The hegemony that has existed for the past 300 years since the era of Descartes and also Newton has helped legitimize as unique, a vision of the world and of nature as being like a machine, subject to the control of men. In this view, women are equated to nature, and therefore subject to male control as part of that scientific quest.
The research within the Ph.D. debates
Proposals for an alternative Holistic Paradigm have been the focus of the educational process in this Ph.D. program. Based on quantum physics which began in the last century, as well as the Second Cybernetics of the middle of that same century, and also systemic biology and chaos theory, María notes that the Doctoral Program failed to include women’s and feminist contributions, although it had included a course in “gender”.
She maintains in her dissertation that the scientific “discovery” of quantum physics at the turn of last century is what feminism and women already knew from their experiences, science and conscience: That all knowledge is relative to the subject who constructs it. Yet María noted that little or no credit was given to feminism for its contribution to that central “discovery”.
María's research recognizes that quantum theories have contributed with scientific validations for that which feminism had already identified and furthermore, many scientists, including quantum scientists who promote holistic approaches, fail to make explicit their own subjectivity in their construction of knowledge.
This is the basis of a major epistemological critique of patriarchy by feminism in the sciences: the relation of power and knowledge that is expressed in the hidden agendas when it fails to recognize that ALL knowledge is subjective.
In other words, what is inherent to the feminist epistemology, became María's comprehensive approach. The literary style of the approach in the dissertation integrates women's testimonials with literary fiction, new journalism, stories, reports and narrations, all documented and argued scientifically within the framework of efforts to deconstruct the present limitations of the “Holistic Paradigm” proposals when they ignore feminist epistemology.
