I got an email from a secondary-school science teacher in New Zealand, who gave me permission to quote it all (but of course I’m omitting his/her name). It shows the beginning of the incursion of Mātauranga Māori (MM) into secondary-school science classes. The government has decided that MM, which does include some factual knowledge (growing crops, catching eels, etc.), but also includes morality, theology, superstition, and word-of-mouth legends, is to be taught as coequal to modern science in science classes. The page below, which comes from a school student workbook—an instructional manual with test questions—is one of many that you can see by paging back and forth at the website. You’ll find that most of the biology is okay, but now and then they slip in some Mātauranga Māori, presenting it as an alternative view of traditional teaching. First, the email (again, reproduced with permission.
Hi Jerry,
I’m a British expat Science/Biology teacher settled and teaching in New Zealand since 2006. I wanted to share with you the latest Scipad student workbook that is widely used in NZ schools. This is the new revised edition for Year 9, the first year in senior school and their first real exposure to science in the classroom. Here’s page 124, it’ll only take you 2 minutes. I despair, creationism (gods) and supernatural forces (mana):It gets better. To make way for this, they removed the pages on Cells and Microscopy. I’m at a loss to know what to do. Fortunately I am only three years away from retirement and will be able to avoid this nonsense. In the meantime my advice to anyone considering a career teaching science in New Zealand is quite simply don’t do it.Regards,
Name redacted
Notice the criticism of the “traditional worldview” and the presentation of the obviously superior Māori worldview. (And, of course, the questions, which make the student buy into Māori spirituality.
I can’t help but add here that the idea that the Māori consider themselves part of the environment, stewarding it carefully as opposed to the “destroy it all” Europeans–isn’t correct. What we know is that between the arrival of Polynesians on the island (13th century) and the colonization by Europeans (18th century), the main method of Māori cultivation involved burning off the native forest. Māori burning was so extensive that it could be detected in Antarctic ice cores, and is estimated to have reduced the forest cover of the island from 80% to 15% (compare left with middle figures below). Europeans of course burned more forest, and that you can see by comparing the middle figure to the right figure. They don’t like to talk about the Māori burnings in NZ, but researchers agree that a substantial part of the reduction in virgin forest cover was caused by the indigenous people. (They also, of course, drove the moas extinct by killing them for food.)
Here’s the result of forest removal by the and after European colonization (from Weeks et al. 2012)
I added that to put some perspective on the claim that Europeans were the people who really destroyed the forests of NZ while the Māori were taking good care of it. And, of course, NZ now has one of the world’s best conservation efforts—largely a product of Western science.
At any rate, my point in posting the page above is to show that the coequality of Western science and indigenous science, or even the claimed superiority of the latter, gives a false view of the facts—and of science itself. The page presents Māori sociology in the form of whakapapa, which really means a genealogy of humans (the network of relationships among indigenous people), and not, as the text implies, an (evolutionary) genealogy of all of life. The page also introduces two teleological terms, “mauri“, or “life essence” and “mana“, the endemic power of a person, a plant or animal, or even an object. Both “mauri” and “mana” are spiritual or teleological terms, and have no meaning in modern science. Even rocks have mauri!
Saying that damaging the environment reduces its mauri and its mana gives us no improved understanding of the environment, but only serves to validate Māori religion. Thus, introducing these terms in a biology curriculum means introducing indigenous spirituality or religion. And yet the kids are quizzed on them! In such a way does the NZ educational standards serve to confuse people and give credibility to the unevidenced spiritual beliefs of indigenous people. Let science be science! If you want to talk abut mauri and mana, put it in the sociology or anthropology class.
Finally, I paged through through the text and, finding that most of it was okay, asked the teacher why he/she recommended that one not try to make a career teaching science in New Zealand. The response:
The Scipad is generally ok, which is why it was disturbing to see this. There’s some chance it might be ditched in a future edition.
But this is the tip of the iceberg. It’s a trend. Our PD (professional development) over the past few years has been almost exclusively CRaRP – culturally responsive and relational pedagogy. We started last year with three days from visiting speakers on a course about the Tiriti (Maori version of Treaty of Waitangi) which many of us found ill informed, biased and racist. It was an agenda, rather than an exploration of colonisation. This year we were told how we could incorporate Karakia (prayers, but at least they can now be non-religious) at the start of each lesson. We are told forcefully by senior management (non-scientists) that Matauranga Maori is science. The Science teachers in my school don’t raise their heads above the parapet, and try to avoid the whole issue.
I guess that’s the crux: being told that 2+2 is 5, and when you say it’s 4, you face considerable kick back.
I regularly mentor trainee teachers. They are not being trained how to teach, how to write schemes of work, lesson plans etc. They express surprise when I share my texts (from the UK) on classroom control etc. But they are all expected to indulge Matauranga Maori, and are castigated if they challenge this.
It’s also about workload/burnout and $$. . . Forty years ago a NZ teacher earned the same as a backbench member of parliament. Today they earn just over half. There has been a gradual decline in teaching as a career. And it’s a global phenomenon.
As an evidence based free-thinker who leans left, it is odd to find myself wondering if I am racist! I understand the intent, as Maori are disproportionately poor, and are still held back by many with racist attitudes. But I don’t think this pressure to claim indigenous ways as always equal helps address poverty.
Actually, I would advise NZers to go into teaching if: 1.they are in Science/Maths – for the job security; and 2. they intend to go overseas (US/UK curriculum, money, opportunity, feeling valued).
From what I see in NZ, and given that its present Prime Minister is Chris Hipkins, NZ’s former Minister of Education who promoted the infusion of MM into science, I think things will surely get worse. Certainly there are no prominent voices in the country advising the schools and government to stop the madness infecting science education. It is only foreigners like Richard Dawkins and me who can write about this stuff without suffering professional consequences.
We already know that the average scores of New Zealand’s students in science, math, and reading has been on a downhill slide for nearly 20 years, putting the country behind other nations comparable in their “First World” status. (See this post by Martin Hanson for the sad statistics.) The infusion of indigenous culture into the science curriculum will surely not stem this decline. Knowing that the government plans to keep increasing the amount of indigenous lore into the curriculum, I have to say that if I was a Kiwi and wanted to teach science, I’d probably go to another country.
Probably best to ditch the ‘western’ science, and use ‘contemporary science’ or an equivalent. Yes, while calculus-based contemporary quantitative science largely arose in Europe, many aspects, not least ‘Roman’ numerals [ nicked by the Arabs from the Indians ], arose outside of Europe.
Incidentally, I believe the use of ‘Western’ is a relatively late coinage, no earlier than the close of the 19th Century, and invented by Americans, of all people, to bring them into the civilised fold. Prior to the late 19th C, you will come across texts that largely allude to ‘Christendom’ or ‘Europe’ in the sense that ‘Western’ came to be used widely since Spengler’s ‘the Decline of the West’ published 1918 or so.
It is the NZ woke left that deliberately uses the contrast of ‘Western science’ vs MM, to imply the country has two principal components — Maori and ‘westerners’, conveniently forgetting that 16% of the nation has some Asian ancestry and 11% has Pacific Island heritage. Of course, all traditional cultures had the same ‘humans are part of the environment’ concept. The dept of education obviously has nobody who has heard of Daoism/Taoism, or the variety of Buddhist worldviews.
Ramesh : 2% Denisovan and advocate for Matauranga Denisova.
I always use “modern” science but used “Western” here because that’s the term used by the woke who push MM in NZ.
Roman numerals are the ones that use certain letters e.g. MMXXIII (2023). Called Roman because these were the numerals used by the Romans. Our modern system is “Arabic numerals”, although the symbols (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9) we use aren’t the same as those used in Arabic (٠, ١, ٢, ٣, ٤, ٥, ٦, ٧, ٨, ٩ – other versions are available). They are called Arabic because they were introduced into Europe by the Arabs of North Africa and Spain.
I spent two weeks working in Jordan a couple of decades ago. In Jordan, the car number plates were written in both Arabic and European and they were strings of just digits. It didn’t take long for me to realise I could decode them in Arabic, at least not after I realised that ٠ is the digit zero, not a decimal point or other punctuation.
Whoops, my bad !
The more fundamentalist a culture is, regardless of its political stripe, the faster it circles the drain.
It puts many of us in a bind. The ruling party and other institutional leaders in many democracies do not only allow this type of Woke nonsense, they actively promote it. Their Woke minions in the bureaucracies then seek to codify it in regulations and policies. (It is still unclear to me who is leading whom.) If it were simply nonsense, one could just roll his eyes. But they are undermining liberal principles of governance and the foundations of scientific knowledge. And, yet, we keep reelecting them. Give me some Dutch farmer to vote for.
None of this will end until we remove the institutional leaders who abet it—or until we have all lost our mauri and mana.
Sounds like you have answered your own question. Don’t keep voting Labour. If you can’t stomach the opposition parties, then don’t vote.
The theory that this activity is the way to achieve equality of outcome is just that- a theory. Based on a model about colonialism’s interaction with indigenous people. A model with some merit and some flaws. NOT established doctrine, but you WILL pay for it if you question the model. You cannot support politicians who want to reverse 3-400 years of humanistic progress, and the principles underlying liberal democracies, like one person, one vote.
Has it occurred to them that the reason we know that humans are not separate and dominant over nature and that natural resources have to be carefully managed is entirely down to science?
Hans Carl von Carlowitz (1645–1714): “the highest art, science, industriousness […] will consist in such a conservation and replanting of timber that there can be a continuous, ongoing and sustainable use.”
(FIrst known use of sustainable, “nachhaltend” in the German original.)
It seems the green wokies in NZ prefer “deep ecology” or faith-based ecologism (with its mysticism and radical holism) to “shallow ecology” or science-based environmentalism.
“Shallow ecology: A green ideological perspective that harnesses the lessons of ecology to human needs and ends, and is associated with values such as sustainability and conservation.
Deep ecology: A green ideological perspective that rejects anthropocentrism and gives priority to the maintenance of nature, and is associated with values such as biocentric equality, diversity and decentralization.”
(Heywood, Andrew. /Political Ideologies: An Introduction./ 7th ed. London: Red Globe/Macmillan, 2021. p. 210)
For more, see: https://www.britannica.com/topic/deep-ecology
“…Another group of natives that the deep ecologists gain inspiration from is the Maori people. The Maori people have no word for an environmental ethic, rather it is just the way they live. To them, living with the land is just part of their life-style and culture. This identification with primal people is one of the tenets of deep ecologists, who frequently use them as example of cultures that embody many of the principles of deep ecology.”
(Cramer, Phillip F. /Deep Environmental Politics: The Role of Radical Environmentalism in Crafting American Environmental Policy./ Westport, CT: Praeger, 1998. p. 29)
Recommended reading:
* Henare, Manuka. “In Search of Harmony: Indigenous Traditions of the Pacific and Ecology.” In /Routledge Handbook of Religion and Ecology/, edited by Willis Jenkins, Mary Evelyn Tucker, and John Grim, 129-137. New York: Routledge, 2017.
“Our primary focus in this chapter is the Maori, my people, of Aotearoa.”
The text is freely available as a PDF file: https://www.routledgehandbooks.com/pdf/doi/10.4324/9781315764788.ch14
It is diagnostic that the page on cells and microscopy was omitted to make room for this disquisition on mauri and mana. After all, microscopy was important in the discovery of bacterial infectious disease, but it is irrelevant to the wonderful revelation of whakapapa.
Come to think of it, the observation of cells and microorganisms by means of the microscope is a perfect example of the “white empiricism” so abhorred by devotees of applied postmodernism. In New Zealand, they have found in MM a useful vehicle for undercutting the dread practice. That fortunate country can look forward to further improvement of its student workbooks along the lines of postmodernism in indigenous costume. Perhaps the concepts of molecules and atoms wlll be dropped next, to make room for a panegyric to the sky father and the earth mother, along with an account of the colonialism inherent in chemistry and physics
Sky parent and earth parent.
Sky father and earth birthing person.
This is misguided in so many ways, and so idiotic (surely every Kiwi knows that Maoris killed off the Megafauna?). If one wants to value and honor Maori, I couldn’t think of a worse way of doing it. This is romanticized Western veneration of nature/noble savage sentiments/science concepts read into Maori culture. Why not introduce a compulsory subject “Maori language and culture”, where the Maori language is taught to high competence?
As others have remarked, the terminology of the textbook is misleading. Science is not the same as “traditional” European culture, and traditional European folk cultures are also not perfectly congruent with Christianity (“rule over the earth”) which was superimposed without destroying the old nature veneration and magic beliefs, very similar to what happened in South America or Subsaharan Africa. The Grimm fairy tales have people turning into animals and animals turning into people, the same motifs one finds in archaic traditional cultures all over the world. As a child, my favorite Grimm tales were one in which the soul of a boy lives inside a deer, and one in which children turn into swans.
should have added “instead”, to the sentence beginning with “Why not introduce…”
I think this would be a far better option, and less paternalistic/condescending, too.
Ruth, there are grave political risks of unintended consequences in fostering a minority language spoken mostly by troublemakers and agitators. New Zealand could find itself creating a bilingual race-based elite that would be composed almost entirely of ethnic Maori. Maori speakers have much greater incentive to learn English—as they do now— than English speakers have to learn Maori, which is a nearly dead language spoken nowhere outside NZ. Once it is nobbled into making all the senior civil service positions and the job of prime minister mandatory bilingual—as we have in Canada for reasons that sounded good at the time—New Zealand will find itself ruled executively by its Maori minority without regard to competence. This will move it that much farther along toward a bi-racial state where the 17% minority shares power equally with everyone else.
Germany does not intend to make all Germans fluent in Turkish just because many Turks live there and have some interesting stories to tell. Rather, you want Turks to learn German, to reduce their isolation and risk of radicalization. (And nearly all Maori speak English now.) Social cohesion is best served by a country’s enforcing one common language on all who choose to live there, the language in which laws are enforced and taxes are collected. Encouraging second languages by government fiat is divisive, as it has turned out to be in Canada.
Living in a country with 4 national languages, 3 of which official, none of which understood by everybody, I do not agree. A country does not necessarily need one common language if at least a second nationl language is learnt at school and the members of the linguistic majority are not too arrogant to refuse learning a minority one.
With respect I am not sure that I would totally agree with you either. I have worked and lived in Norway where the principal official language is naturally Norwegian with some variations because of indigenous people such as the Sami. However all children learn English at school and are fluent in both languages at an early age. There is an obvious linguistic majority but no arrogance perhaps with the exception of Swedish but that is a whole different subject because of the past history with Sweden.
There is a downside for those not Norwegian working and living there. It is quite difficult to learn Norwegian as Norwegians when confronted with a non Norwegian speaker will instinctively switch to English first, fine if you are an English speaker but it makes it difficult when you really want to practice and perfect your Norwegian. Difficult too for non English speakers as ideally they have to be very proficient in two languages for the best integration.
Norwegian is not widely spoken except it was once said that there were more Norwegian speakers in Minnesota USA than in Norway because of past economic migration before Norway wealth changed particularly with oil revenues. How true this is I cannot confirm but it must have been hard times indeed for Norwegians to leave such a spectacular home country. I mean no disrespect to Minnesota not ever having been fortunate to visit this part of the USA.
So the valorization of Maori attitudes regarding nature, which we know wasn’t really very enlightened, is balanced with the total dissing of colonialist attitudes regarding nature, which we also know became far more enlightened than is being presently depicted here. But Western views about preserving natural areas from the 1960’s onwards was possibly more enlightened than Maori views from centuries ago. There. I said it.
Heck, I’ve always regarded humans as a part of the world and nature. Though there is no denying those who’ve destroyed the most often regarded themselves as above nature.
A bit off but did you read about the fatal fire in Wellington? Before recovery started a Karakia (Māori prayer) was done. There are two reasons I was uncomfortable about it. The first is my secularist views and the second even more so is it is possible disrespectful or even insulting too those who died and most of all their families who could’ve been Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu (our second largest religion), Sikh, Pagan or you name it, they may have followed it.
My issue was it was a state/government/public endorsed action, not a private one by bystanders whom I’d have fully respected, but the Crown endorsing one religion over others.
Not that I can’t blame many being uneasy entering a burned shell of a building to gather human remains.
Given the circumstances and some witness statements I had the idea that most of the victims were Maori. But I agree the Crown shouldn’t be promoting Maori woo when they would get all pecksniffy about reading Church of England prayers if worshippers had died when the cathedral in Christchurch collapsed in the earthquake.
How can they know the religion of the Maori people killed ?
If they were up with the latest census data, they would see that
https://tewhata.io/all-maori/social/people/religion/
38.1% of All Maoris reported having religious affiliation in 2018 and about 55% reported no religion.
While 28.6% of All Maoris report religion as being very or quite important.
Matauranga Maori can be considered a religion in many ways.
I don’t think so, then I never want to get into their personal details, I respect their privacy. Sure, their families have every right to do it though, I’d defend their right.
“One understands nothing about creationism unless one understands that it is meant to be a system of ethics.” – Hector Avalos
It’s saddening to realise that the victory of evolution over creationism wasn’t so much one of science triumphing over superstition, but really about the state of politics in society. I’ve come to realise the same mindset that allowed for sympathy for teaching creationism is on display on the Left when it comes to showing openness and tolerance towards marginalised groups.
Whatever concerns one might have about getting to the truth of the matter take a backseat to the wider ethical conversation the discussion takes place in. Right now, there’s rightfully a concern that indigenous peoples are marginalised in societies (we have a similar concern in Australia – coming to the forefront now over the upcoming referendum of an indigenous voice to parliament) and so the attempts to integrate indigenous cultures into the wider societal narratives is well-meaning and in some ways necessary. But it shows a misunderstanding of the nature of science.
i agree with most but moas were killed by the pacific rat introduced to nz at the time not hunted to extinction .
Mātauranga Māori is crazy . what also sad about it was how Māori at the time of contact with Europeans were open to new ideas. it was impressive from farming, trade warfare ,politics ,reading writing, Māori applied science with amazing zeal. look at the Māori wars ,education, and farming at the time. if it worked they loved it. i guess they saw so many benefits
now we have a self proclaimed Māori elite who dont represent the average Māori at all claiming superior knowledge political rights ect.
new Zealand is multicultural but treated as bi cultural. immigrants children constantly say they they aren’t treated as kiwis. racism, homophobia is rampant. we found a way to be both to pc and to bigoted at the same time.i feel zero pride being a kiwi. gone are the days of Karl popper.
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No, killed by humans, not rats. See https://www.science.org/content/article/why-did-new-zealands-moas-go-extinct
The far left has mistaken stooping down and bending over for lifting up.
Unfortunately, I have to agree with most of the observations made by the science teacher referred to in this article. A couple of provisos. 1. While I understand annoyance at the idea that indigenous culture is inherently environmentally friendly and harmonious when isn’t always or in every way, I note that there is scientific truth to some indigenous knowledge, e.g. seasons and food identification and preparation, and that the NZ experience of deforestation and burning is not a globally applicable comparison even if there are some equivalent examples, such as Easter Island. 2. While the idea that only indigenous peoples “own” spirituality is offensive and even irritating, the environment could do with more people having a more respectful approach toward it than seeing it as a source of monetary exploitation. However, the rest is pretty much spot on. Apart from all the general issues associated with infusing mythology into what should be a field of universal, objective truth, my biggest fear of the forcing of a culture and philosophy into a place it doesn’t belong is the broader racism and polarisation the resentment of that fuels. Not that anyone should be pandering to racism (much opposition to Matauranga Mãori will be by people who really are just racist and couldn’t care less about science any more than they do indigenous culture). However, I really don’t think forcing Matauranga Mãori into science is doing the Mãori people any favours, especially during a time that some kind of reconciliation is being attempted. Well-meaning, but a misplaced way of assigning dignity. I note that the Voice in Australia is a totally different matter- more the reverse – the redress of an imposition that illegally deprived people of recognition of even being homo sapiens.
Just been reading a bit more of it. Most is fairly reasonable regardless, just rather dull, even when I try to think as a 13/14 year old, this is for 7 year olds, to a teen this is talking down to them and is insulting. And there is no mention of biological or botanical evolution. Pages 128 and 130-131 are interesting as well, 163 has a bit about Flax. I’m sure all know this, but I can only say it this way.
The ironic thig is on page 230 it talks about Astrology and Pseudoscience, 237 about the fake Moon Landings and 240 about Matariki, no date about the international view on it.
But what gets me is this is this is low standard in general for teens.
So many times I want to rant and rave about garbage like this, then I realise that people like Jerry and Dawkins have said it already!
I used to teach high school Science in New Zealand (I now work overseas outside of education). During the lead-up to the introduction of MM into the curriculum, I had a conversation with another teacher in which I asked how the concept of “mauri” could be understood or discussed in the context of the prevailing frameworks of biology, chemistry, and physics. Needless to say, no explanatory mechanism could be offered as to how mauri “works”, what it is made of, etc. Furthermore, I was told that because of my background (?), it wasn’t possible for me to understand the concept. The icing on the cake was when I was told that I didn’t “need to understand” either, as the students would decide what it meant to them. I realized at this point that we were approaching the issue with vastly different worldviews. Also at issue is the fact that New Zealand is suffering from a severe specialist teacher shortage (I didn’t realize how underpaid teachers were until I went overseas and started working outside the sector). At the end of the day, if you want specialist teachers who have a deep understanding of science and an appreciation for the non-trivial epistemology that underlies its practice, you have to pay and resource people and schools properly. Most importantly, science must remain free of political and ideological interference.
This post is needed and, sadly, unlikely to get a lot of traction in NZ, where I live. Those in teaching institutions who have spoken up against the blurring of lines between science and faith/spirituality have been hung out to dry by their institutions, who should be fiercely defending their right to debate such an important issue. I fear that the stifling of the debate will only exacerbate tensions between Māori and Pakeha, which are not as extreme as racial tensions in some countries, but meaningful nonetheless. Adding to the difficulty of debating the issue is that denying that Mātauranga Māori is science or equal to science is likely to have one branded racist. I hope that we find a way to discuss the issue without rancour, but it will take a decided shift from where we seem to be right now.
New Zealand — beautiful country I thought — so when I saw a relevant faculty position posted in Nature a year or two before covid I read it with interest. In addition to the usual stuff there were four desiderata with regard to Maori language and culture. Hmm. I emailed the chair of the department to ask about this. He seemed reluctant to be frank in writing in a way that might possibly be used against him. I concluded that the position was a set aside for a Maori but the four criteria essentially were graded so that if no qualified full Maori person could be found they could descend the steps one by one to the lowest level at which some connection of Maori culture could be claimed to satisfy bureaucratic requirements. The system adapts. It will be interesting to see how the science teachers adapt. I wish you luck!
There is so much over-reaction here. The curriculum page says “In most societies humans are seen as seperate and dominant over nature…”. This is exactly true. It is why we find ourselves in our climate and Holocene extinction mess. The roots for this thinking are found in religious texts where humans are granted “dominion” over nature. The scientific view is that humans are animals with a genus and species name, and are fully integrated with nature. Science asserts nowhere that humans are above nature—that is a metaphysical idea (bordering on pataphysics). Evolution traces our biological lineage to cyanobacteria and its precursors—you don’t get any more integrated than that. What that text is actually comparing is Western or Abrahamic religion with the MM spiritual belief set. I agree that it does fail to clarify that position, but to its minor credit, it doesn’t anywhere assert that “Western Science” promotes the exploitative view. If the promotion of a world view that incorporates respect for the environment is added to the curriculum, then good. Nor is there anything wrong with accounting for how that conclusion is arrived at by an indigenous people. It is up to those teaching this curriculum to be explicit that the Māori rationale for this perspective is founded in spiritualism and is faith-based and religion does not enter into the scientific method. Science has nothing to say about anything that defies measurement or modelling and it cannot endorse such concepts. You can also arrive at the conclusion that respecting the environment is a good idea by measuring oceanic microplastics, atmospheric carbon or examining the Earth’s extinction record since the rise of H. Sapiens. Good teachers contextualise their materials.
You seem to forget that this is a science textbook, not a sociology textbook. And if the Maori are really stewards of nature compared to the colonists, how come they destroyed more forest per capita. The “Western view” they’re talking about is clearly the Western view of science.
And no, I did not over-react.
Sorry, me again. Here’s a page from “Big Ideas 2”.
https://scipad.co.nz/Digital%20previews/2022/BigIdeas2sciPAD/BigIdeas2.html#p=173
So far it is all I’ve seen in them, as I’ve flicked though a number of them and it only seems the “Big Ideas” so far has this stuff in it, after that they seem fairly mainstream, I could be very wrong. Book 3 out next year appears to have something called “Carbon Reaction in the Taiao”, Taiao can be translated as environment, but like many Te Reo words it is a very poetic term that can vary depending on context and I advise you google for yourself.
The introduction video shows a page from the unreleased book mentioning in a paragraph about “collaboration” about how Māori and Pacific people are being brought in more. Ok, in the past their knowledge was taken when fact, but the rest wasn’t, and it was simply gathered from asking or watching (to put it politely), today for better or worse, it may be different.
Here are the rest of the books. https://scipad.co.nz/
In closing, I must give credit where it is due. The structure, later on more so when there is less talking down is better than when I was a teen.
They do ironically cover pseudoscience like Homeopathy and the Human Evolution book covers religion and spirituality on one page, but it seems to be little more than an observational one.