i think he is omitting a few words: he might want to say that science created the means for European powers to build empires by dominating people in far off places; these empires ran on slavery, racism & genocide in far off places (the colonies); much later in the twentieth century the violence & genocide came back to continental Europe in the form of two world wars (when the same weapons and ideologies that were developed to kill 'colored' people were turned on the Europeans). in the aftermath some people try to make sense out of this mayhem and they ask the question of 'what's the point of this project ? Are these ideas of enlightenment at fault of getting into such a mess? (or might it have been something else like how we applied them) ? and what can we do about it ?' . Is that correct ?