ABSTRACT
In this chapter, science is presented as a cultural discourse, whereby the focus is on science in a European historical context. Thus, “science” evolved in the communities of intellectuals, mainly in ancient Athens. When such communities became more institutionalised and formalised—starting with Plato’s Academy—they became “discourse systems”. After Plato, European intellectual culture is reproduced and transformed, typically in response to key events in European history. Until the 17th century, scientific responses to events assumed the form of a quest for a renaissance. The scientific response to the West European reformation wars and their aftermath (post-war reconstruction) establishes a radical break with this renaissance pattern, igniting an altogether new definition of science. In the past two and a half centuries, enlightenment science has become predominant, yet this post-classical reconstruction of science is not without contestation. By reconstructing science as a cultural discourse, it becomes possible to uncover hegemonic intellectual imperialism, expressed in ethnocentrism and Eurocentrism, and marginalisation of other communities of intellectuals, with a view to making intellectual culture flourish and shape a political sphere according to reason or intellectual insight rather than domination.
