I won’t dwell at length on this, but offer it up as an example of the craziness infecting New Zealand. Here is a Linked In comment by Karl Wixon, a self-employed education reformer but also holds a job that seems to be funded by the government:
Kaitohu Matua Māori / Chief Advisor – Māori (p/t contract)Education New Zealand · ContractApr 2021 – Present · 1 yr 6 mos
The Chief Advisor Māori is the key cultural attaché for the Chief Executive and is responsible for providing specialist advice and counsel on all matters relating to ENZ’s responsiveness to Māori.
His job, then, is to do exactly what he’s doing below: showing that Mātauranga Māori (MM) or Māori “ways of knowing”, should be embedded in New Zealand education. That’s fine if the “ways of knowing”— which include some practical knowledge but also theology, morality, word of mouth, and legend—are taught as sociology and anthropology. But that’s not how it works in New Zealand, as MM is supposed to be taught as “coequal” to modern science. That will hold back science education for everyone, as well as giving young people a false view of science.
Here Wixon asserts that the early Māori already knew about discoveries in astronomy and cosmology that we think are modern, and that these indigenous discoveries were sorely neglected. But his claim is based entirely on a few spirals carved by Māori! As the person who sent me this noted:
“This sort of thing is bad for both mātauranga Māori and science, but in the current moral panic we’re unlikely to see any pushback.”
This is the writing of a delusional obsessive, but one who’s just doing his job. The craziness of his claim is evident in the way he forces ancient carvings of spirals (which of course are not unique to
That’s all the debunking this piece needs. But what’s nearly as bad are all the people who weigh in, agreeing with Wixon! Much of New Zealand (not the rational folks, of course) buy into this kid of stuff. There is only one comment that is even semi-critical, and that one simply says that modern science and indigenous knowledge need not be at odds. Here are a few more:
I don’t know how much of this comes from valorization of the indigenous people and how much from an anti-science attitude, but it hardly matters. What matters is that Kiwis should be aware of this stuff, and fight like hell to keep mythology from being represented not just as coequal to science, but superior to science.
If you hire people to find heresy, crime, racism, woo, or whatever, they are going to find it. After all, their paycheck depends on it.
Sorry for a second comment so quickly, but how is this any different from christians and muslims finding “scientific knowledge” predicted/foreshadowed in *their* holy books? Does Wixon accept those as well? If so, should they also be taught alongside MM and science? If not, why not?
It is no different. Except that MM is being given a huge share of science and education funding of an entire modern nation.
“In general we look for a new law by the following process. First we guess it. Then we compute the consequences of the guess to see what would be implied if this law that we guessed is right. Then we compare the result of the computation to nature, with experiment or experience, compare it directly with observation, to see if it works. If it disagrees with experiment it is wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science. It does not make any difference how beautiful your guess is. It does not make any difference how smart you are, who made the guess, or what his name is – if it disagrees with experiment it is wrong. That is all there is to it.”
-Richard Feynman
The Character of Physical Law (1965)
Chapter 7, “Seeking New Laws”, p.150 (Modern Library edition, 1994)
Also in a recorded lecture – consult YouTube for Feynman delivering the lecture live.
Beyond satire – poor NZ.
Yes. The man is doing his job. But he’s either an idiot for believing that nonsense or he’s dishonest for disseminating it. If the latter, how can he live with himself?
That someone should dispense such drivel as Wixon has done is sad. What is more disheartening is how many comments were along the lines of “Oh. Gosh. What insight! Thank you for enlightening me.”
People fall all over each other to be the most effusive in their praise of idiocy just to show how woke they are. It would make me weep if I was the weepin’ kind.
How does Uri Geller live with himself? comfortably.
WEIT is not only interesting, but also increasingly hilarious. This comedian had me at “NASA and the science community is cathing up with Maori knowledge”.
The nature of such assertions, similar to those recently published in Scientific American, are actually conspiratorial — in the original meaning. The situation was allegedly that some knowledge exists, and perhaps existed for centuries, but that experts or authorities have conspired to ignore, perhaps suppressed, that information.
Alright then, this can be resolved fairly easily. We need not get bogged down any further. If that is the honest appraisal, the people who possess that knowledge can now (and for quite a while) publish it to the internet, if not submit it to peer review, and show us the areas where NASA and scientists might want to investigate further to “catch up” with Maori ways of knowing. This bar is in fact very low (the knowledge allegedly exists, after all). Just show it, make a prediction what it means, and then wait and see how it turns out. If Karl Wixon wants to share his Maori insights, he could do that any time now, otherwise we’d call people like that “blowhards”, and conspiracy nuts.
Are there geographic boundaries to the validity or applicability of MM? Does MM ‘work’ outside of NZ? Does it need a Maori person for it to be effective outside of NZ? In other words, is it portable or is it localized to NZ? Or, as the Catholic Church does, are there Maori ‘relics’ that can effect MM anywhere? Is it negated by native American culture and practice (another way of knowing) in North America? Can they coexist? Is MM universal or is it a local phenomenon?
The Noble and Scholarly Savage.
The Nobel Savage.
(IMO, having been colonised or otherwise oppressed is no licence to self-righteously spout blatant crapola; mockery is an appropriate response.)
(I am reminded of “the blame of those ye better”.)
If NASA and the science community are only now catching up with the knowledge the Māori have had for thousand, if not thousands, of years, then those Māori have done stunningly and criminally little with that knowledge.
I prefer the way NASA and the science community are now dealing with this newly re-acquired knowledge.
And no, a picture of a spiral does not constitute a widely tested and peer reviewed law of physics. ‘Evidence’ of the “trust me, I just know” kind needs to be firmly rejected as having scientific meaning.
The JWST image is of the galaxy M74 as it looks today, and thus this image is nothing to do with the creation of the universe. It’s not a galaxy “being formed” and it’s not a universe being formed.
Thus, if the Maori spiral carving is (as claimed) “understood to represent the creation of the universe”, then any resemblence to the galaxy M74 is coincidental. So Wixon’s claims are not even self-consistent.
If we are being completely accurate, the JWST image is of M74 as it looked 30 million years ago. Yes, in the context of a Universe that is 13 billion years old, that is pretty much the same as today, so it doesn’t affect your point.
If the Maori didn’t know this fact (that M74 is 30 million light years away), I would argue that they are way behind modern science.
They understood the Earth year – the concept of the light year, not so much….
I’m waiting for MM to unify gravitation with quantum field theory.
Or to come up with a proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem which fits into the margins of a book.
Of course the ancient Maori knew about logarithms. Did they not use logs in the construction of their outrigger canoes? To answer the question raised in #7 above,
here in the Pacific NW, we will be enjoined to apply matauranga Salish, in which logs were prominent too, along with the universal curative properties of St. John’s Wort and tea made from Devil’s club. Speaking of which, MM in New Zealand will presumably reach its natural end when everyone in that lucky country is advised to replace “western” dentistry by alternative, ancient Maori practices.
Modern cosmology isn’t “science” because it talks about the origins of the universe: it’s science because of how it talks about the origins of the universe. It builds theories from observation, prediction, and test. It runs the results and conclusions through critics who try to find mistakes and give alternative explanations. It advances by steps which can be demonstrated, confirmed or falsified.
MM isn’t science. Even if we grant that there is just a remarkable likeness here, HOW did the Māori figure this out? Science isn’t the conclusions; it’s the method. If they’re claiming someone went into a trance and had a vision, that’s not science. If they’re shrugging their shoulders and saying the process of discovery has been lost to time, that’s not science either.
Karl Wixon is wrong in multiple ways.
Karl Wixon’s effusions are an extreme example of this sort of rubbish, but there is an increasing amount of it to be found on mainstream sites funded by the NZ government. Here are just a couple of examples from the “NZ Science Learning Hub”
https://www.sciencelearn.org.nz/resources/3153-smart-maori-astronomy
https://www.sciencelearn.org.nz/resources/3155-te-ao-maori-space-whakapapa
There are modern scientists who doubt that some elements of even modern “scientific” cosmology are scientific. The Nobel prize-winning condensed matter physicist Phil Anderson spoke of “the morasses of string theory, cosmology and other postempirical subjects”, and George Ellis, co-author with Stephen Hawking of “The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time” has been highly critical of the multiverse enthusiasts:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/does-the-multiverse-really-exist/
But the great thing about matauranga Maori is that, however debates in cosmology turn out, its proponents will always be able to claim that MM contained the currently favoured theory all along.
As for the NZ public fighting this stuff, I fear it’s not going to happen. Most people seem unaware or uninterested, and anyone who doesn’t follow the party line is instantly denounced as a racist. Even the clearly false statement that all matter contains “mauri” in the national chemistry curriculum pass largely without comment.
What”s going on in New Zealand, it seems to me, is an example of pluralistic ignorance.
From Wikipedia:
In social psychology, pluralistic ignorance refers to a situation in which the minority position on a given topic is wrongly perceived to be the majority position or where the majority position is wrongly perceived to be the minority position. This can be more simply described as “an individual who does not believe, but that individual thinks that everyone believes”.
Thank you for reporting this latest horror (sigh). I was reading an article from NZ the other day and I almost needed a translator. Since (like 98%+ of NZers) I don’t speak Maori.
Nor do I want to or feel I should have to, even if I still lived there which I’m glad now I don’t.
I do know NZers though and find it hard to believe they’ll take all this nonsense just lying down.
D.A.
NYC https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2020/06/10/photos-of-readers-93/
ps Great job on yesterday’s podcast, btw.
Better than modern science and they haven’t invented the wheel yet.
To be fair…
Without hard-surfaced roads and pack animals that can be adapted for draft, inventing wheels is not worth the effort of making them. Wheels on axles reduce rolling friction only on decent roads, or on hard-packed earth in dry weather, and are a heavy, rut-forming encumbrance everywhere else. Wheels have to be large to be effective; making them accurately, especially the wheel-axle interface, is a challenge. Only advanced, settled civilizations build roads, taxing the populace to finance them and patrolling them to prevent freeloader use by enemies. The absence of wheels in nomadic stone-age societies is not surprising. The utility of a wheel doesn’t even present itself to the imagination ….even with spiritual references to the circularity of life and the medicine wheel.
If you’re near water, small boats are better.
“… The absence of wheels in nomadic stone-age societies is not surprising. The utility of a wheel doesn’t even present itself to the imagination ….even with spiritual references to the circularity of life and the medicine wheel.”
This is demonstrably false. The Yamnaya culture which originated in the Pontic Steppe expanded into Europe replacing much of the existing population (over 90% in Britain) 5000 years ago. They used wagons (with wheels). Of course they had the horses needed to pull them.
Interesting topic – was discussed here – maybe can add to it :
https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2021/12/26/two-questions-about-human-history/
Thanks. I had forgotten that. Maybe I got grossed out by the fingernails. And toenails. Especially toenails.
Especially see Max Blancke and Gravel Inspector in that thread..
They had metallurgy. They weren’t stone-age. The steppe, like the Canadian and American prairie in recent times, offers opportunity for wheeled carts and wagons (with draft animals) even without roads in suitable weather. Bronze tools ease the wheelwright’s task immensely. Tallow from the animals reduces the squeak of hub on axle. Reduce the noise and you reduce friction thus birthing the lubricant industry. (Tallow was still used to lubricate the journal bearings of steam locomotives into the 20th Century.) Much happens with wheels.
The utility of a wheel doesn’t present itself without a suitable surface to roll it on. A nomadic culture without animals where those flat surfaces don’t exist naturally will not stick around in one place long enough to build roads, which would end up being used by the next occupiers.
My point was that it is not a knock against Maori and Amerindians that they had not invented the wheel into modern times. They just had no need to, to mother the invention.
Fair enough, I wasn’t trying to pile on about Maori lack of technology and agree with your point. In another comment I defended their navigation, ship building, and astronomical knowledge. However, the Yamnaya were nomadic pastoralists who drove their wagons well beyond the steppe as far as Spain, England, and Scandinavia in a span of perhaps 200 years. They did have bronze technology which they likely introduced to Europe. Mainly, I bring up the Yamnaya because I find them fascinating and their existence was unknown even twenty years ago.
BTW, I stumbled on the fingernails in ThyroidPlanet’s link and wish I hadn’t.
Definitely a people to learn more about, Carl, and I thank you for bringing their culture to my attention.
As laughable as some indigenous claims to “scientific” knowledge are, the Maori and their ancestors have extraordinary accomplishments. Perhaps not exceeding modern methods, but in astronomy, navigation, and seafaring the people of Oceana (Pacific Islanders) were without peer for centuries. From their origins on Taiwan they spread out over the Pacific as far as Hawaii, New Zealand, and Easter Island (Rapanui). The Austronesian languages spoken on Madagascar also had their ultimate origins in these Pacific voyagers. Pretty impressive. Obviously, the “ways of knowing” these people had were highly effective. The claims I make here don’t rely on indigenous legends, but modern science in form of DNA analysis, carbon dating, and linguistics.
Not to knock the courage and ability of ancient people, especially given their lack of technical knowledge, but the distribution of their ancesors today may be more the result of survivor bias than extraordinary seamanship; the survivors survived. We have absoutely no way of knowing what their success rate was; the migrations took place over millenia. It could be that trips which resulted in colonization were extremely rare, some maybe even entirely by chance. We will never know.
They certainly would have required tremendous courage to undertake such voyages if most of their predecessors were never heard from again. The fact that such a vast area was colonized can’t be disputed. The who and when of the expansion is now well understood thanks to modern science. The “accidental voyage” theory can be dismissed. The settlement of the Pacific was deliberately intended, conducted, and accomplished. To put icing on the cake, in 1980 a 5000+ mile trip from Hawaii to Tahiti and back was accomplished by Pacific Islanders without instruments sailing a traditional outrigger.
CarlW, I’d be interested to hear more about what you know about this. Pacific voyaging is still a live topic in NZ, I believe, although there is certainly an orthodoxy which non-Maori question at their peril. There is a very interesting article by Prof Atholl Anderson, a very eminent scholar who happens to be Maori (as opposed to a “Maori scholar”) here:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03036758.2017.1334674
There is a short article on Prof Anderson here:
https://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/79760636/atholl-anderson-where-did-maori-come-from
and re the “accidental voyage” business, this is interesting:
“because if you don’t have very competent seafaring technology and yet you still pack everybody you know into a canoe and set off for some place you may or may not find, it’s certainly heroic but not necessarily skilful”.
Re “traditional outrigger” applied to the NZ situation, none of the original boats in which Maori arrived here have survived, and the modern reconstructions are based on guesswork as to what they might have used, and use modern technology in their construction. Prof Anderson is of the view that windward sailing was unlikely given his favoured theory of a double spritsail, and conjectures that a reversal of the prevailing winds around the 13th century might account for the ability to undertake a westwards journey at that point.
Jumbo, I’m relying on Voyagers by Nicholas Thomas and Who we are and How We Got Here, Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past by David Reich.
The focus is not on the Maori, though they are discussed, but the wider, related, Pacific peoples.
Quite true that the “traditional outrigger” is guess work so we can’t have huge certainty about their construction, though we have it from Captain Cook that that the 18th century examples impressed him greatly. How similar they were to the boats that traveled to Hawaii and Easter Island around 1000 C.E. is not yet and may never be known, but so much that was unknown or considered unknowable is no longer.
They did have extremely impressive navigational and seafaring skills, yet somehow it was Cook who arrived in the South Pacific in the eighteenth century (rather than Polynesians who arrived in the North Atlantic) with a ship able to carry extensive provisions and withstand high latitude seas and weather, a sextant, compass, telescope, longitude and latitude, some primitive maps to which he greatly added and, via the printing press, enlightened the rest of the world, plus a chronometer in his later voyages.
Matauranga Maori allegedly had great astronomical knowledge centuries ago, but as I noted on an NZ blog just yesterday, somehow it’s modern science which gives precision and detail to astronomical observations, and with capitalism and fossil fuels has enabled our comfortable, modern lives of abundance, good health and global communications.
Where are the snails and nautiluses? They had the spiral shape figured out even before the Maori. Several hundred million years ago, in fact.
There’s no easy solution to any of this. Probably Maori and other minorities still feel the effects of past oppression and surely it is right to recognize this fact and to try to repair it in some way – maybe additional resources for education and health, as well as supporting their languages and cultures.
While some of it is political, much of it flows from well-meaning people, but this woke stuff is potentially dangerous on several levels – social cohesion, community relationships and, even mental and physical health.
Traditional knowledge contains elements of science but is not science until tested through the methods of science.
Like all others my health is my own business and the business of my family. However, I admit to having been diagnosed with stage 4, highly-aggressive cancer in late 2015 and being given little chance of survival. Indeed, I sorted out my financial affairs and said my goodbyes to the world.
However, four years of intensive chemotherapy at Wellington Blood and Cancer Centre, including highly expensive private chemotherapy with Dr. Richard Isaacs in Palmerston North (New Zealand), and a stem cell transplant from a German donor (from the city of Dresden) in February 2019 and I have made it so far when most of my peers are gone.
One of the experts who looked after me in hospital, one Dr. De Souza, described my excellent response to the transplant as miraculous, but I doubt that he used that word in the biblical sense.
Good luck? Yes, in the sense that my body adapted well when the others died in hospital beside me even while I was there. But I’m here mainly thanks to modern medicine. No big deal because it happens to lots of people and I am not special. Almost everyone who did chemotherapy with me is gone, including people much younger than myself.
But where would I be now if I had gone for massage, incense and incantations?
David Lillis
Hey David, yes, I agree with your first para, to some extent, but then, when I see the sort of stuff promulgated by “Professor” Rangi Matamua and “Professor” Joanna Kidman I feel that the response in the Fast Show is correct. “It’s all a lot of of old bollocks, isn’t it”?
Sorry you’ve not been well, and glad to har you’re in remission.
If our host will allow the question, are you in Eastbourne? We had a house on Muritai Road.
Jumbo. Indeed, I am on Muritai Road and glad for every day above ground. My illness obliged me to retire early. Though I would rather work and earn a living, life without the stresses of the workplace is quite pleasant, even though one is always aware of the endgame that will be your fate if the cancer gets out of control a second time – following the traumas of multiple episodes of chemotherapy, long periods of time in hospital, and a stem cell transplant. It is very sobering to know that you are on last chance and, to be honest, it focuses your mind.
I use my relative freedom to write about issues of interest, principally bullying and encroachment of traditional knowledge into science etc. Though I was trained in physics and mathematics, my enduring passion since I was a kid is evolution and principally the evolution of the flowering plants and of humans. I maintain a watching brief on advances in prime number theory, though I do not work in that area.
I am sure that most or all people who read Professor Coyne’s forum do so out of interest in the natural world and also the world of human beings in society etc. Those who comment actively probably do so to state their minds, for sure, but also to contribute positively in order to make for a better world. That objective is important to me and to many others.
Specifically, my interest in combatting bullying emerged when I saw horrendous bullying in our Public Sector and I can call it out because I am retired. Others still in employment cannot speak out.
My interest in the current encroachment of traditional knowledge into science arises partly because it is retrograde and dangerous to have untested notions of the world around us masquerading as science when it is so highly important that we provide education of the highest quality for our young people and enable science to have its effect on health and wellbeing, our environment and our economy.
My interest was intensified by the vilification of the seven Auckland professors a year ago though, thankfully, that situation has died down.
My take on indigenous knowledge? A good deal of useful and perceptive learnings there and they did very well in developing and refining their understanding of several domains critical to their survival, with very limited resources – agriculture, food technology, manufacture of tools, textiles and clothing, navigation, astronomy and medicine etc. Such knowledge was acquired through observation, experience and testing and much of it is valid and useful, within limits.
The present controversy surrounding traditional knowledge may originate in a confusion between science as the most widely-accepted description and explanation of the universe devised by humans and the traditional knowledge of groups of people across different parts of the world. This traditional knowledge is relevant to their descendants and of great interest to modern humanity, but should not be confused with science, particularly in education.
In short – traditional astronomy and creation myths, for example, are worthwhile areas for research. They still have a part to play in our society but they are not the same as, or coequal with, astronomy or astrophysics. The same is true of traditional medicine and other domains. Perhaps we can view traditional knowledge and science as overlapping magisteria, but conflation is the two is ultimately unhelpful.
In writing articles or other contributions for the public domain, such as those published here, I believe in having the guts to put my name to my voiced opinions. However, I recognize that most others cannot afford to take the risk.
David Lillis
Can’t help but notice: yet another ‘Māori’ who looks rather white.
So what does that have to do with anything?
And thus ‘creation science’ finds its way into academia and ultimately, the classroom.
It matters not ‘whose’ creation myth it is.
“It matters not ‘whose’ creation myth it is.”
No, I think that ‘whose’ is precisely what matters.
I know what you mean, but I specifically said ‘myth’.
Not ‘story’ (like Big Bang cosmology, backed by observation).
So sure, various myths might have different baggage (and thus consequences), but ultimately, ANY myth in science class (school, academia etc) is misplaced, ideologically motivated, and ultimately potentially destructive).
But I do know what you meant. 🙂
I mean that non-Christian myths are okay.
Interesting about the Landsat tests in the 1970s.
And if I’m not mistaken many artistic traditions have spiral like patterns?
Whether you call it science or mātauranga or philosophy, what is of lasting value in ancient wisdom derives from disciplined observation of physical and social reality even in the absence of modern instruments, as opposed to making up myths and legends which are told primarily in order to make people feel good. Through disciplined observation of reality, the Polynesians were able to navigate the Pacific even though they did not have modern instruments. Through disciplined observation of reality, the Greeks figured out that the earth was round and were able to figure out roughly how big it was and how far away the moon was, and to determine that its phases were caused by Earth’s shadow rather than a monster eating the moon, even though they did not have modern instruments either. So, the question to ask is, Is Karl Wixon a disciplined observer of reality, or a maker of myths and legends primarily designed to make people feel good?
It wasn’t the Maori who figured out navigation, but their ancestors, the Polynesians, and it was by trial and error (how many died during the figuring out process?). No hypotheses involved, so although it is empirical knowledge, it wasn’t derived using the methods of modern science, which still don’t exist in most “indigenous knowledge”, which is based not on experimentation, blind testing, or the like, but trial and error–in the same way that learning when the berries come is observation. The Greek determination of the round earth and its circumference was done using modeling and is more akin to modern science.
Did you read Wixon’s tweet? I doubt that anyone with two neurons to rub together could say that his claims make him a “disciplined observer of reality”. Read what he says!
And if you think that the “legends” of Matauranga Maori were made up stories, known to be false, to make people feel good, try telling the same thing to devout Christians about the Bible, or to Muslims about the Qur’an.
I should clarify that I am not saying that the more obviously mythical sorts of myths in which the hero goes on a quest, etc., were “known to be false,” but rather that such myths filled in gaps in knowledge about things for which there was no explanation at the time, e.g., “What is the origin of the world?.” in a psychologically reassuring way. And thus made people feel good in that sense.
But it didn’t answer any questions; it gave false answers—just as myths do today. What about the oral legend that the Polynesians discovered Antarctica. Did that make people feel good? No, it was just a way to claim achievements that weren’t true.
I think the truth lies halfway between with that one: or to be more precise, halfway to Antarctica.
It does seem conceivable to me that the old-time Polynesians, who were fairly adventurous, might well have sailed beyond New Zealand to see if there was anything worthwhile still further south.
If so, they would soon have ended up uncomfortably cold and turned back, which is really about all that that particular legend claims.
I agree that Antarctica proper strains belief. Without a ship fortified against the ice, like those of later explorers, it is doubtful that early Polynesians could have got past what those later explorers called the “ice barrier.”
But the ancient Polynesians might well have discovered some sub-Antarctic islands and turned back at the ice barrier, which is quite a different claim to that of discovering Antarctica proper, and far more believable.
After all, Shackleton negotiated the same waters in a fairly small boat, so it can be done, if you don’t mind taking risks and have no fear of the stormy seas that are otherwise the main disincentive to venturing past New Zealand to the south.
Shackleton was in a longboat, sailed the open sea, and didn’t see Antarctica on his voyage to South Georgia.
Also, the legend was that the Polynesian boat WAS MADE OF HUMAN BONES. Care to explain that one away.
Let’s face it: there is no convincing evidence that the Polynesians ever got close to the Antarctic continent. You’re just saying that if X, Y, Z, and Q were true, PERHAPS they could have. That’s speculation, not evidence.
We know, on the other hands, that the Russians saw Antarctica in the early 19th century.
Point taken, also, about the Greeks having more of a theoretical system with which to use their observations, e.g., of a staff casting a shorter shadow at noon in Egypt than it did in Europe at the same date and by precisely how much, a comparison that nobody would have bothered to make where they not already thinking about what the shape of the earth might be. Thus we can speak of three levels of knowledge, namely, (1) out-and-out myth (2) empirical observation, and (3) a dialectic of observation and theory, i.e., science. And by the way, I was asking a purely rhetorical question about Wixon, who clearly does not tease different kinds of mātauranga apart but has them all jumbled together like an unmade bed, as do many others who speak of mātauranga as if it is all one thing I suspect. (I leave it to others to decide whether my argument betrays some sort of Western or modern preoccupation with classification!)
I’m a little uncaffeineated at the moment, so I apologize if this is off the wall as a comment :
“What’s the evidence that the Polynesians discovered Antarctica? None save ancient myths.”
https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2022/01/14/whats-the-evidence-that-the-polynesians-discovered-antarctica-answer-hardly-anything/