Academics pursue project to ‘Decolonize Physics’ – ‘We aim to critically investigate if & how physics itself has contributed & still contributes to colonialism’
By: Marc Morano – Climate Depot
Click to access v77n1.0-a4130.pdf
2021 report: Decolonizing Light: A Project Exploring Ways to Decolonize Physics – By Ingo Salzmann, Louellyn White, Donna Kahérakwas Goodleaf, and Tanja Tajmel
Excerpts: The aim of our project is exploring approaches to decolonize physics, of both its narratives and contemporary research. We decided to focus on physics, as this discipline plays a special role in the field of science due to its unique scientific authority. Physics is commonly regarded as the “most objective” and the “hardest” science [2], it fundamentally defines scientific key concepts such as energy, matter, force, light, space and time, for all the other sciences.
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Related Links:
University of Rhode Island and Director of Graduate Studies Erik Loomis wrote: “Science, statistics, and technology are all inherently racist because they are developed by racists who live in a racist society, whether they identify as racists or not.”
Loomis added: “This is why I have so much contempt for those, including many liberals, who “just want the data.” The data is racist!”
Also see: According to this professor, ‘Science, statistics, and technology are all inherently racist’
University of Rhode Island Professor Erik Loomis said in a tweet that science, statistics and technology are inherently racist “because they are developed by racists living in a racist society.” – Loomis also said that he has contempt for people who “just want the data.”
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Identity politics invades the climate change debate
How 2 Pro-Nazi Nobelists Attacked Einstein’s ‘Jewish Science’
woke woke woke
A Wonderful, A Wonderful, A Wonderful…
Now the Woke Wussies are attacking Knowledge itself.
If Physics doesn’t agree with the narrative, punish it until it conforms
“Decolonizing Physics” — every time I see one of these news items, it makes me even more paranoid that I’m having one of those wacko dreams right now that we all have right before we wake up and get out of bed, where everything seems really real, but when we are fully awake and remember what we just dreamed, we say, “that has got to be one of the dumbest, most illogical dreams yet!“
This reminds me of one of those word salad generators that sneak articles by editors of journals to embarrass their peer review process!
More ChatGPT?
I remember a few years ago someone here made one that readers could go to and generate their own. He was asking for contributions of phrases to add to the program. (Mocking the incidents you’re talking about.)
I contributed “The systematizing of error”.
CliSy has that in spades. These guys are taking to a new level!
Newspeak has jumped out of our fiction and into our daily lives. Orwell must be laughing from the hereafter. He saw this as a career path. Taxpayer funded Bureaucrats getting paid good money to invent new concepts to authorize new regulations in order to restrict movement and control the masses complete with a propaganda network to ingrain and erase these words and concepts as the Central Authority deems necessary.
In my weirdest dreams I often find myself falling from a great height. Just before I strike the ground I decide to fly instead.
In their world, this approach really works. Perhaps we should encourage them to try.
And the most important take away is that you, Russell, are a racist for not embracing such dreams and when they find you out, and they have their ways, there will be consequences’. It might be advisable not to relate the nature of your dreams to anyone outside your close circle of friends and even then do so with caution.
‘Racist’
You keep using that word. I don’t think it means what you think it means.
+1000 for the Princess Bride Reference!
it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.
On reading this, Daleks came to mind – I do not know why:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhEUBgu9j5Y
I guess this video makes as much sense as the decolonialising physics.
If only we could De-Colon-ize wokeism
Once the jaw bone goes beyond the sphincter, it is an almost incurable condition.
We have committed this interchange to paper so that we can use it away from WUWT. Thanks!
Perhaps?
Exterminate. Exterminate! exTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE!!!
I was tempted to ask “are they completely mad?” but now I have the nswer!
Loomis also said that he has contempt for people who “just want the data.”
Good, it is mutual. I have contempt for people that say such profoundly stupid things.
In a world where this person is a Director of Graduate Studies, can I get off the ride now?
No, you stay on. People, and I use the term very loosely, like Loomis shouldn’t be allowed on the ride in the first place.
Yes, they obviously aren’t up to safe use standards, like selling tickets at the fair to pilot a real jet fighter
Why would anyone consider doing Graduate work at RIU whose Director of Graduate Studies is such an idiot?
I are a Gradidgit
I are a literate engineer.
These clowns are not intellectually tall enough to have been allowed on the ride to begin with.
The problem with a “Director of Graduate Studies” is they are really the most useless professor you can find. Their sole job is to push paper around. The departments select the graduates, teach the courses, and manage the research. Occasionally, we have to endure badly worded liberal arts wokeness from the “Director”, but then we just go on and do what we need to do. Physics, chemistry, math, and engineering just try not to say “idiot” out loud and go back to analyzing data.
Loomis grew up in the same ‘systemic racist’ community as everyone else.
Loomis is white; as such he can not help being racist.
Every thing that Loomis does, says, writes, comes from a racist bent and cannot be trusted;
‘This is why I have so much contempt for those, including myself, who “just want the truth.” The truth is racist!’
(If unwilling to accept the above, Mr Loomis must admit to hypocrisy as well.)
Sounds like he has a lot in common with Michael Mann!
University of Rhode Island and Director of Graduate Studies Erik Loomis wrote: “Science, statistics, and technology are all inherently racist because they are developed by racists who live in a racist society, whether they identify as racists or not.”
Erik Loomis – I have news for you: based on your logic, every single thing and every single idea on this planet is racist. Do I hear you say that natural things, like trees for example, are not racist? Oh dear, you have missed the quote “A poem lovely as a tree”. Poems by your definition are racist, and therefore trees by association are also racist. I suggest you hand back everything you have, including your clothes, and purge your mind of all thoughts that relate in any way to the thoughts of others. Basically, everything. In particular, that means that you can no longer use terms such as energy, matter, force, light, space and time. Oh, and you also can’t use the word ‘racist’ – that word was itself coined by a racist, Richard Henry Pratt, in 1902. Yes, he was a real racist: ““A great general has said that the only good Indian is a dead one,” Pratt said. “In a sense, I agree with the sentiment, but only in this: that all the Indian there is in the race should be dead. Kill the Indian in him, and save the man.”“. Basically, all you have left is silence. Except that silence is racism. So now you can’t speak, and you can’t be silent. That may sound difficult, but it really isn’t at all difficult because that concept uses logic, which you rate as racist and therefore not allowable. No need to thank me, it has been a pleasure helping you.
I was going to say that it sounds like, if we eliminate everything he calls “racist”, he’s advocating a return to the stone age. But they had fire back then.
What came before the stone age?
Racists.
It’s the answer to everything apparently.
It is a hard subject, apparently way to hard for you folks. I’d suggest you guys apply for something at your level. There is a shortage of dog catchers.
I would suggest shark washing.
I was thinking Monkey Nard Sniffer but they’re undereducated for that position
Rather like science under Stalin, with Lysenko, or science under Hitler, with “Jewish physics” being condemned.
Intersectionality is a silly game of injustice collection, devised to resurrect as a zombie Marxism, which is quite dead, to anyone who cares about evidence. Of course, the Social Justice Warriors involved hold evidence in contempt, treating it as a Dead White European Male standard. Feelings are all that really matter!
A modern day rendition of the pacific cargo cults and the focus on witches and superstition of times past. These people have as much understanding of the practice of physics as the pacific islanders had of the mechanisms that brought planes to land on their island, bringing goods and food beyond their technological reach. They mistake physics as something one “knows,” some kind of factual knowledge that can be read in a book or learned from a story. And conjured up by donning suitable hats and waving flags replicating the ones the airmen used for guiding aircraft to island landings during the war. The are unaware that physics is something one does, not somethings one knows. They are unaware of the notion Feynman captured when he said that “Science doesn’t teach anything, experience teaches.”
The best outcome is also most likely, that this rabble will have fun, party on, enjoy the friendship of like minds, and run through a good bit of money producing nothing but momentary feelings of their supporters and themselves. Some of us have seen similar mobs in the past. Timothy Leary’s turn on, tune in, drop out, the rise of remote communes, and the surety that the age of Aquarius is upon us and there will be no more war, nothing but love and peace for all forever. At best it will just fade away. At worst it will descend into criminality, dangerous drugs, and senseless violence as in the past. At the far end of worst it could lead to a cultural revolution reminiscent of Mao or Pol Pot, once these people turn to forcing their views on others, especially if anyone actually gives them that power.
In the meantime, I have work to do and don’t see any use in letting these idiots intrude in my thoughts any further.
Loomis also said that he has contempt for people who “just want the data.”
That’s OK, that antisocial sneer and ten bucks might get him a doughnut. The rest of the human race, who’ve actually contributed to improvements in human welfare through their knowledge of the behaviors of solids, liquids and gases in the various states of weather that humans live in, will largely reserve the contempt he deserves for private discussions, and continue their beneficial acts and beliefs.
He is a professor of history. I wonder if that is a concentration in Marxist history, as most historians I know actually prefer to work from data even if they then twist it into some strange perversion of it.
This article exceeded all my expectations…
For stupidity.
Statistics is a sub-set of mathematics. So the ancients were all racist. Before it was even a term. 😉
The Ancients were all Old White Men. People of color didn’t come into being until after Noah
I think if you look the Egyptians were not white
They were certainly highly educated with very advanced medicines
The white people only really appeared as an advance group in the middle ages
They we’re also after Noah
There weren’t and Greeks or Romans? I knew stories about them were pure fantasy!
Was not the fratricide Cain marked before Shem?
Wait…do you mean that the great flood didn’t kill all that wasn’t on the ark?
I’m willing to bet that the not so good perfessor would also declare that it impossible of a person of color to be a racist.
I welcome his concomitant rejection of all technology, including the internet, the power grid, his home, car, and office, all medicines and health care, and everything else since man learned how to make fire and form spearheads. He humor will not be missed.
Every living thing must then be racist if evolution is one species dominating the others be they a plant, an animal or even a bacteria or a virus. Is it racist to spray a herbicide to kill the weeds in a crop needed to feed the human race?
Speciest.
Somebody has a rather skewed view if the world if xe thinks these fields aren’t studied in Japan, China, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, India, Pakistan, New Guinea, …
Those are the only enlightened places. All others will become
indarkenedindoctrinatedIt wasn’t exhaustive – the ellipsis indicates an incomplete list.
There are very few places where these fields are not studied or practiced.
In their own little world where Reason does not exist.
daft, daft daft.
I can’t work out whether this was written by ChatGPT, the Postmodernism Generator or SCIGen 🙂
I’d reckon that “Yes it was,m now prove me wrong would be a good start”
Is that attitude just an extension of the “all engineers are (Troglodytes|Neanderthals) meme?
I am a racist. And proud of it. I have every right to be. And, as long as I don’t indulge in racist behaviour the law must protect me.
My best friends are racists too and many of them are of black, of white, of off-white, or scaly green. Will you join me. Don’t think I want the Loomis creature in our gang though
Aren’t we all forgetting that all the debating and discussing seriously this inane proposition (that physics is “racist” – and should be “de-colonised”) takes place in only our Western civilisation?? The majority of human beings is in fact Chinese, Indian, African or Russian.
I doubt that any such idiotic academic papers will appear in universities there – but if they do they will be ridiculed mercilessly, I am sure.
They will succeed. The good news is that it will make it much easier to shut down the universities, demolish their buildings, confiscate their endowments, plow the land under, and sow it with salt. The faculty who perpetrate this crime against reason should be made to row galleys across the oceans. The administrators should be sold into slavery.
This incredible word salad is clearly just thrown out there to justify the oodles of money the Canadian government gave these people to warm their chairs for three years. There is nothing concrete in their work except the part where they say their goal is to get more money for blacks and indigenous people for academic chairs.
It appears that they may have been criticising the education system, and then blaming it on one particular field of study.
And possibly whingeing about some government or another for being involved in hosting an astronomical observatory.
Modern DNA science shows that 99.99% of the human genome is identical in everyone. Therefore, only .01% of it can be racist. People who see racism everywhere need a better hobby.
we share 95% with chimps 🙂
Its actually upwards of 99%
https://www.science.org/content/article/bonobos-join-chimps-closest-human-relatives
And Horses and Donkeys are only 98% genetically similar but still produce a Mule.
The Humanzee might be possible.😁
The Humanzee is the Director of Graduate Studies at the University of Rhode Island. He was pounding on his typewriter for an infinite time to produce his racist screed.
99% (or 95%) of what number?
Whatever number comprises the entire genome of both species
Don’t we share something like 80% with carrots?
Erik Loomis can’t be right: he is a white man.
Must be the revenge of the historians who failed physics class.
7 Habits of Successfull People is one of the great business books anyone can read. Instead of teaching unsuccessfull people that they are victims, these “do gooders” should be teaching those people the skills that make people successfull.
But that would require hard work and determination. Its far easier to point your finger and scream “racist!”.
The culture of victimization being foisted on people by progressives is designed to keep them on the plantation and dependent. Nobody can succeed self identifying as a victim.
“There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.”
Looks like progress is to make even a requirement for a trifling investment of fact to be a hate crime.
Only fanatic racists attribute their wokeness to racism. “I’m not a racist for calling you a racist. You are.”
These people are completely nuts.
Is this The Onion or an attempt to turn Science into a billion dollar tax-payer funded religious/propaganda organisation. ?
Most of the population still don’t understand how the knowledge to build an iPhone was attained. They just sacrifice some of their hard earned to those called scientists, and Voila! Those who get called scientist say that academic rigor is not scientific, who am I to say different. Wait second, that is stupid, or am I racist?
Someone gaslight me, please!
Great response on Twitter:
Data is data.
Datum is datum
I should have added the /sarc tag shouldn’t me?
Data is plural, singular Data is a Star Trek character, are droids racist too?
Well, Data had the lightest skin color of all the crew.
Sounds more like “physic”
https://www.thefreedictionary.com/physic
Or, I guess, you can’t use “:” in a physics publication?
Unless you seek reaching your quote quantum quota
Read John McWhorter ‘Woke Racism’, for reflections on the phenomenon, quite some similar examples, and some very interesting insights into it. Thoughtful, funny, indignant and very penetrating.
The paper itself is worth reading carefully, all six pages of it. Its a classic of its kind, McWhorter’s analysis of the phenomenon is fully applicable to it.
That’s the most convincing NON argument I’ve seen in a long time.
Sadly it suffers from the “I have my head up my arse fallacy”.
Science, logic and data are all racist therefore should all be dismantled and ignored.
Oh hang on, I just tried to draw a logical conclusion, I’m RACIST.
The worm maybe turning. Skeptical American employers, to remain globally competitive, will likely soon administer their own hiring tests. They already suspect that prestigious university degrees are hollow and certify very little.
Are Universities Doomed? | ZeroHedge
The problem is that any tests that doesn’t produce what the do gooders consider the “correct” result, will immediately be declared to be racist and will be outlawed.
Companies used to have such tests, but too many minorities failed the tests, so they were eliminated. (The tests, not the minorities)
Light is inherently elitist. Fiat Lux, “Light is good” and all that religious claptrap. What about the rest of the electromagnetic spectrum? Don’t those frequencies have rights too?
Grants, grants, grants. Is there no end to the way academia rips off society?
Next: the decolonisation of Theology. The great god Imhotep will finally get their revenge! Rejoice!
hmmm…. next we’ll have to decolonize mathematics /sarc
“Badges? We don’ need no stinkin’ badges!”
When the con artist is confronted with his con, the typical reaction is to tell the mark not to believe his or her lyin’ eyes and just believe. In this case the con man exclaims the data are racist.
Racism is clearly seen in the Universal Law of Dust, whereas:
Dark dust only falls on light objects, and light dust only falls on dark objects.
If everything they see is “racist”, I suggest they pull their heads out of their respective sphincters. Quackademia nuts.
I’m appropriating that term, “Quackademia nuts”. I now have a term to describe academic folks who are in need of an “optorectomy” procedure. Thanks.
Can we decolonize the decolonizers?
Canada used to make some sort of sense. Must be something toxic in the water now.
I don’t believe Rhode Island is in Canada. Though you can have it if you want it.
This “professor” needs to define ‘racism.’ Especially what might make data “racist.”
In my mind a ‘racist’ is one who judges other people by identifying their race and applying a stereotype. This is normal behavior for people of the human race. The human race (there’s really only one) is tribal by genetic inheritance. We like people who are in our tribe and distrust outsiders. That’s inborn.
To even use the term “White Men” is racist on its face. (Sexist, too.)
“Science, statistics, and technology are all inherently racist because they are developed by racists who live in a racist society, whether they identify as racists or not.”
Sexist, too. “Science, statistics and technology are all inherently sexist having been developed by sexists who lived in a sexist society.” <– just as stupid
The problem is that there are real differences between the sexes. There are real differences among the so-called races due to differences in genetic heritage.
Certain races and sexes dominate in physical skill. Is it racist to note this data?
Certain races and sexes dominate in academic skill. Is it sexist to note this data?
Certain races and sexes dominate in leadership skill. Is it okay to note this data?
Racism is to pre-judge a given person by their race. Prejudice.
Non-racism is to judge everyone by the same standard and let the chips fall where they may. Equal opportunity without expecting equal results because groups do have different skills due to different genetic heritage. Judge but don’t pre-judge.
“Race” and “racism” are just one of the artificial divisions between Humans.
Loomis is a violence-promoting radical…
“I See Nothing Wrong With It”: Rhode Island Professor Defends Murder Of Right-Wing Protester In Portland – JONATHAN TURLEY
“Most human beings were disgusted by the murder of Aaron “Jay” Danielson, the member of the right-wing group Patriot Prayer, in Portland. University of Rhode Island Professor Erik Loomis is not among them. Loomis defended the killing by Michael Reinoehl, an Antifa member who appears to have stalked Danielson before gunning him down. Loomis insisted that any problem in gunning down right-wing counterprotesters was tactical not moral.
I testified in the Senate about the erosion of free speech and rise of violence on our campuses and in our streets. Antifa and related groups have succeeded in advancing anti-free-speech agendas as students and faculty justify attacks on those with opposing views. Loomis has long espoused extremist views and violent language, including calling for NRA executive Wayne LaPierre’s “head on a stick.”
In his latest post, Loomis has been criticized for appearing to justify the murdering of those who hold opposing views. He adopts the rhetoric used by Antifa extremists in labeling those on the other side of protests as “fascists” and then justifies any means to resist them, including apparently murder. While Loomis does not call it murder, he dismisses the killing because it involved someone he classified as a “fascist.”
Labor historians should not be allowed to comment on anything STEM related! The man makes a living indoctrinating youngsters into the union movement collectivist mindset. He is an Associate Professor of History and Director of Graduate Studies. His credibility to speak on this issue is null.
Besides, if he would look around he would find that half the STEM faculty are white males, 40% of the rest are east or south Asian males, about 6% are white females and the last 4% are females of the rest of the races. There are a few notable black males in the mix as well.
200 years ago there were no books in any of the Bantu languages of Africa.
There we no schools or universities in the areas populated by Bantu tribes. There was no philosophy, no engineering and architecture, no medicine and education, no roads and railways, no historical and legal documents, nothing resembling those in the Middle East, Far East and southern Europe some of which dated back millennia earlier.
This was at the same time that Michael Faraday was making an incredible scientific breakthrough in England. Of course they now want Maths and Science and Physics decolonized and replaced by indigenous knowledge. There are oral traditions handed down in folk tales but these are not reliable records of knowledge. There were the superstitious practices of witch doctors which bore little resemblance to the development of medicine going back millennia and has little to contribute to the study of medicine.
Two thousand years ago the Romans were busy with astonishing construction projects – some which still stand today. Even earlier the Greeks understood the principles of constructing stable homes. We can look further afield in the Middle and Far East and find nothing that can compare in Africa, south of the Sahara. All this so called decolonizing is a dumbing down of Africa and reflects the ignorance of the proponents of these ideas.
It’s official! The lunatics ARE running the asylum!
(Are science graduate students forced to interact with him, or can they ignore him without repercussions?)
Of course brain dead idiots who lack the most basic critical thinking skills would reject empirical data. It proves their sick world views have no basis in reality.
Is it any wonder why western civilization is so quickly falling apart??
The more woke lunacy like this I come across the more I am thinking that the World Wide Web, designed by scientists for them t exchange data and ideas has degenerated into the World Wide Wuhan Wet Market of Idiocy producing a pandemic of Imbecilicosis in academia and the eco-left political tribe.
It is pretty obvious whose brains have been twisted by the mere notion of racism. This ‘physics is racist’ lunacy is the sort of bile spewing out of Putin’s mouth about Ukrainian nazis. I think we know who the real neo nazis are.
Clearly racism is being redefined as any tendency to seek truth and insist on evidence. Let those who follow this path reap the rewards which will inevitably be cold, hunger, privation and early death. Nature doesn’t play favorites or tolerate stupidity no matter how virtuous you are in your own imagination.
Racism, much like hate speech, is anything a socialist disagrees with, but can’t refute.
These people should devote their lives to feeding themselves from the grubs and worms they can find under rotting logs. Their minds don’t seem to be up to anything more complex.
Good luck crossing bridges which have been built according to decolonised physics.
People who see racism everywhere are probably racists BECAUSE of being obsessed with it.
Yeah, but we all came out of Africa 300,000 years ago, we are all black on the inside. Just our skin faded from living in a shitty climate for so long. 🙂
Gravity must be racist. After all, it holds down black people and everything they do.
Almost all writing is racist. a small amount of black surrounded by a white page. Where is the equity in that.
It is really hard to fathom that someone could be so stupid. The effect of recreational drugs, maybe? Wherever he got his degrees from should revoke them.
Quote from the article:
“Let’s elaborate this further for the example of the Planck–Einstein relation E = h · υ describing the energy E of a light quantum, a single wave-particle of light emitted or absorbed; υ is the frequency which determines the color of light, h is the Planck number named after the German physicist Max Planck who lived around 1900 in Berlin. This formula has been found valid and enabled the development of solar panels (absorption) and lasers (emission). Every STEM student is expected to know this relation. In our project, we will not question E = h · υ. But we ask: What person was Max Planck? What circumstances enabled him (and others) to discover this relation? How was his work related to colonialism, by whom was he funded? What happened in this time around the world? Why were essentially only white men doing physics research? What knowledge about light was disrupted by colonialism? “
In relation to the last question, seriously: why do the authors believe knowledge about light was disrupted by colonialism? Was Planck constant discovered by Indigenous and Black People much earlier, was there an Indigenous Physical Society, universities, professors. Did they have a six-semester course of lectures on theoretical physics. Was quantum physics, the greatest achievement of Planck’s career, already known and disrupted?
Strange that they should use the physics, electronics, developments by ‘white’ westerners, etc., as a stage upon which to discuss victimhood. The authors should have only used computers and other artifacts that were developed in the civilizations of Africa. Oh,… guess not. What’s so crazy is that people actually waste time reading this stuff.
The following are some of the phrases and sentences that caught my eye in Salzmann et al. article:
Rather, our project initiatives are motivated by the marginalization of women, Black people, and Indigenous peoples [5], particularly in physics, as it is documented by the statistics of the American Institute of Physics [6].4
to increase the presence of Indigenous and Black students, faculty and staff on all levels.
purposefully training university students from marginalized and racialized groups in physics (e.g., by offering well funded positions to Indigenous and Black graduate students), initiating collaborations with Black (e.g., Montreal’s Haitian community) and Indigenous communities in scientific projects, and seeking conversations with Indigenous Knowledge Keepers about their cultural (philosophical as
well as practical-empirical) knowledges to include them in the curriculum.
decentering Eurocentric Western science through decolonizing curriculum in ways that elevate Indigenous scientific and intellectual contributions and develop new narratives.
Higher education systems in Canada have a history of perpetuating Eurocentric/Western canons of thought as the ‘normative discourse’ across all academic fields of study and continue to play a key role in promoting the colonization of Indigenous peoples.
Canada’s Residential schools — and by extension university systems — set the groundwork to perpetuate on-going Eurocentric educational policies and practices designed to diminish and
undermine Indigenous epistemologies, languages, histories and cultures while imposing assimilative frameworks and practices on Indigenous students [8-11].
The impacts of these institutional racist policies and practices has led many Indigenous students to drop out of school [12].
_____________________________________________________________________
This strikes me as a philosophy endorsing the idea that Eurocentric is bad, while indigenous-centric, black-centric and other-centric are good, which looks a lot like colonization of one centricism by another centricism. How is this not doing the very thing you say you are not doing?
Hypocrisy dressed up as scholarship is sophistry.
Its not that big a stretch to associate physics and other branches of knowledge with technically advanced societies which, as it happens, have done a bit of colonizing over the centuries and millenia. IT goes with the reality of survival in a dangerous and competetive world. The Egyptians, Persians, Hittites, Greeks, Romans and Arabs fitted that bill long before the western europeans did.
The real issue though is that the expanded knowledge base in question, of which physics is just a part, was brought forth and diseminated by the oral and written word. By comparison the sort of intellectual bulimia that shouts ‘physics is colonial’ is a contemprary phenomenon that comes forth via a different route of ideas transmission typically associated with a dose of the Trotsky’s, i.e. the sphincter of self importance and attention seking.