How colonialistic is science?
This week I was pointed into the direction of a Youtube
video entitled ‘science must fall’. Here we go I thought, Anti-vax, Anti-GMO
and probably anti-thinking. I will warn you, If you want to watch the video, it
will take 4 minutes of your time (more if you have to pause it to put your head
in your hands so as not to scream, much like myself. There is also the two hour
video. Your choice). Alas, it wasn’t anti GMO or anti vaccination or
anti-climate change it was just plain anti-science. ‘Fallists’ met to give a
talk on how we should ‘decolonise science’. No, this is not satire please keep
reading.
The point of the discussion that was clearly been put across
by the speaker is that science is a western thing, created and pushed onto African
people. Effectively, science is a religion that has been shoved down their
throats. Now, there are people here in the western civilisations who claim this
to be true, we call them ‘morons’. This woman said (or something to this
effect):
‘Wipe away science and start with a blank slate. We can make
our own knowledge’
They bang on about ‘black magic’ and how they can get
lightening to strike down their enemies. Newton’s apple made him write ‘some
equations’ and then that was forced upon the world. You can hear some heckles
and much relieving laughter from the audience. Although when someone claimed
the lightening summoning wasn’t true, the moderator said he had ‘violated their
‘safe’ space and made him apologise. Nothing like standing up for what you believe
in, eh? He shouldn’t go outside when there is a thunderstorm, he’s clearly not
safe.
No, Science isn’t imposed
Science, as much as they deny this, is a fundamental truth.
Gravity, as discovered by Newton, didn’t just appear in the western civilization
circa 1687 and then get forced onto
the rest of the world. That is insane on the face of it. To make that even more
absurd, they want to sustain a culture whereby science is totally eradicated
and principle foundations are ignored in order to come up with their own truths
about the universe. The objective of science is to seek out the truth, no
matter who you are, weather you’re a king, African, British, Russian, or a plague
ridden peasant, the fundamentals of science are true.
A transcultural atmosphere around science is imperative to its
function. We make hypotheses, test them, publish the results – that’s not
really science. We replicate the studies, other labs use them, and other countries
replicate and reproduce. Then we have science, we have communication,
confirmation (or not) that something is on the right track. Science, for all
intended purposes, needs to be freely administered to other countries in order
for it to be effective.
However, with that said, it isn’t perfect. Science is
undermined constantly, for example, in that video. Science is undermined when
it is twisted in order to factualise religion or pseudoscience. But enrolling
science out to other countries is not colonialism.
How to science wrong
As I said, she stated that Sir Isaac Newton published a
paper and that was it. What was once free-floating around in Africa suddenly
came crashing down. As science moves on in decades, we see that the theory of
gravity has been questioned, tested and was challenged by Einstein’s theory of
general relativity.
“Newton saw that apple falling and then out of nowhere
gravity existed”
But that doesn’t
matter, because gravity is real whether or not you think it is. This is then
moved on to by arguing that science ‘does not belong to humanity’ claiming that
scientists in Africa would have come up with a different answer. That, is science. Things are looked at in multiple
ways, take medicine for example. We have antibiotics and some doctors not
wanting to prescribe them for resistance reasons and some doctors prescribing
them for anything. We have new drugs being developed and doctors choosing to
use them for things other than their intended use because the side effects may
be a benefit to the patient. The only way doctors know of these is through the
knowledge passed through the scientific community. People come up with
different answers all the time, yeah, some are wrong. But what these scientific
communities are doing is building upon the knowledge that took years to get, to
further the scientific advancements in the world. They are not sat around
discussing if gravity is real or not. It is very clear here that what they want
is science to back up and give substance to cultural beliefs – ignorance that
cannot and should not be tolerated in this day and age.
The speaker, before stating that ‘gravity existed
out of nowhere’ states that she had a scientific education. This hugely remains
to be seen. I have no idea where she got thus ‘education’ but I would seriously
like to chat with her tutors.
‘If you disagree with this thinking, then you need to go
back and decolonise your mind’
As a scientist and a science enthusiast when I was growing
up I spent my time reading science books, watching science videos, learning
science and ultimately studying science at degree level. Not too shockingly,
that means I have read about Newton’s laws of gravity and the Theory of
Relativity. As a skeptic, I have read the studies, challenges and disputes that
has come along with those theories and have decided for myself, as with other scientists,
that these are fundamental truths of the universe. That is not colonialism. That’s
information and critical thinking. I encourage her to have a crack at it.
Conclusion
Science is science. It doesn’t care on your directionality.
West or eastern, gravity is fundamentally true because it has been studied, not
just because somebody said it is true. Science is about transparency, what on
earth would starting out new and wiping the slate clean do? Rejecting science
and using it to fit what you believe is detrimental to systems; governments,
healthcare and education.
If science doesn’t fit your worldview, you don’t just simply
ignore it, or in this case; try to literally wipe it from eastern civilisation. Tad extreme.
