Trained as a physicist and later a historian and philosopher of science, Evelyn Fox Keller writes from inside scientific practice, refusing to separate it from ideology.

These essays examine how metaphors of secrecy, penetration, mastery, objectivity and creation shape the questions science asks—and the stories it tells about its discoveries. Moving between molecular biology, nuclear physics and debates within feminist theory, Keller argues that language is not decorative wrapping around neutral knowledge: it helps determine what can be seen, imagined and pursued. 

Published in 1992, the collection captures feminist science studies at a particularly fertile point, when criticism of masculine authority was becoming more attentive to the internal complexity of science itself. Keller resists the easy claim that objectivity is merely male and therefore disposable; her more difficult question is how scientific knowledge might remain rigorous while becoming conscious of its histories, metaphors and exclusions. A strong book for readers interested in feminism, epistemology, the politics of scientific language and the strange intimacy between discovering life and manufacturing death.

First edition. Routledge, 1992 paperback. Very good condition with light rubbing and minor shelf wear to the covers.