Thread by @EveKeneinan

This is the thesis of Luce Irigaray, concerning science as “sexed knowledge.”

Whatever truth there may be to this claim, the answer is, it is usually of UTTERLY TRIVIAL IMPORT.

@ConceptualJames gives the example of him tossing a chunk of sodium into water, followed by his female colleague @HPluckrose doing the same.

Guess what? Sodium explodes in water.

@ConceptualJames @HPluckrose Speaking of sexed sodium, I and a friend once swiped some sodium from the chemical room in my high school and positioned it in the boy’s room in one of the urinals, so it would be flooded when the thing was flushed.
😆

@ConceptualJames @HPluckrose Anyway, the MATERIAL POINT is: there is no RELEVANT, NON-TRIVIAL difference between “male” and “female” knowledge of what sodium does when introduced to water.

@ConceptualJames @HPluckrose Aristotle said 2400 years ago “Fire burns in Greece just as it does in Persia.”

He might have added “Fire burns for men just as it does for women.”

@ConceptualJames @HPluckrose This thing, the thing that is the same for everyone in all times and places, this thing the Greeks (plausibly) were the first to mark out as a distinct thing, is what we call NATURE.

It’s the opposite of “that which is by convention”, what we today call a “social construction."

@ConceptualJames @HPluckrose To anyone who says “Nature is a social construction,” the answer is “No, human beings are by nature social animals that produce social constructions, always and everywhere, which shows that socially constructing things belongs to HUMAN NATURE."

Except maybe less wordy.

@ConceptualJames @HPluckrose A: “Nature is a social construct of human beings.”
B: “Construting social constructs is a natural activity of human beings."