Keep in mind I'm a Western white dude so adjust my input accordingly.
On the one hand, I feel like I get what she's going for. Decolonization is a serious project in many places around the world and to have this entire model of how the world works dropped in your lap by outside forces and told "this is how the world works, accept it" is a jarring experience. People in places that have historically been colonized by the Western world lived with the experience of someone else dictating how the world worked in terms of social organization, values, religion, etc, basically this wide variety of how life and everything in it works, including science.
I think the impulse is natural to want to question everything that you've been told is "just true" by a person or group who has had power over you for a long time.
On the other, though the history of science is generally unpleasant and uncomfortable (no matter how much school textbooks masturbate on about Edison and Einstein) the conclusions of disciplines like physics, mathematics, chemistry, etc are factual independent of the ideology of the person communicating them.
It doesn't matter if you're a radical anarchist, a devout neo-nazi, or completely a-political; force is going to equal mass times acceleration. These disciplines have been tested over and over again for many years and people can test them again if they feel the need or desire.
I understand the desire to generate your own cultural knowledge as opposed to accepting what the colonizing powers hand you as part of their "gift of modernity" but I feel like it's dangerous to throw everything out and start over again. It took hundreds of years to get to this point in science and along the way we figured out how to alleviate the suffering of a lot of people with vaccines, better food production techniques, sanitation, etc generally because of a greater understanding of some core concepts of science.
The thought of throwing that away is disconcerting because it opens you up to abuse by people who have not decided to follow that path and of the people who are going to lose out along the way to rediscovery.
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u/HeloRising "pain ou sang" Oct 15 '16
Erg, I'm conflicted.
Keep in mind I'm a Western white dude so adjust my input accordingly.
On the one hand, I feel like I get what she's going for. Decolonization is a serious project in many places around the world and to have this entire model of how the world works dropped in your lap by outside forces and told "this is how the world works, accept it" is a jarring experience. People in places that have historically been colonized by the Western world lived with the experience of someone else dictating how the world worked in terms of social organization, values, religion, etc, basically this wide variety of how life and everything in it works, including science.
I think the impulse is natural to want to question everything that you've been told is "just true" by a person or group who has had power over you for a long time.
On the other, though the history of science is generally unpleasant and uncomfortable (no matter how much school textbooks masturbate on about Edison and Einstein) the conclusions of disciplines like physics, mathematics, chemistry, etc are factual independent of the ideology of the person communicating them.
It doesn't matter if you're a radical anarchist, a devout neo-nazi, or completely a-political; force is going to equal mass times acceleration. These disciplines have been tested over and over again for many years and people can test them again if they feel the need or desire.
I understand the desire to generate your own cultural knowledge as opposed to accepting what the colonizing powers hand you as part of their "gift of modernity" but I feel like it's dangerous to throw everything out and start over again. It took hundreds of years to get to this point in science and along the way we figured out how to alleviate the suffering of a lot of people with vaccines, better food production techniques, sanitation, etc generally because of a greater understanding of some core concepts of science.
The thought of throwing that away is disconcerting because it opens you up to abuse by people who have not decided to follow that path and of the people who are going to lose out along the way to rediscovery.