Jan 19, 2022 12:46 AM
https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2022/01/1...d-science/
EXCERPTS (Jerry Coyne): I’m not going to criticize Nature too strongly for posting the article below, because most of it, involving how to cooperate with indigenous people when one does field work in their area, describes good practices. [...] the practices of Canadian and American grant-givers is, by and large, sensible, though the sensitivity to locals is relatively new compared to pretty bad stuff done when I was a child. [...] I think the movement to involve indigenous people is, by and large, admirable.
But I am going to discuss the statement of Māori researcher Daniel Hikuroa, because it exemplifies some of the problems with trying to see Māori “ways of knowing” as coequal to science (a program that is in fact occurring in New Zealand secondary schools and colleges), and with trying to use superstition as a basis for “science.”..
[...] I will fault Nature for one thing, though. Actually, two things. The first is simple:—this sentence (emphasis is mine): "There’s no road map out of science’s painful past. Nature asked three researchers who belong to Indigenous communities in the Americas and New Zealand, plus two funders who work closely with Alaskan Natives, how far we’ve come toward decolonizing science — and how researchers can work more respectfully with Indigenous groups."
The term “decolonizing science” is not only undefined, but pejorative: it implies that science itself is a colonialist enterprise (with the further implication that white men were the colonizers). In fact, science is just a toolkit for finding out true things about the cosmos; colonization is not part of that toolkit. [...] science is no more “colonizing” than are architecture, clothing, or art.
It’s time to ditch this term, which is about as ambiguous as “structural racism.” If people want to argue that science is inherently racist or that scientists in general try to keep out minorities, then say that, but you’ll be saying something that is no longer true.
Second, the article lacks criticality...
So on to Hikuroa’s statement about why we need to incorporate Mātauranga Māori, or Māori “ways of knowing” into science. As always, I note at the outset that traditional knowledge, acquired from trial and error or reasoning, may have a place in modern science. But that’s not all that Mātauranga Māori is; it includes creationism, oral tradition (such as the claim that the Polynesians colonized Antarctica), morality, philosophy, and so on. When you want to weave such indigenous knowledge into modern science, and are trying to make a case for this, it behooves you to give specific examples. Here’s one from Hikuroa: [...see blog...]
... I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen this example used to defend Māori ways of knowing, probably because it’s only one of a handful of such examples. Leaving aside my doubt that water serpents really were seen as entirely mythological, why does this one example crop up over and over again? I suspect because there aren’t very many. And that paucity deserves examination when arguing that Mātauranga Māori should be taught as coequal to science. If this is the nature of indigenous “science”, it’s worth hearing about, but is far from all the knowledge we’ve acquired about the cosmos that came from pure curiosity.
As we scientists press harder on Māori and their supporters to justify their “coequality” claims for teaching, the more often they argue that the myths in their “ways of knowing” were just that—myths that everybody knew weren’t true, but were somehow practically useful. I don’t believe that. It’s similar to what religionists did when science began showing that their truth claims were wrong: they sweated and wriggled and finally said that most of Scripture is metaphor and was understood as such.
[...] I believe I’ve said this before (one of my few bon mots): “When a scientific claim is falsified, it’s thrown into the garbage claim. When a religious claim is falsified, it’s turned into metaphor.”
This is why, I think, Hikuroa says that “Taniwha” (water serpents) do not exist as physical entities. Is that really the common belief, and was it the case 300 years ago? Or did the myths become mythical only when science came along?
[...] I tend to be wary of claims that indigenous people have taught us how to be stewards of the land, because they often practiced a slash-and-burn type of cultivation, as did the Māori, who also didn’t do a particularly good job of conserving a good source of meat ... We are all guilty of overusing resources, but here’s an example from New Zealand... [see blog]
So if Mātauranga Māori really is a “variation on the scientific method,” and should be taught as thoroughly as is modern science in the science classroom, let us have a knowledge of the cosmos as extensive as that produced by modern science. And let us have predictions that are not simply “the albatross will return next year to breed”.
[...] Calls for coequality of indigenous knowledge and modern science often seem to be surrogates not for scientific equality, but for moral and political equality. But the latter issues are already settled ... But often the claims represent attempts to secure political power, and there we must be more wary. ... It’s as if these falsehoods must be pushed to justify a desire for political power... (MORE - missing details)
EXCERPTS (Jerry Coyne): I’m not going to criticize Nature too strongly for posting the article below, because most of it, involving how to cooperate with indigenous people when one does field work in their area, describes good practices. [...] the practices of Canadian and American grant-givers is, by and large, sensible, though the sensitivity to locals is relatively new compared to pretty bad stuff done when I was a child. [...] I think the movement to involve indigenous people is, by and large, admirable.
But I am going to discuss the statement of Māori researcher Daniel Hikuroa, because it exemplifies some of the problems with trying to see Māori “ways of knowing” as coequal to science (a program that is in fact occurring in New Zealand secondary schools and colleges), and with trying to use superstition as a basis for “science.”..
[...] I will fault Nature for one thing, though. Actually, two things. The first is simple:—this sentence (emphasis is mine): "There’s no road map out of science’s painful past. Nature asked three researchers who belong to Indigenous communities in the Americas and New Zealand, plus two funders who work closely with Alaskan Natives, how far we’ve come toward decolonizing science — and how researchers can work more respectfully with Indigenous groups."
The term “decolonizing science” is not only undefined, but pejorative: it implies that science itself is a colonialist enterprise (with the further implication that white men were the colonizers). In fact, science is just a toolkit for finding out true things about the cosmos; colonization is not part of that toolkit. [...] science is no more “colonizing” than are architecture, clothing, or art.
It’s time to ditch this term, which is about as ambiguous as “structural racism.” If people want to argue that science is inherently racist or that scientists in general try to keep out minorities, then say that, but you’ll be saying something that is no longer true.
Second, the article lacks criticality...
So on to Hikuroa’s statement about why we need to incorporate Mātauranga Māori, or Māori “ways of knowing” into science. As always, I note at the outset that traditional knowledge, acquired from trial and error or reasoning, may have a place in modern science. But that’s not all that Mātauranga Māori is; it includes creationism, oral tradition (such as the claim that the Polynesians colonized Antarctica), morality, philosophy, and so on. When you want to weave such indigenous knowledge into modern science, and are trying to make a case for this, it behooves you to give specific examples. Here’s one from Hikuroa: [...see blog...]
... I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen this example used to defend Māori ways of knowing, probably because it’s only one of a handful of such examples. Leaving aside my doubt that water serpents really were seen as entirely mythological, why does this one example crop up over and over again? I suspect because there aren’t very many. And that paucity deserves examination when arguing that Mātauranga Māori should be taught as coequal to science. If this is the nature of indigenous “science”, it’s worth hearing about, but is far from all the knowledge we’ve acquired about the cosmos that came from pure curiosity.
As we scientists press harder on Māori and their supporters to justify their “coequality” claims for teaching, the more often they argue that the myths in their “ways of knowing” were just that—myths that everybody knew weren’t true, but were somehow practically useful. I don’t believe that. It’s similar to what religionists did when science began showing that their truth claims were wrong: they sweated and wriggled and finally said that most of Scripture is metaphor and was understood as such.
[...] I believe I’ve said this before (one of my few bon mots): “When a scientific claim is falsified, it’s thrown into the garbage claim. When a religious claim is falsified, it’s turned into metaphor.”
This is why, I think, Hikuroa says that “Taniwha” (water serpents) do not exist as physical entities. Is that really the common belief, and was it the case 300 years ago? Or did the myths become mythical only when science came along?
[...] I tend to be wary of claims that indigenous people have taught us how to be stewards of the land, because they often practiced a slash-and-burn type of cultivation, as did the Māori, who also didn’t do a particularly good job of conserving a good source of meat ... We are all guilty of overusing resources, but here’s an example from New Zealand... [see blog]
So if Mātauranga Māori really is a “variation on the scientific method,” and should be taught as thoroughly as is modern science in the science classroom, let us have a knowledge of the cosmos as extensive as that produced by modern science. And let us have predictions that are not simply “the albatross will return next year to breed”.
[...] Calls for coequality of indigenous knowledge and modern science often seem to be surrogates not for scientific equality, but for moral and political equality. But the latter issues are already settled ... But often the claims represent attempts to secure political power, and there we must be more wary. ... It’s as if these falsehoods must be pushed to justify a desire for political power... (MORE - missing details)