Universalism, multiculturalism, and science education

The universalists and the multiculturalists are divided over the question of the nature of science. The universalists maintain that science (understood both as an activity and as the endresult of this activity; i.e., scientific knowledge) has a universal essence andthat western modern science (WMS) is the paradigm example of such science, which provides epistemologically a far more superior form of knowledge than any other traditional sciences. The multiculturalists are critical of these views because they believe that such views are wrong not only philosophically, but also politically andmorally, as they serve a politics of exclusion andsuppress the fact that there are alternative forms of science, which suit the purposes of a “goodlife ” better than WMS. To justify their claim that there are as many different kinds of science as there are cultures, the multiculturalists resort to several strategies. Because of lack of space, I will discuss only two. The first strategy is to appeal to the disunity-of-science thesis to undermine the view that all sciences, if they are to count as science, must have a universal common core. The secondstrategy is to broaden the notion of science to make room for TEK andIK. While Snively andCorsiglia make use of the secondstrategy, Stanley and