European expansion and modern science were mutually dependent, not coincidental

Evidence

Is it entirely the irrelevant coincidence suggested by conventional European histories that the “voyages of discovery” and the “birth of modern science” started in Europe during the same period? To the contrary, each required the success of the other for its own successes, according to the science and technology scholars writing the new postcolonial global histories. And this symbiotic relation between European expansion and the advance of modern sciences continues today, according to critics of Third World development policies. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1587

Categorization

• XREF: Resonates with critiques of ‘discovery’ narratives; echoes both postcolonial studies (Mignolo, Quijano’s coloniality of knowledge) and the thesis in The Defeat of the Spanish Armada that contingency undercuts triumphalist history. — connects to: European science advanced through immersion in its contemporary cultural and political projects — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1583
• SEED: Angle: how the tools of ‘science’ were literally the tools of empire — a piece on why navigation, cartography, and botany were colonizing instruments first and ‘pure science’ second.