the marginalization of groups without technological access,
local, regional, cultural, and religious identities have also been mobilized (Massey
& Jess, 1995; Pinxten & De Munter, 2006). If the countermovement of postcolonial
studies is taken into account, an open and nonexclusive view of science is highly
relevant (Pinxten, 2006; Pinxten & note, 2005).^6
The next sections introduce debates in the philosophy of science that have con-
tributed towards an understanding of the production of knowledge within a context
and a worldview. These debates have been essential to provide room for critiques
on science and knowledge production from minority perspectives and also from
the field of deaf studies (see the section titled “Deaf Epistemologies as a Critique
and Alternative to the Practice of Science”), and they support the viability of deaf
epistemologies and associated metatheorizing.DEAF EPISTEMoLoGIES AnD ALTERnATIvES
To THE PRACTICE oF SCIEnCE
According to the received view of science, science is a cumulative enterprise to find a true
theory that is the key to nature. The received view claims epistemic foundationalism
in its efforts toward a logic of justification: Each scientific theory can be (re)formu-
lated by rules of correspondence between the language of theory and the language of
observation. The observer is distinguished from the object of observation: Any interfer-
ence by the subject is eliminated, and theories are confirmed by empirical verification.
This leads to a deductive certainty as far as is possible at a particular moment in time.
However, critics in the 1950s and 1960s pointed out that science is conducted
from within a weltanschauung (“worldview”) and, hence, epistemological theorizing
must attend to the dynamic historical and sociological contexts and the linguistic-
conceptual frameworks that influence the production of science and knowledge.
Kuhn (1962) points out the value of the notion of a consensus or shared research
tradition (paradigm) that is the basis for scientific theorizing among researchers in
the same field. In addition, observation is theory laden: Knowledge is reasonable for
a particular subject in a particular context, while the meaning of reasonable depends
on the conceptual and theoretical frameworks that influence the organization of
the data. Feyerabend (1965) criticized science’s language of neutral observation and- The practice of “studying knowledge in terms of epistemic practices” (Tanesini, 1999, p. 116)
and describing these epistemic practices as activities within historical, cultural, and social contexts is
illustrated by the Cameroonian case study in Chapter 5 and Chapter 8.