Postcolonial Theory of Science and Other Knowledge Forms: The Engagement with Cognitive and Epistemic Justice

Abstract

The essay addresses concerns about the history and philosophy of science that emanate from the current discussions on the ideas of epistemic justice, cognitive justice, and epistemologies of the Global South. These discussions are salient for the raging debate on the decolonization of minds, knowledge, and the university. We therefore need to address their consequences for the history and philosophy of science, seen here not as distinct formations but as a unitary whole customarily referred to by the acronym HPS. This paper is a preliminary step in that direction. In the first two sections, the essay provides a sketch of Eurocentric diffusionist models in the history of sciences and critiques of histories of science in the non-West based on such models that emanated from India. The latter half of the paper an exegetic effort to tease out the meanings associated with cognitive justice, and deliberates upon the philosophical consequences resulting from diverse readings of epistemologies of the Global South for the pursuit of the history and philosophy of science. Can these concepts be woven into a more just account of the global history and philosophy of the sciences?