Pseudoscience Directory
It seems we humans have always been curious about how ‘things’ work, including our bodies and our surroundings. This curiosity, in and of itself, probably didn’t initiate any acts of colonization. But it can be argued that some of the studies meant to satisfy that underlying curiosity appeared to have provided a rationalization for colonization practices that were based on the differences in human physical characteristics. To be fair, some information, particularly from the impartial observations of the early writers, were adopted by the colonizers to fit into their plans of domination and conquest.
These Pseudoscience articles include a few of those early curious individuals who shared data that highlighted the differences in the human species. And there is a review of the work from some of the properly trained scientists who conducted research and published their findings that purported to prove physical and intellectual disparities based primarily on the color of a person’s skin. Their efforts became known as ‘Scientific Racism’ and was marked with numerous studies with accompanying reports that sought to credit specific physical, emotional and mental traits to distinct groups of people. While this pursuit of scientific evidence to prove differences between humans with different skin coloring has continued until the present, it is overwhelmingly considered a pseudoscientific endeavor and is widely discredited. And lastly, there is a short piece about Pliny, The Elder, a first century Roman scholar, and how portions of his 37 volume Natural History had a distinct effect on some of the colonizers and how they conducted conquest of Indigenous lands.
These articles of Pseudoscience may contain some cross referencing, but in general, each article is an independent statement about a period in history.
As I discover new information about Pseudoscience, additional articles will be included in the Colonization *Footnotes website and added to this Directory.