"In support of the West’s physical claim to the whole world, the Western history of science sought to establish an intellectual claim to all knowledge in the world, especially all scientific knowledge. To situate this claim in its proper perspective, we need to probe a little deeper to understand a bit of the unstated logic behind colonialism. According to the religious beliefs of the colonialists, such an intellectual claim of discovery, in turn, established the colonialist’s moral claim to the whole world. It was these “moral” claims that distinguished colonialism from a simple project of robbing the world by physical force."