Indigenous science

We talked in class about the question, "is there indigenous science?" The question bothers me, but not for the reasons that it would bother most scientists. I think many scientists genuinely view other systems of knowledge as inferior, and therefore do not want to call them science, because science is to be reserved for the "superior" approach to knowledge. I don't buy into that view. Science is, in fact, a fairly young system of knowledge compared to many of the world's systems of knowledge. I think it should enter into dialogue with those other systems of knowledge as a junior conversant.

No, instead, there’s something about the way the question "is there indigenous science?" comes across that bothers me. It's something about the assumptions that could be read into the question. People could interpret the question to be carrying the assumption that "science" is a good kind of knowledge to be, and that other labels for systems of knowledge are less valuable. I reject that assumption. I don't think that science can enter into an equal and mutually respectful dialogue with other systems of knowledge if everyone who is a party to that dialogue agrees that the word "science" is the best label for a system of knowledge to have. The way the question is framed seems to stack the deck in favor of "science" being the most valuable. That grates on me.

Then there's the pragmatic question of how would one get scientists to answer yes, indigenous people have science. One would have to define science in terms of its content: science equals knowledge about the natural world. In that case, a scientist would be hard put to answer no. In fact, in a case of the dog biting its own tail, scientific research shows that scientific research is just beginning to catch up to where indigenous knowledge is in many areas. Your average American college student knows very little about ecological relationships between plants and animals in the area he or she lives in. Highly trained biologists/ecologists are the only people whose ecological understanding even approaches that of indigenous hunter-gatherers.¹ Science hasn't yet figured out how to cure diabetes, just how to manage it. They've got a cure for it in the Amazon.² Australian geologists and hydrologists have not done a very smart job of managing Australia’s water resources, and have only just discovered that Aboriginal people managed a system of underground water storage and aqueducts for thousands of years.³ Research has showed us our own ignorance: there are gaps in our knowledge in places where there is no gap in indigenous knowledge. Michael emphasized in class that this is not limited to ecological knowledge, but I will save that for exploring later. (Though see entry from 2005 on how the understanding of time and relationships in science is affected by using English.⁴)

Science is often defined by its methods, however, rather than its content area. Empirical studies that allow one to compare competing explanations and select the one that best fits the data are the method, the method of strong inference.⁵ It's democratic in a way, because even if your ego and your emotions want one explanation to be true, you have to go with what nature shows you in the data. Physicist Richard Feynman said, "Science is a way of trying not to fool oneself." I think that's a good thing. On the other hand, it's a slow and indirect method in many ways. It's exactly the way you would expect people to go about figuring out an object if they didn't think the object was intelligent. I wonder if calling indigenous knowledge of the natural world "indigenous science" could also mask an important difference in methods of acquiring knowledge. The challenge, I think, is to get scientists to respect other methods of acquiring and managing knowledge. Even the phrase "acquiring knowledge" reveals the cultural assumptions that I bring to the table., as a white woman of European descent trained in universities based on the European system. Well, here I am, cultural assumptions and all!

¹ Medin, D.L. & Atran, S. (2004). The native mind: Biological categorization and reasoning in development and across cultures. Psychological Review, 111 (4), pp. 960-983
² Wright, A. & Smith, M. (2001). The Shaman’s Apprentice, documentary film by Miranda Productions.
³ "Aboriginal people built water tunnels" ABC Science News
⁴ Stone, V.E. (2005). How many ways of knowing are there? Indigenous Science Network Bulletin, 8 (4), p. 1.
⁵ Platt, J.R. (1964). Strong inference. Science, 146 (3642), pp. 347-353.