Colonialism, science, and health

Abstract

In addition to genocide, slavery, and the dispossession of indigenous people, colonialism, as a form of control, meant the suppression of traditional knowledge. The imposition of Christianity, the modern Western paradigm, and modern science that followed perpetrated this suppression. The universal role held by modern science is supported neither by epistemic nor social aspects. It is ineffective and complicit in the collapse of civilization, and it is worsened by comprehensive and unifying ideas to be reduced to an input-process of technological innovation for the benefit of social control industries such as the military, information technology, communication, or health. Furthermore, it suppresses ancestral knowledge related to health and medicine that may be beneficial and must be researched (stimulant medicines). Coupled with the health industry, it promotes the medicalization of life, spreading uncertainty, anxiety, and unease. Therefore, it is an instrument of neocolonialism that imposes its priorities, supplanting problems in subordinated countries, and extracts substantial resources, which is detrimental to social policies and programs. The biggest objection to the universality of modern science is derived from its empiricist and reductionist nature. Through the practically impossible idea of a unifying and explanatory knowledge, it impedes researchers the understanding of the complexity of the world and their historical moment and to act accordingly. It transforms great creative and liberating potential to submissiveness for the interests of capital and its representatives.