One of the areas that Luana Maroja and I highlighted in our “Ideological Subversion of Biology” article, which analyzed six misguided statements about biology made in the service of ideology rather than scientific truth, was the last one:
6. Indigenous “ways of knowing” are equivalent to modern science and should be respected and taught as such.
Now both of us believe that indigenous people can produce and have produced knowledge, even though it’s usually of a restricted nature: trial-and-error truths limited to the geographic area that a group inhabits. But ideology, which has bought into the “authority of the sacred victim” mindset, has gone beyond that, as I’ve often written about New Zealand.
The assertions of adherents to this trope fall into several areas and share several characteristics:
a.) There are indigenous “ways of knowing” that are every bit as good as modern (they often say “Western”) science. These “knowledge acquisition methods” differ, but produce knowledge equally valid and important. (Note that the use of “Western” science is inaccurate, since science is now a worldwide endeavor. I will use “modern science” from now on.)
b.) The knowledge produced by indigenous “ways of knowing” has been ruthlessly suppressed by arrogant and bigoted Western scientists who think that their “way of knowing” is best.
c.) Indigenous knowledge is, in some cases, crucial in solving pressing problems for humanity. The most common example is global warming.
d.) Promoters of the value of indigenous ways of knowing usually adduce only a few examples to support their case.
All of these features are on display in a new article in the prestigious science journal Nature written by Oscar Allen, described as “a freelance writer in London,” though online information about him seems nearly nonexistent. You can read his article by clicking on the link below.
I’ll give some quotes demonstrating each of the four points above. Quotes from the article are indented; bold headings are mine, and the same as given above:
a.) There are indigenous “ways of knowing” that are every bit as good as modern (they often say “Western”) science. They are different, but produce knowledge just as solid.
. . . Indigenous and local communities hold unique insights that can enhance people’s shared understanding of the natural world and inform attempts to protect it. Recognizing this, scientists such as Cohall and Roué are working in partnership with Indigenous and local groups to preserve and amplify these insights, integrate them into their own research and co-produce fresh knowledge with these communities.
. . . . This loss continues today, in part because of the modern Westernized education system; “it might not directly suggest that you should not focus on Indigenous traditional practices,” Cohall says, “but it definitely emphasizes a different way of knowledge acquisition.” He also explains that urbanization has led more people to move to cities, away from the rural areas where they can experience nature and apply traditional practices
. . .other forms of Indigenous and local knowledge fit less easily into different epistemological systems. Often, ways of understanding the environment are formed through direct experience of nature and can be altered by when, where and in whom the knowledge exists.
“In our Western world, nature and culture are separated, and science pretends to be capable of giving knowledge without taking into account culture. Indigenous knowledge is more holistic,” says Roué.
A common claim is that because indigenous people live closer to nature than do “Western” scientists sequestered in their labs, they are more able to tell us things about nature. This is often part of the claim that indigenous people hold an important key to solving global warming. As for indigenous knowledge being more “holistic”, I’m not sure what that means.
. . .Most importantly, researchers should respect the equal value of Indigenous and local knowledge. Cohall says it is also formed through the same basic method as Western science: “Science is essentially making observations over a period of time and then drawing inferences.” The production of traditional knowledge is analogous, he says, but occurs in a less-controlled environment and is built up through generations of direct experiences with nature.
Neither method is necessarily better, but both can add to our understanding of the world,
I would take issue with all of these statements. “Equal value” is wrong; modern science, which progresses rapidly and on a worldwide basis, has improved human welfare (and not just local welfare) on a much broader scale and much more deeply. Indigenous knowledge is produced largely through observation and trial-and-error methods, and is often passed down via legends or word of mouth. Indigenous knowledge may draw inferences, but it lacks many of the tools of modern science that have made the latter far more effective: hypothesis testing, pervasive doubt and criticism, the use of statistics and mathematics, controlled experiments, and so on. Ask yourself: how much of your well-being derives from indigenous knowledge versus, say, the knowledge produced by science since the sixteenth century? And yes, I assert that the difference in methodology makes modern science better than indigenous ways of knowing.
b.) The knowledge produced by indigenous “ways of knowing” has been ruthlessly suppressed by arrogant and bigoted Western scientists who think that their “way of knowing” is best.
Similar dynamics have played out repeatedly over the past 500 years or more, as Western science has become imposed as the dominant knowledge system around most of the globe. In the process, many alternative ways of understanding the world have been marginalized. “There has been for a long time, and there is still, a distrust of Indigenous knowledge among scientists,” says Marie Roué, an environmental anthropologist at the French National Centre for Scientific Research in Paris. She says that Indigenous knowledge is often dismissed because it incorporates religious or spiritual elements. It also tends to be passed on orally and through cultural traditions, making it hard to formalize in the manner prized by the Western empirical method.
. . . Throughout history, various communities have settled, or been forced to settle, in the Caribbean. Each of these groups brought their traditions and culture and produced unique insights through their interactions with the natural environment. Sometimes the groups brought medicinal plants with them, which Cohall says might have happened with the periwinkle. But this knowledge has since been dismissed or suppressed. “A lot of those traditional Indigenous practices were pushed to the side because they were considered to be more primitive or not advanced or sophisticated, which led to a major loss of information,” Cohall says.
Here’s a bit from one of the two examples used: how the Sámi people find lichens to feed their reindeer. Modern scientists, it’s said, can’t abide the Sámi’s inability to say when or where lichens will appear every year because they are spotty, depending on weather:
Such thinking is, to some, infuriating. “I think that there’s an extraordinary arrogance that runs through many Euro-American knowledge systems,” says Luci Attala, a UK-based anthropologist and chair of the Tairona Heritage Trust, in Swansea, UK, which works to amplify the voices of the Indigenous Kogi people of northern Colombia. To her, researchers in the mainstream scientific establishment are culpable for the marginalization of Indigenous and local knowledge. “They’re part of the problem,” she says. “They’re part of the world that has spent years discounting other ways of being and assuming that their methodology is the one and only route to truth.”
Exploitation of indigenous knowledge is part of this theme, and we can’t deny that indigenous people have been exploited by modern scientists, as when their blood is taken for purposes other than what is said, or when animals and plants are removed from their environment without getting proper permission. That said:
. . . Reyes García is particularly sceptical about the premise of co-production, warning that it is often imposed and exploitative, rather than equitable. “Co-production is something that we scientists have invented because we are in big trouble; the environmental crisis, climate crisis, inequality crisis — we have messed up the world and we don’t know how to solve it,” she says. “And then we look at Indigenous people and see these people are actually managing well, so we think ‘Let’s just draw from their knowledge.’”
And here the ideological purpose behind distorting the value of indigenous knowledge becomes clear (my emphasis):
It is a critique that Roué is aware of. But she still feels that working towards better collaboration can help to place Indigenous and local knowledge in contexts that can convince industries and governments to make changes: “Our work begins by understanding and gathering knowledge, but it goes further and has also a political purpose — to empower Indigenous people.”
Empowering marginalized people is fine, but one has to know exactly what you’re trying to accomplish with a scientific project. Are you trying to find out things about the universe, or are you trying to empower marginalized people? These won’t always be the same, as we’ve learned from the money given to Māori in New Zealand to play whale songs and rub whale oil on kauri trees to save them from a parasite transmitted underground (see here and here). The Māori will be empowered (or rather, enriched), but no knowledge can possibly be gained, except the knowledge that following the dictates of ancient legends (the whale and kauri were created as “brothers”) is wrong.
c.) Indigenous knowledge is, in some cases, crucial in solving pressing problems for humanity. The most common example is global warming.
. . . The worsening climate and biodiversity crises are deeply affecting many Indigenous communities and other non-industrialized societies. These groups tend to be more reliant on and attuned to the health of the natural world, so their experience can provide valuable perspectives on environmental change.
This one again:
. . . “Co-production is something that we scientists have invented because we are in big trouble; the environmental crisis, climate crisis, inequality crisis — we have messed up the world and we don’t know how to solve it,” she says. “And then we look at Indigenous people and see these people are actually managing well, so we think ‘Let’s just draw from their knowledge.’”
Managing well? Then why does the article say this?
The worsening climate and biodiversity crises are deeply affecting many Indigenous communities and other non-industrialized societies.
While indigenous experience can tell us how climate changes over the short term can affect the local environment, let’s remember that the discovery of the phenomenon of global warming, the reason why it’s happening, and a lot of worldwide documentation of its effects (e.g., melting of sea ice) was determined by, yes, modern science. Solving the problem is not critically dependent on a fusion of indigenous knowledge and modern science.
d.) Promoters of the value of indigenous ways of knowing usually adduce only a few examples to support their case. The article gives only two examples, and neither is all that convincing.
The first involves the use of the Madagascar periwinkle around the world to treat diabetes and other maladies. Although the article notes that
Extracts from the flower are used as a remedy for eye infections in the Caribbean, where Damian Cohall, a Jamaican-born ethnopharmacologist at the University of the West Indies in Cave Hill, Barbados, learnt of it through interviews with elder members of local communities. Research in his laboratory identified compounds in the plant that inhibit an enzyme that regulates insulin levels and could lead to treatments for type 2 diabetes (see go.nature.com/3djmhyr). “The fact that these anti-diabetic properties are known in traditional practices validates the Indigenous science that existed well before Western knowledge systems,” Cohall says.
Well, we wouldn’t know if the drug really does have antidiabetic effects on people without a double-blind test, eminently possible here. Has such a test been done? Indeed, and it failed (see below). But this is the case for all of the many medicines derived from plants: there are reports that plants are useful (though some are not) in treating diseases, and then it’s given over to modern science to identify the relevant compounds and do the double-blind test to see if they work. In fact, Wikipedia says this about the Madagascar periwinkle:
It was not found to be anti-diabetic in double blinded controlled studies
Well, so much for Dr. Cohall . . . .
However, the isolation of periwinkle compounds turned up two: vincristine and vinblastine, that are still used in chemotherapy. The Wikipedia article says this about the flower: “Its use as an anti-tumor, anti-mutagenic agent is well documented in the ancient Ayurveda system of medicine and in the folk culture of Madagascar and Southern Africa.” So this is a good example of how indigenous knowledge can be turned into something really efficacious in modern medicine (I’m doubtful if they really cured cancer using the flower in indigenous cultures, and what are “mutagenic effects in ayurvedic medicine”????). But yes, if this is accurate, indigenous knowledge has led to knowledge that helps people worldwide.
The other example is that of the Sámi people, who live by herding reindeer. Those reindeer feed on lichen. The lichens are killed unless they are under snow, and the Sámi have a good idea about where lichen “pastures” can be found at different times. But this indigenous knowledge is said to be thwarted by arrogant forestry companies, who, as I said, get peeved with the variability in appearance of lichens.
Further, one bit of “co-production” of knowledge produced by combining modern science and Sami knowledge is bizarre:
Controlled burning is commonly used to manage forests around the world, but is not widely used by Swedish forestry companies. Although there is no evidence to suggest that the Sámi have traditionally used the technique, the idea that fire can benefit biodiversity is conserved in the Indigenous language. “There is a Sámi word, roavve, that means ‘a forest that has burnt in the past’ but also ‘a forest that is rich in lichen’,” says Roturier.
Lars Nutti, a Sámi reindeer herder from the Sirges community, recognized the significance of this linguistic artefact. “Roavve is a description of an old sparse forest with good grazing for reindeer,” he says, “but recreating such forests is largely impossible with today’s policies.” After an expanse of forest burnt down near where Nutti lives, he approached Roturier with the idea of running a research project to investigate whether dispersing lichen in this area would result in healthier pastures. “And the results actually showed that it worked very well, beyond our expectations,” says Roturier.
So here we have a potential improvement from one smart Sámi, but an improvement that doesn’t derive from indigenous Sámi knowledge. The ethnic group never did controlled burns. Rather, it came from modern knowledge: one Sámi realized that controlled burns have been used in other places to good effect—as a substitute for natural burns that no longer occur. It’s still not clear whether the Sámi will actually burn their forests to raise the titer of lichens, but this isn’t really a demonstration of indigenous knowledge; rather, it’s a potentially good idea derived from knowledge coming from modern conservationists.
And that’s it: the only two examples in the whole article. There is much palaver about the coequality of indigenous knowledge and science, but a dearth of examples of how they can work together to cause benefit the world.
This kind of hype is typical. It may be baffling if you haven’t encountered this species of article before, but realize that its main purpose is not to advance science but to advance people considered marginalized. When the author says this:
Most importantly, researchers should respect the equal value of Indigenous and local knowledge. . . Neither method is necessarily better, but both can add to our understanding of the world,
the proper response is “no they are not equal. Sure, indigenous knowledge can add to our understanding of the world, but modern science can add infinitely more.”
There’s a book to be written about all of this stuff, but I’m not going to write it, and no publisher in the world would touch it.
I don’t think that the purpose is to advance marginalized people. I think they are just useful for impeaching Western civilization. The larger project is to destroy the idea of objectivity and universality. Once that is done, the ostensible objects of the effort will be discarded. This is nothing else than the oppressor/oppressed trope aiming to destroy “bourgeois” society. We’ve seen how this plays out.
I don’t think we should discount another underlying purpose here: to advance spirituality and the sort of soft virtues (cooperation, simplicity, harmony) which are manifested in nostalgic beliefs about what small tribes in earlier ages were like. Life was better then; we were happier.
The Noble Savage trope doesn’t seem to die when knowledge advances, possibly because it pulls on emotional strings and hits psychological triggers dating back to when we lay safe in our mother’s arms. Western-Science-as-a-Bully harks back to when the older kids considered us worthless and ignored us. Put some institutional power behind these primitive goals and resentments and watch the candle in the dark begin to gutter.
“The larger project is to destroy the idea of objectivity and universality.” Which is already a cornerstone of postmodernist thinking, is it not?
I ask myself more and more, specifically, who is funding these highly conformist, repetitive, and redundant pieces.
Indeed, these pieces target potent emotional responses – especially the notion that if society hadn’t developed in the decrepit way that it did – especially because of the sins the reader committed to facilitate that development – we would be dancing and rejoicing in harmony with nature instead of a polluted hellscape of grief and misery (was that Steven Pinker that said Progressives Hate Progress?)
Wilfred Reilly has a chapter on that desire to return to a Garden of Eden notion in Lies My Liberal Teacher Told Me.
While I’m at it (see Monday Hili Dialogue) Here’s the chapter title :
[quote]
Lie #3: “Native Americans Were ‘Peaceful People Who Spent All Day Dancing'”
[end quote ]
When I took a class on Evolution in college, I believe one point made was that Indigenous people in North America caused the extinction of at least a couple of species of the giant fauna that existed during the last Upper Paleolithic Ice Age by overhunting them. So much for being “in harmony” with nature.
In Australia (giant kangaroos, wombats) and New Zealand (moa, haast eagle) too.
I add Madagascar. Giant lemurs, giant fossa, malagasy hippos and elephant birds were hunted to extinction by the immigating Indigenous people.
On the Pacific islands, many endemic bird species were wiped out by hunting or by rats, pigs or dogs that the Polynesian colonisers brought with them.
We need not think only of the contrast between modern science and indigenous knowledge. As early as Leeuwenhoek’s discoveries with lenses, scientists began to be able to observe and experiment on microscopic living things. This made possible a vast development of scientific knowledge, totally beyond anything ever done by indigenous people. Western science depends on the development of methods of observation and experiment tied in with scientific theory, just as Leeuwenhoek’s work depended on optical theory, and the understanding of what you can accomplish with lenses. Methods of observation and experiment have developed enormously since the early days, but already Leeuwenhoek’s discoveries about microbes surpassed anything done by indigenous peoples.
Re “the understanding of what you can accomplish with lenses”: beside the microscope—which underlies much of modern medicine—there was of course
also the telescope, which revolutionized our picture of the universe. Moreover, the invention and production of eyeglasses— around 1400, first in Florence and Venice—enabled many individuals to work past middle age, significantly increasing the number of skilled artisans. One might argue that lens-grinding
craftwork underlies the scientific revolution, and possibly the Renaissance. But
few point out that the glass-working technology was itself a sort of folk tradition, INDIGENOUS to northern Italy in the late medieval period.
Does recognition of indigenous ways of knowing extend to all such people, or only to certain, special interest groups? Is modern scientific method trumped by the indigenous knowledge of an Englishman residing in England?
What principles, specifically, do these indigenous “scientists” follow?
Do the folks whose ancestors came from other lands ever gain the knowledge possessed by the indigenous? Do you have to find a Celt to get at indigenous knowledge in England? Is an Angle a too recent arrival? Surely, the knowledge possessed by the descendents of Vikings is questionable. What about the Normans – are they too late to have gathered such information, and in a short time? Can a recent arrival from India ever hope to possess such knowledge? (Yeah, I know the English are a mixed lot, to varying degrees.)
Before modern science we also had indigenous science. Why did modern science replace indigenous science? Because it explained a whole lot of stuff that indigenous science could not explain. Too many examples to mention. Modern science succeeded because it explained stuff. Simple as that.
Your paragraph regarding the toolbox of modern science says it all:
“[Indigenous knowledge] lacks many of the tools of modern science that have made the latter far more effective: hypothesis testing, pervasive doubt and criticism, the use of statistics and mathematics, controlled experiments, and so on.”
That’s the crux of the matter. Observations made by indigenous peoples are much the same as observations made by scientists. Lots of studies in science involve observations in nature: the layering of the rocks, the species present at a locality, the map of stars in the sky. But indigenous and modern science seem to diverge sharply when it comes to the methodologies used in evaluating observations: hypothesis testing using statistics, double-blind testing, falsification, laboratory and field experimentation, the extensive use of technology, and all the rest. These methodologies work in partnership with empirical observations to give modern science the power it has to help us understand the world.
This is a reply to Norman Gilinsky saying that observations made by indigenous peoples are much the same as observations made by scientists, the difference being in the methods used to evaluate the observations. But this plays down the significance of observational techniques used in the sciences, for example using electron microscopes. The development of high-tech observational techniques is an essential feature of modern science. Scientists don’t simply observe nature with their eyes and other sense organs, and then evaluate the observations, but create tools that make sophisticated kinds of observation possible.
Ppp
Yes. Tools that let us visualize the unseeable.
My difficulty with believing that the vinca alkaloids (vincristine and vinblastine) were known or suspected to be useful in cancer before scientists figured it out is the same as for all these folk remedies: prove to me that there was enough active ingredient in the indigenous preparations to produce the effect that patients today enjoy (or put up with) from the refined pharmaceutical. (Yes, opium and belladonna, OK. I’m not convinced the indigenous knew about cinchona bark for malaria specifically. There is a Chinese remedy that works: qinghaosu.)
A common side effect of vincristine is peripheral neuropathy. Most people who’ve had a full course for the treatment of Hodgkin disease or non-Hodgkin lymphoma will have permanent painful paresthesia in the feet. This dose-limiting toxicity requires that it be given with three other drugs to treat these cancers. The likelihood that an Ayurvedic healer would be able to give enough raw periwinkle to see even a modest impact on the “tumor” — vincristine only works in some cancers, not at all in others, so a diagnosis is necessary — without inflicting neuropathy on his patients is so remote to be non-sensical. At a minimum, all his patients would be suing him for causing nothing but sore and numb feet to no visible purpose.
The (wrong) folk belief that periwinkle improved diabetes led to the discovery of the anti-cancer drugs. That’s just happenstance. Pharmaceutical companies extract thousands and thousands of chemicals from natural sources and screen them for a variety of useful effects: anti-cancer is just one hit among many misses. And only a few of the hits ever make it to market. Ayurvedic mysticism didn’t drive vincristine along. Anything that comes from a natural source known to indigenous people can be claimed in retrospect by them to have had traditionally accepted benefits for symptoms vaguely similar to diseases that western doctors diagnose. (Much of settler medicine was little better until about 1910 when the Flexner Report put medical education on a scientific footing. But at least there was a science to appeal to.)
“Indigenous “ways of knowing” are equivalent to modern science and should be respected and taught as such.”
Fine, demons must exist then. And witchcraft. Most cultures have some concept of demons and witchcraft, and probably still ascribe all manner of ills to them.
So hopefully, psychology textbooks are going to start to have sections on demonic possession as a possible cause for bipolar disorder, as this is a very important piece of indigenous knowledge.
Statistics too…why limit explanations of bad events to the study of probability, when witchcraft and curses are equally good explanations?
How many articles has Nature published by any indigenous author using indigenous knowledge-creations methodologies? If some so-called indigenous knowledge can solve global warming, then publish the proposal. I’d love to see it.
This is all performative lip service until they actually take this step.
It’s all about a way for those not in the scientific community to grab power.
The social pressure to fit in with the progressive crowd for the editors at Nature is stronger than the desire to stick to the science (also see the DEI piece in Nature).
Thinking about this more, when you get down to our roots, aren’t we all some type of indigenous people? It just happened that some branches developed better ways of recording and building knowledge based on good explanations than others.
Certainly for the physical sciences, the scientific method is vastly superior to folk knowledge simply by distinguishing between which conclusions are reliable and repeatable. Mathematics seems the key here.
However, in the social sciences, I don’t agree. The efforts to apply scientific methods to human behavior, whether individual or group behavior, has failed to surpass the insights of Buddhist philosophers from thousands of years ago.
In recent years we’ve seen laudable efforts by some social scientists and writers to incorporate those ideas into modern science and that seems a worthwhile endeavor. Psychology and Psychiatry particularly got off to a bad start by taking Freudian and Jungian ideas about mysterious forces in our brains as a starting point.
We all know that scientists can be wrong, and the good ones will admit it when they are. But I have never seen the proponents of ‘indigenous knowledge’ claim that this can be wrong too. The herbaceous concoction that is supposed to cure malaria may do nothing; the initiation rite that is supposed to prepare youngsters for adult life may cause lifelong trauma.
China and Japan were never colonized, and what happened to them? I would say in these cases they have mingled their cultures and practices with the west, and definitely western style science and medicine dominates in those countries. Would they agree that their indigenous knowledge and practices were always equal to those of the west?
It makes no sense does it? And of course, for many centuries the West was behind the East! I wonder if these purveyors of “all cultures are equal” are also the same people who would never fail to point out how backward the West once was.
We used to call this Natural History and it was often the 1st chapter of Ecology textbooks. So the starting point for many modern science experiments, not really an different way of knowing. One sad thing is that those who push the equality of indigenous knowledge, perhaps feel that indigenous students just cant compete or have the ability to carry out the biochem undergraduate degree, followed by a PhD examining how a species might have anticancer properties. They can, so why isnt that being pushed? If their “different way of knowing” is = to modern science, that seems to be less of an incentive to do modern science. John McWhoter has spoken about this.
Here is the McWhorter piece – https://johnmcwhorter.substack.com/p/no-more-tests-we-should-measure-black?subscribe_prompt=free
Substitute black with indigenous, regardless, its just a lowering of standards.
Not just just: it’s an inclusive and equitable lowering of standards….
There’s a great phrase for that:
“The soft bigotry of low expectations.”
— Michael Gerson (George W. Bush speech writer)
“a.) There are indigenous “ways of knowing” that are every bit as good as modern (they often say “Western”) science. They are different, but produce knowledge just as solid.”
I see the repeated reference to “ways of knowing” in these and similar articles, but it seems that in every instance the language that follows discusses instances of indigenous knowledge itself, rather than their supposedly unique ways of knowing. Indeed, the only suggestions I ever see of indigenous “ways of knowing” are observation and trial and error, which are precisely the methods of modern science and not anything unique to indigenous people. If there are other “ways of knowing” that are being presented as valid (perhaps knowledge derived from trances or reading tea leaves) they’re never mentioned and — like the two examples I’ve given — the suggestion that those methods can derive valid and useful “knowledge” is preposterous and indefensible.
I don’t think the indigenous theory of disease has helped much – that mostly descended into witchcraft and curses from gods or one’s enemies. Many indigenous people lacked metallurgy skills beyond the use of ornamental metal, instead using bone, stone, and wood. Hard to conduct electricity through those though.
Why do so many indigenous people seek the forbidden fruits of Western science then, like: air conditioning, solar power, well pumps, phones, antibiotics and vaccines, lighting, and internal combustion engines for transportation and agriculture? Why aren’t they satisfied with their own discoveries and methods of their own culture? If indigenous science is so valuable, why do they so readily forsake it then?
Scientific appropriation by non-Westerners strikes me as unseemly and hypocritical…we should take it all back as their science is just as good, or that’s their claim (or Nature’s claim).
Conversely, I’m pretty sure I can thrive just fine after relinquishing all breakthroughs from indigenous science even if we grant the discovery of vincristine.
We seem to be going through a period where we take the mind-boggling products of science, developed mainly in the West, for granted.
Ho hum, I can carry around a hand-sized computer that can access all of the music ever produced and all of the books ever written.
I can fly safely from one end of the planet to another in a journey measured in hours. Yawn.
Meh, I can have major surgery to repair vital internal organs and keep me alive.
But when presented with some pedestrian bit of knowledge from an indigenous tribe, we must gasp in amazement and place it on equal footing to space travel.
This apparently is what it means to be enlightened.
Papers on indigenous “ways of knowing” ignore that the West has it own history of indigenous knowledge. For example before Leeuwenhoek’s discoveries I understand spoilage and fermentation were attributed to spontaneous generation and illnesses were commonly blamed on “bad air” or the four humors. But I haven’t see the authors of these papers argue for bringing back that knowledge as co-equal with Western science. Let’s see them argue for geocentrism, astrology, alchemy, the four humors and a flat earth.
Don’t give them ideas. Astrology, alchemy, the four humors, and the flat earth will appear on the curriculum of postmodernism, queer theory, and postcolonial theory before you can shake a rattle.
“…shake a rattle” ROFL
Indeed, and let’s not forget about folk meteorology and climate science present in many European traditions.
Red sky at night, shepherd’s delight.
Red sky in the morning, shepherd’s warning.
Bored and tired of the lets make medicine a zero sum game, “mines bigger than yours” pathetic language to make a point for ideology.
If there is a value in a particular plant, method, then let’s make use of it, virtue signalling over it never cured anyone. If anything it is divisive and clouds the objective.
That book to be written?
Perhaps not, but perhaps yes to listing all the indigenous contribution and dead ends to date.
Show it is not any more “special” than contributions made by focused, dedicated scientists of all peoples on the damn planet, those trying to make life just that more bearable, inspired and of purpose, that is, to help others when a body is compromised. Healing I think it’s called…
From the article:
…says Roué. “They don’t speak about pasture like a botanist does -— as a permanent mix that is more or less good for an animal — they speak through their experience of ever-changing conditions.”
I don’t believe any botanist regards a pasture as permanent (if any botanists are out there, feel free to correct me).
My family owned grazing livestock and horses for years. We worked with a university extension service to regularly review our pastures to ensure that they met the animals’ needs, and that included watching the ever-changing conditions, as well as changing up the mix to ensure that the land remained fertile and productive while still meeting the needs of the animals. Not only that, but I also daily looked over our land to check the conditions. It was never a static or permanent condition. It was done observationally and scientifically.
She also mentions that the Sami look at how available lichen is to reindeer given the conditions of snow and wind (implying that we less-enlightened westerners do not). What a load of BS. Every farmer, every rancher, knows how available grazing plants are given the amount of snow or ice or standing water and adjust feeding by either moving the animals or supplementing the feed. The Sami ain’t special in this regard.
Her strawman statement displays a complete ignorance of facts and this article is infuriating.
Lamentable, really, that so many triumphs of indigenous Ways of Knowing have
been overlooked. For example, there was the widespread use of Hypoxis plants
(African potato) to treat HIV (as well as everything else). And we can’t forget the
surgical treatment of trepanning, boring a hole in the patient’s skull to
let out the evil spirits. Numerous skulls excavated in Mexico indicate that this
Way of Knowing was employed in pre-Columbian Latinx medicine.
I know quite well, and it cannot be disputed, that every time I spill salt and throw it over my left shoulder, into the eyes of the devil, he has never, ever, managed to attack me.
Homer: Not a bear in sight. The Bear Patrol must be working like a charm.
Lisa: That’s specious reasoning, Dad.
Homer: Thank you, dear.
Lisa: By your logic I could claim that this rock keeps tigers away.
Homer: Oh, how does it work?
Lisa: It doesn’t work.
Homer: Uh-huh.
Lisa: It’s just a stupid rock.
Homer: Uh-huh.
Lisa: But I don’t see any tigers around, do you?
Homer: Lisa, I want to buy your rock.
I think this is your Oscar Allan
https://www.zest.science/blog/functional-foods-for-longevity
https://www.zest.science/about/team
Shamans or doctors, who do these enlightened authors take their sick family members to? Say one thing, do the other. Hypocrites. Kasich keeps telling people that the Democrats are on the wrong side of the 80% questions and I’m guessing all of the people who believe this nonsense are democrats. Keep on losing. You deserve it democrats. Get back to normal or go extinct.
What annoys me most is that this article takes up space in a leading journal when there is more important data to present from other scientific disciplines.
PCC(E) writes:
“There’s a book to be written about all of this stuff, but I’m not going to write it, and no publisher in the world would touch it.”
I OFTEN think this on every reportage of yourself or the great Luana.
Why not? You’re utterly qualified to write it, you’ve BEEN doing a lot of the research over the years b/c I’ve read so right here.
And you’re used to blowback from the religious right and even now, from the woke left. You counter idiocy with panache! And while your old publishers wouldn’t touch it, I think there’s more of a market for this now than, say, 5-10 years ago.
There’s Passage Press for eg.
You have the tools, the knowledge, experience and abilities. Both of you.
“War is the common cry, pick up your swords and fly!”
Led Zeppelin, “Battle of Evermore”
D.A.
NYC
CAPITALISM tends to help this dilemma.
Some time ago I wrote about “Traditional Chinese Medicine” being downgraded in Taiwan (as opposed to the commie pukes in the PRC)
Taiwan Nearly Cured of Traditional Chinese Medicine
https://democracychronicles.org/traditional-chinese-medicine/
“Ways of knowing” aren’t competitive in the marketplace. Only academia and activism. Or if your lefty gvt (lookin’ at you NZ!) is captured.
D.A.
NYC
Edward Ernst, former professor of Complementary Medicine at the University of Exeter (Uk), whilst retired, blogs regularly on studies in alternative medicine and might have been a victim of cancel culture. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edzard_Ernst
His blog is here https://edzardernst.com/