What is scientific imperialism?

Answer 1

Scientific imperialism is a term that appears to have been coined by Dr Ellis T Powell when addressing the Commonwealth Club of Canada on 8 September 1920. Though he gave a definition of Imperialism as, "the sense of arbitrary and capricious domination over the bodies and souls of men," yet he used the term 'scientific imperialism' to mean "the subjection of all the developed and undeveloped powers of the earth to the mind of man."[1] In modern parlance, however, scientific imperialism refers to any situation in which science seems to act imperiously, such as "the tendency to push a good scientific idea far beyond the domain in which it was originally introduced, and often far beyond the domain in which it can provide much illumination."(John Dupré, Against Scientific Imperialism, 2006) It can thus mean an attitude towards knowledge in which the beliefs and methods of science are assumed to be superior to and to take precedence over those of all other disciplines. "Devotees of these approaches are inclined to claim that they are in possession not just of one useful perspective on human behavior, but of the key that will open doors to the understanding of ever wider areas of human behavior."[2] It is also apparent in "those who believe that the study of politics can and should be modelled on the natural sciences, a position defended most forcibly in the United States, and those who have dissented, viewing this ambition as methodologically unjustified and ethically undesirable."[3]