Article ID: CBB760577508

John Augustus Abayomi Cole and the Search for an African Science, 1885–1898 (2022)

unapi

How did “science,” once a term used to refer to universal knowledge, come to be applied to the epistemic practices of particular civilizational and racial groups? This essay approaches this question by examining the life and writings of John Augustus Abayomi Cole, a Sierra Leonean medical practitioner and public intellectual who in the late nineteenth century used the term “science” to describe African knowledge systems. Cole’s writing on science in Africa was explicitly anti-imperial and grounded in a critique of the “materialism” of European society. While reminding Africa’s European conquerors of the folly of their civilizing mission, Cole at the same time urged the “Europized” elite of Sierra Leone’s capital of Freetown to adapt themselves to African spiritual and scientific life. The essay argues that marginal intellectuals like Cole, whose thought was shaped by several interlocking local and intercontinental forces, were instrumental in generating the concept of civilization-specific science.

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https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB760577508/

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Authors & Contributors
Orchiston, Wayne
Cartwright, Brad J.
Robby Zidny
Diaz, Roberto Jesus
S. N. Venugopalan Nair
Kochhar, Rijul
Concepts
Cross-cultural interaction; cultural influence
Traditional knowledge
Africa, civilization and culture
Epistemology
Indigenous peoples; indigeneity
Science
Time Periods
19th century
Early modern
Renaissance
18th century
Modern
20th century, late
Places
Africa
India
Citizen Band Potawatomi Indian Tribe of Oklahoma
Europe
Allahabad (India)
Atlantic world
Institutions
British Association for the Advancement of Science
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