Evelyn Fox Keller
contemporaryPhilosophy of Science, Feminist Philosophy of Scienceb. 1936
Evelyn Fox Keller (born 1936) is an American physicist, biologist, and philosopher of science whose work examines the interplay between gender, language, and scientific practice. She is best known for her feminist critique of biology and her influential biography of geneticist Barbara McClintock. Her scholarship interrogates how conceptual metaphors—particularly in genetics—shape and constrain scientific inquiry.
Notable Achievements
1
Authored 'A Feeling for the Organism' (1983), a landmark biography of Barbara McClintock that reshaped philosophy of biology
2
Developed sustained critique of gene-centric reductionism in 'The Century of the Gene' (2000)
3
Analyzed how gendered metaphors structure biological and scientific discourse in 'Reflections on Gender and Science' (1985)
4
Explored the limits of mathematical modeling in developmental biology in 'Making Sense of Life' (2002)
5
Pioneer in demonstrating how social and linguistic frameworks condition what counts as scientific explanation