Indigenous science
I stumbled on something at the Healing Whiteness blog: indigenous science. For example:
Indigenous science is holistic, drawing on all the senses, including the spiritual and psychic.
What I find interesting about this is the attempt to appropriate the word “science” for something that is explicitly not scientific. In fact, the blog has a list of the ways that indigenous science differs from real science. It reminds me of Creation Science, which is religion posing as science, and Scientology, which is gibberish posing as science. If someone wants to reject science, fine, I don’t agree but I can respect the position. But rejecting science in principle while hanging on to the labels is just pathetic.
Speaking of healing whiteness, I think I’ll go work on my tan.
January 13th, 2009 at 12:14 pm
Depending on the definition, indigenous science can be many things. In my definition, Indigenous science recognizes the sort of value-added benefits of having science and recognizing that there may be some greater acting at the same time. The Healing Whiteness blog does have some deficiencies, but at least try and bridge the gap that western science has put up intentionally, I believe. Look up “Ten Lies about Indigenous Science” and Kay Porterfield and see what I mean. Even then, it becomes an emotionally charged topic because the topic of racism come up over and over again. Indigenous and western science are two different things, and you really can’t measure one with the other. Both stand equally, but to diminish one or the other really minimizes both schools of thought. It’s sort of like comparing physics with psychology, there really isn’t much middle ground.
January 13th, 2009 at 12:57 pm
Thanks for the tip on Kay Porterfield.
Let me make it clear that I was making fun of the juxtaposition of “science” with “spiritual” and “psychic”, and I think it’s just as silly when Europeans do it.
Porterfield doesn’t talk about the spiritual or psychic. Instead, she talks about people mastering their environment by systematic trial and error. That’s science, no matter who does it.