Gimcracks Legacy: Sex, Wealth, And the Theater of Experimental Philosophy‪.‬

Experimental philosophy in the late seventeenth century depended upon what Stephen Shapin and Simon Schaffer have famously characterized as the "modest witness" that is, a gendered figure of authority, gentility, and privilege measured for "[his] moral constitution as well as [his] knowledgeability." (1) The modest witness was a subject position that emerged in "the laboratory" itself "a disciplined space, where experimental, discursive, and social practices were collectively controlled by competent members." (2) The authenticity of the "modest witness" was borne out of performance, policing, and collective agreement, but it also depended upon the idea that these practices produced a modest witness who merely reflected the results from scientific experimentation. (3) While the benefits of Shapin and Schaffer's work are multiple, their insights have invited a range of reconsiderations, most notably by Donna Haraway. (4) The role of the modest witness and the rise of experimentalism in general, contends Haraway, generated a model of gender difference that Shapin and Schaffer assume existed a priori.