7 ms·

Indigenous Myth and Science: From Egypt to New Zealand

30 points by leephillips 5y ago

b215826 5y ago
Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29441050 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29441050
hw-guy 5y ago
Just wow. I'm embarrassed for New Zealand. An American analogy would be if the National Academy of Science were taken over by Christian creationists, and the teaching of evolution were condemned as "hurtful" etc.
- sarsway 5y ago
  It seems to be the other way around though. Modern scientists getting upset for schools teaching creation myths. To be honest I think it's a bit arrogant to say there's no value in these myth and dismiss them as nothing but fairy tales. Because they tend to delve deep into philosophy, raise questions of what we are, and what it means to be here, and there's definitely value in studying these kind of things. Obviously evolution should be taught as well, but it's a narrow mindset to assume we actually have it all figured out, can proclaim an objective truth about our existence, and everything else is just non-sense. Because you have to admit, there are so many things we don't really know, and we can't be pretentious, like nothing ever could possibly challenge the paradigm of our current understanding. Like for example the picture of the pyramids in the blog post, how did those exactly came to be? Well nobody knows. Another thing that nobody knows, is how exactly atoms and particles work, and it really demonstrate the fragile legs on which we're standing here. It means we don't actually have working model of our reality. Which is pretty big deal if you want to proclaim things as true. Not to come across as too wacky, but some of these old spiritual texts are really interesting, they don't have to be taken at face value, but there's some buried wisdom there that makes them worth mentioning in schools I think.
  - hw-guy 5y ago
    I agree about the spiritual part. Many people get wisdom, inspiration, etc. from the Bible. But people who use the Genesis timeline to calculate the age, composition, and shape of the earth, or the emergence of living species, are considered fringe in the U.S. In New Zealand, similar traditions coming from the Maori are considered unassailable dogma, and skeptics are regarded as heretics to be condemned.
  - cycomanic 5y ago
    Sure we can talk about mythicism and religion in religion class or maybe philosophy class, but keep them out of science classes, because they certainly are not science. And it is not arrogance to say that religion is not an equivalent system for explaining the world.
- InitialLastName 5y ago
  > An American analogy would be if the National Academy of Science were taken over by Christian creationists, and the teaching of evolution were condemned as "hurtful" etc. The subset of people in the US who would be willing to push that agenda are neither insubstantial nor marginalized from political power (in recent memory they've been within an unhealthy septuagenarian's heartbeat of the presidency).
  - hw-guy 5y ago
    Maybe they are not marginalized from political power in the civic realm, but they are certainly considered outliers in the academic world (aside from a few evangelical colleges).
cmrdporcupine 5y ago
The problem is that scientists don't just do science, they're people. They have ideological biases of their own, and they're often not corrected because they're systemic and entrenched. And because of these biases they often don't listen to evidence or voices that doesn't fit pre-existing concerns. Especially in "softer" or social sciences like archaeology / anthropology. Example: "Clovis first" settlement of the North America vigorously drowned out other voices, sometimes with aggressive nasty personal politics (read about how how Tom Dillehay was treated personally about his discoveries at Monte Verde sometime, got pretty nasty). All the while indigenous Americans were insisting in various capacities that they had been much longer. And lo and behold, archaeology is finally starting to 'discover' these facts, but in reality much of the evidence has been here all along (though a lot of it is probably underwater), it just required looking for it and not immediately discounting its possibility. And yes, this doesn't mean that "science" is wrong or the scientific method intrinsically flawed. And usually these things shake out eventually. But I don't think there's anything wrong with shaking people a bit and asking them to open their eyes and ears and accept that what they think they're doing as a pure empirical method needs to be scrutinized carefully and part of that is accepting that there are stories and knowledge out there that have all too easily been discounted with the same kind of attitude the author of this article is presenting.
- leephillips 5y ago
  I believe the author explicitly did the opposite of what you accuse him of doing. He even criticized the original letter from the seven because of its sweeping dismissal of Maori knowledge, and the likelihood that some of it is scientific in nature. His point is that science is a process, and one shouldn’t confuse traditional myth with this process. I think he’s right, even if in some cases the process, and its flawed instantiation, leads to incorrect conclusions in cases where the traditional story is correct.
  - robonerd 5y ago
    He only seems to defend Maori knowledge insofar as that knowledge was derived from informal scientific experiments. > I do take issue with one sentence in original letter by the seven scientists: “Indigenous knowledge may indeed help advance scientific knowledge in some ways, but it is not science.” As a blanket statement this is not strictly correct. Some indigenous knowledge is scientific in nature. Surely indigenous people’s survival depended on empirical examination and trial and error testing associated with a variety of natural phenomena, including: which plants were beneficial or harmful to eat, which might provide useful medicines; how the detailed migratory behavior of animals that might serve as prey would impact on hunting success, tidal variations and annual weather cycles, to name just a few.
tombh 5y ago
> There is no such thing as Western Science, Eastern Science, Chinese Science, or Indigenous Science. There is just Science ... Of course we all understand that. But isn't the reality that Science is skewed towards Science That Gets Funding? Empirical data is empirical data, but Western Science is a _particular_ selection of the empirical facts that reflects the politically-influenced institutions of science in the West right?
- leephillips 5y ago
  Science is neither data nor a collection of facts. As Krauss points out, it’s a process for accumulating reliable knowledge.
- cmrdporcupine 5y ago
  Exactly. There's "science" and then there's "Science(tm)". Nothing wrong with the scientific method. But there's lots wrong with plenty of scientists. In the long run it might work out, but it requires vigorous critique and engagement to shake out some of the biases. And so attitude is important here.
rayiner 5y ago
Maybe this is me being a 90s kid, but the interregnum between when you couldn’t say factual things because it could upset non-falsifiable Christian beliefs and when you can’t say factual things because it upsets non-falsifiable beliefs of other sorts was weirdly short.
- mc32 5y ago
  I hope this comes to pass to become but a pox on history. This incarnation, pun intended, has greater sway amongst the elites and those in the position of promulgating and legitimizing these positions. It’s a bit concerning that these aren’t your traditional uneducated proles espousing these views but rather highly educated elites. This is what we call ideology. It's not out of "provincial ignorance," for example.
  - rayiner 5y ago
    This is the critical distinction. I can process most of the anti-vax stuff going on, etc., by thinking about how people in my dad's village in Bangladesh would react to things. At the end of the day, folks in rural Georgia who think the government wants to tag you with an Obama chip have a lot less power than the professors at Ivy League universities that mint almost all of our economic and political elites.
robonerd 5y ago
I broadly agree with the points he is making, but I have a few bones to pick. First though, I appreciate his definition of science: "Science: a process that allows us to understanding how the world works by careful empirical investigation supplemented by rigorous theoretical analysis and predictions that are then subject to additional empirical testing." This is well stated. However he unfortunately he later states "I would argue that there is only one kind of knowledge, at least about the real world, and that is empirical knowledge." This goes entirely too far, it seems to reject not just the existence of a priori knowledge, but also intuition derived from the shared experience of being human, knowledge derived from informal experience, etc. He's strayed into scientism; the belief that all truth is exclusively discovered through science. This is a common belief system for 'engineery-types', but it often leads people astray when they ignore and eschew qualitative analysis and focus exclusively on empirical quantitative data. This was McNamara's fallacy; he thought he could win a war by collecting enough quantitative data and crunching numbers, ignoring any consideration that didn't lend itself to numerical analysis as unscientific. He was subsequently blindsided by public sentiment in Vietnam and America, and lost the war. A few examples of knowledge that isn't empirical: Using your shared humanity to intuit what somebody else is feeling, in order to have compassion for them. Creating art that you know is aesthetically pleasing, without first performing any empirical analysis of what that even means. Knowing that all humans deserve human rights.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- elliottkember 5y ago
  I think your three examples are all subjective statements, and not objective knowledge. You can't know that something is intrinsically aesthetically pleasing. You can say that a painting is aesthetically pleasing to someone (or many people) but without opinionated viewers, it cannot be described as such. Gravity, on the other hand, works even if nobody is present.
  - robonerd 5y ago
    > I think your three examples are all subjective statements, and not objective knowledge. They aren't empirical knowledge, which is the point. They are nevertheless knowledge in the sense that is relative to humans. Another example: I accidentally rear-end somebody at a traffic light. He jumps out of his car hopping mad and storms towards me. I know he is angry, but how do I know that? I know that because of my qualitative assessments of the situational context and his body language. There is no objective empirical analysis going on in this situation, but nevertheless I know what's going on.
photochemsyn 5y ago
The whole thing seems rather overblown. In terms of natural observations of the world around them and the use of a rational process to measure time, Maoris appear to have done the same kind of things all other cultures have done - made measurements and used astronomical observations to measure time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C4%81tauranga_M%C4%81ori#Distance_and_Mathematics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C4%81tauranga_M%C4%81ori#Dis... Other aspects of the issue seem more like social choice - i.e. 'free-market economic theory' as practiced today is no more 'scientific' or 'mathematically sound' than Maori Matauranga social notions about how best to organize societies and 'pursue happiness' - perhaps they have different notions of what happiness means, is all.
- Manuel_D 5y ago
  Sure. But things like evolution, the big bang theory, and the formation of the solar system is a bit more sound than Rangi and Papa creating the world. Maori culture absolutely should be taught - in social studies classes, just like how we teach about Zeus and Osiris but draw a distinction between that and science.
  - photochemsyn 5y ago
    I really liked how Feynman discussed Mayan astronomy - they had a higly accurate calendar based on detailed astronomical observations, which made pretty accurate predictions - but they didn't have a very good model, i.e. the notions of planets in space orbiting the sun had nothing to do with their system. Now, was the Mayan calendar a scientific system or not? It had observations and predictions, after all. It's entirely possible the some of the scientific models we now use are similar in nature to the Mayan calendar, even though they're based on accurate observations and make good predictions. It's an interesting concept, in any case.
    - Manuel_D 5y ago
      Right, plenty of early calendar systems formed the basis of early astronomy. It's fair to call that science. But calling mythological creation stories science is not. Rangi and Papa are no more scientific than Cronus and Gaia. It's literally teaching creationism, just a different creation story than the Judeo-Christian one.
soco 5y ago
This is exactly the kind of stupidity which gives fuel to the rightwing. Who gained anything from this persecution of scientists? Qui prodest? Did the Maori gain anything? Or just some "pure champions" got the opportunity to hammer their chests to impress their mates, the hell with the rest of the world?
yk 5y ago
The author gives quite a few examples what science supposedly is not, however doesn't really say what science is. From the declaration of totalizing aspiration, "I would argue that there is only one kind of knowledge, at least about the real world, and that is empirical knowledge," it seems that he would get into trouble trying to differentiate an account of Maori crafts and effective field theories. Thing is, Maoris were perfectly capable of building functional boats, and if that is science, then it is not clear why it shouldn't be taught in a science class. On the other hand, if science is the way to some upper case Truth, then effective field theory, which is probably the most mainstream understanding of the standard model, does quite explicitly not make such claims. It just claims to be a low energy approximation. So, in that case the question is what should be taught in a science class. > But the more worrisome assertion is that the group of seven’s letter had “caused "considerable hurt and dismay" among staff and students”, as if that matters. Now, this transforms Krauss from someone who is merely wrong to someone who is an idiot.
- cycomanic 5y ago
  The question is, does science contradict how maories build boats? The question is not if Maori had incredible seafaring skills and knowledge about navigation. The question is Maori mythsticism an equally valid system for explaning the world? If you believe in this relativism, than the only conclusion is that the fundamental Christian genesis is also equally as valid and we should also teach creation in science classes. I strongly reject this view.
  - robonerd 5y ago
    Science classes should be reserved for teaching scientific things. I think you, I and Krauss would all agree on that much. I wish it were uncontroversial, but evidently it isn't. However Krauss seems to goes further. If knowledge is asserted to only come from scientific means, and if the purpose of schooling is to impart knowledge, that seems to leave little room for classes which don't purport to be science classes in the first place. You could presumably make room for these classes through twisted logic along the lines of "Actually English Literature is science because we're making empirical observations about the words written on this paper...", but I don't think there is much real utility in this line of reasoning. It's much simpler to simply accept there are some subjects that have value yet aren't science.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
karpierz 5y ago
> The suggestion in the report that science has been used to promote the dominance of Eurocentric views is a particularly egregious example of this misunderstanding. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_racism#Ideological_applications https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_racism#Ideological_... > There is just Science: a process that allows us to understanding how the world works by careful empirical investigation supplemented by rigorous theoretical analysis and predictions that are then subject to additional empirical testing. I take issue with this definition. It uses a lot of words which seem meaningful, but are just arbitrary thresholds: "careful", "rigorous", "testing". How do I know if I'm doing "careful empirical investigation" or just "empirical investigation"? Am I being rigourous enough to be "Science"? How do I tell if my "testing" is valid? Is it "Science" if I think parachutes work? There's evidence, but it could simply be a placebo.

30 points by leephillips 5y ago

Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29441050 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29441050

Just wow. I'm embarrassed for New Zealand. An American analogy would be if the National Academy of Science were taken over by Christian creationists, and the teaching of evolution were condemned as "hurtful" etc.

sarsway 5y ago
It seems to be the other way around though. Modern scientists getting upset for schools teaching creation myths. To be honest I think it's a bit arrogant to say there's no value in these myth and dismiss them as nothing but fairy tales. Because they tend to delve deep into philosophy, raise questions of what we are, and what it means to be here, and there's definitely value in studying these kind of things. Obviously evolution should be taught as well, but it's a narrow mindset to assume we actually have it all figured out, can proclaim an objective truth about our existence, and everything else is just non-sense. Because you have to admit, there are so many things we don't really know, and we can't be pretentious, like nothing ever could possibly challenge the paradigm of our current understanding. Like for example the picture of the pyramids in the blog post, how did those exactly came to be? Well nobody knows. Another thing that nobody knows, is how exactly atoms and particles work, and it really demonstrate the fragile legs on which we're standing here. It means we don't actually have working model of our reality. Which is pretty big deal if you want to proclaim things as true. Not to come across as too wacky, but some of these old spiritual texts are really interesting, they don't have to be taken at face value, but there's some buried wisdom there that makes them worth mentioning in schools I think.
- hw-guy 5y ago
  I agree about the spiritual part. Many people get wisdom, inspiration, etc. from the Bible. But people who use the Genesis timeline to calculate the age, composition, and shape of the earth, or the emergence of living species, are considered fringe in the U.S. In New Zealand, similar traditions coming from the Maori are considered unassailable dogma, and skeptics are regarded as heretics to be condemned.
- cycomanic 5y ago
  Sure we can talk about mythicism and religion in religion class or maybe philosophy class, but keep them out of science classes, because they certainly are not science. And it is not arrogance to say that religion is not an equivalent system for explaining the world.
InitialLastName 5y ago
> An American analogy would be if the National Academy of Science were taken over by Christian creationists, and the teaching of evolution were condemned as "hurtful" etc. The subset of people in the US who would be willing to push that agenda are neither insubstantial nor marginalized from political power (in recent memory they've been within an unhealthy septuagenarian's heartbeat of the presidency).
- hw-guy 5y ago
  Maybe they are not marginalized from political power in the civic realm, but they are certainly considered outliers in the academic world (aside from a few evangelical colleges).

cmrdporcupine 5y ago

The problem is that scientists don't just do science, they're people. They have ideological biases of their own, and they're often not corrected because they're systemic and entrenched. And because of these biases they often don't listen to evidence or voices that doesn't fit pre-existing concerns. Especially in "softer" or social sciences like archaeology / anthropology. Example: "Clovis first" settlement of the North America vigorously drowned out other voices, sometimes with aggressive nasty personal politics (read about how how Tom Dillehay was treated personally about his discoveries at Monte Verde sometime, got pretty nasty). All the while indigenous Americans were insisting in various capacities that they had been much longer. And lo and behold, archaeology is finally starting to 'discover' these facts, but in reality much of the evidence has been here all along (though a lot of it is probably underwater), it just required looking for it and not immediately discounting its possibility. And yes, this doesn't mean that "science" is wrong or the scientific method intrinsically flawed. And usually these things shake out eventually. But I don't think there's anything wrong with shaking people a bit and asking them to open their eyes and ears and accept that what they think they're doing as a pure empirical method needs to be scrutinized carefully and part of that is accepting that there are stories and knowledge out there that have all too easily been discounted with the same kind of attitude the author of this article is presenting.

leephillips 5y ago
I believe the author explicitly did the opposite of what you accuse him of doing. He even criticized the original letter from the seven because of its sweeping dismissal of Maori knowledge, and the likelihood that some of it is scientific in nature. His point is that science is a process, and one shouldn’t confuse traditional myth with this process. I think he’s right, even if in some cases the process, and its flawed instantiation, leads to incorrect conclusions in cases where the traditional story is correct.
- robonerd 5y ago
  He only seems to defend Maori knowledge insofar as that knowledge was derived from informal scientific experiments. > I do take issue with one sentence in original letter by the seven scientists: “Indigenous knowledge may indeed help advance scientific knowledge in some ways, but it is not science.” As a blanket statement this is not strictly correct. Some indigenous knowledge is scientific in nature. Surely indigenous people’s survival depended on empirical examination and trial and error testing associated with a variety of natural phenomena, including: which plants were beneficial or harmful to eat, which might provide useful medicines; how the detailed migratory behavior of animals that might serve as prey would impact on hunting success, tidal variations and annual weather cycles, to name just a few.

tombh 5y ago

> There is no such thing as Western Science, Eastern Science, Chinese Science, or Indigenous Science. There is just Science ... Of course we all understand that. But isn't the reality that Science is skewed towards Science That Gets Funding? Empirical data is empirical data, but Western Science is a _particular_ selection of the empirical facts that reflects the politically-influenced institutions of science in the West right?

leephillips 5y ago
Science is neither data nor a collection of facts. As Krauss points out, it’s a process for accumulating reliable knowledge.
cmrdporcupine 5y ago
Exactly. There's "science" and then there's "Science(tm)". Nothing wrong with the scientific method. But there's lots wrong with plenty of scientists. In the long run it might work out, but it requires vigorous critique and engagement to shake out some of the biases. And so attitude is important here.

rayiner 5y ago

Maybe this is me being a 90s kid, but the interregnum between when you couldn’t say factual things because it could upset non-falsifiable Christian beliefs and when you can’t say factual things because it upsets non-falsifiable beliefs of other sorts was weirdly short.

mc32 5y ago
I hope this comes to pass to become but a pox on history. This incarnation, pun intended, has greater sway amongst the elites and those in the position of promulgating and legitimizing these positions. It’s a bit concerning that these aren’t your traditional uneducated proles espousing these views but rather highly educated elites. This is what we call ideology. It's not out of "provincial ignorance," for example.
- rayiner 5y ago
  This is the critical distinction. I can process most of the anti-vax stuff going on, etc., by thinking about how people in my dad's village in Bangladesh would react to things. At the end of the day, folks in rural Georgia who think the government wants to tag you with an Obama chip have a lot less power than the professors at Ivy League universities that mint almost all of our economic and political elites.

robonerd 5y ago

I broadly agree with the points he is making, but I have a few bones to pick. First though, I appreciate his definition of science: "Science: a process that allows us to understanding how the world works by careful empirical investigation supplemented by rigorous theoretical analysis and predictions that are then subject to additional empirical testing." This is well stated. However he unfortunately he later states "I would argue that there is only one kind of knowledge, at least about the real world, and that is empirical knowledge." This goes entirely too far, it seems to reject not just the existence of a priori knowledge, but also intuition derived from the shared experience of being human, knowledge derived from informal experience, etc. He's strayed into scientism; the belief that all truth is exclusively discovered through science. This is a common belief system for 'engineery-types', but it often leads people astray when they ignore and eschew qualitative analysis and focus exclusively on empirical quantitative data. This was McNamara's fallacy; he thought he could win a war by collecting enough quantitative data and crunching numbers, ignoring any consideration that didn't lend itself to numerical analysis as unscientific. He was subsequently blindsided by public sentiment in Vietnam and America, and lost the war. A few examples of knowledge that isn't empirical: Using your shared humanity to intuit what somebody else is feeling, in order to have compassion for them. Creating art that you know is aesthetically pleasing, without first performing any empirical analysis of what that even means. Knowing that all humans deserve human rights.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
elliottkember 5y ago
I think your three examples are all subjective statements, and not objective knowledge. You can't know that something is intrinsically aesthetically pleasing. You can say that a painting is aesthetically pleasing to someone (or many people) but without opinionated viewers, it cannot be described as such. Gravity, on the other hand, works even if nobody is present.
- robonerd 5y ago
  > I think your three examples are all subjective statements, and not objective knowledge. They aren't empirical knowledge, which is the point. They are nevertheless knowledge in the sense that is relative to humans. Another example: I accidentally rear-end somebody at a traffic light. He jumps out of his car hopping mad and storms towards me. I know he is angry, but how do I know that? I know that because of my qualitative assessments of the situational context and his body language. There is no objective empirical analysis going on in this situation, but nevertheless I know what's going on.

photochemsyn 5y ago

The whole thing seems rather overblown. In terms of natural observations of the world around them and the use of a rational process to measure time, Maoris appear to have done the same kind of things all other cultures have done - made measurements and used astronomical observations to measure time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C4%81tauranga_M%C4%81ori#Distance_and_Mathematics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C4%81tauranga_M%C4%81ori#Dis... Other aspects of the issue seem more like social choice - i.e. 'free-market economic theory' as practiced today is no more 'scientific' or 'mathematically sound' than Maori Matauranga social notions about how best to organize societies and 'pursue happiness' - perhaps they have different notions of what happiness means, is all.

Manuel_D 5y ago
Sure. But things like evolution, the big bang theory, and the formation of the solar system is a bit more sound than Rangi and Papa creating the world. Maori culture absolutely should be taught - in social studies classes, just like how we teach about Zeus and Osiris but draw a distinction between that and science.
- photochemsyn 5y ago
  I really liked how Feynman discussed Mayan astronomy - they had a higly accurate calendar based on detailed astronomical observations, which made pretty accurate predictions - but they didn't have a very good model, i.e. the notions of planets in space orbiting the sun had nothing to do with their system. Now, was the Mayan calendar a scientific system or not? It had observations and predictions, after all. It's entirely possible the some of the scientific models we now use are similar in nature to the Mayan calendar, even though they're based on accurate observations and make good predictions. It's an interesting concept, in any case.
  - Manuel_D 5y ago
    Right, plenty of early calendar systems formed the basis of early astronomy. It's fair to call that science. But calling mythological creation stories science is not. Rangi and Papa are no more scientific than Cronus and Gaia. It's literally teaching creationism, just a different creation story than the Judeo-Christian one.

soco 5y ago

This is exactly the kind of stupidity which gives fuel to the rightwing. Who gained anything from this persecution of scientists? Qui prodest? Did the Maori gain anything? Or just some "pure champions" got the opportunity to hammer their chests to impress their mates, the hell with the rest of the world?

yk 5y ago

The author gives quite a few examples what science supposedly is not, however doesn't really say what science is. From the declaration of totalizing aspiration, "I would argue that there is only one kind of knowledge, at least about the real world, and that is empirical knowledge," it seems that he would get into trouble trying to differentiate an account of Maori crafts and effective field theories. Thing is, Maoris were perfectly capable of building functional boats, and if that is science, then it is not clear why it shouldn't be taught in a science class. On the other hand, if science is the way to some upper case Truth, then effective field theory, which is probably the most mainstream understanding of the standard model, does quite explicitly not make such claims. It just claims to be a low energy approximation. So, in that case the question is what should be taught in a science class. > But the more worrisome assertion is that the group of seven’s letter had “caused "considerable hurt and dismay" among staff and students”, as if that matters. Now, this transforms Krauss from someone who is merely wrong to someone who is an idiot.

cycomanic 5y ago
The question is, does science contradict how maories build boats? The question is not if Maori had incredible seafaring skills and knowledge about navigation. The question is Maori mythsticism an equally valid system for explaning the world? If you believe in this relativism, than the only conclusion is that the fundamental Christian genesis is also equally as valid and we should also teach creation in science classes. I strongly reject this view.
- robonerd 5y ago
  Science classes should be reserved for teaching scientific things. I think you, I and Krauss would all agree on that much. I wish it were uncontroversial, but evidently it isn't. However Krauss seems to goes further. If knowledge is asserted to only come from scientific means, and if the purpose of schooling is to impart knowledge, that seems to leave little room for classes which don't purport to be science classes in the first place. You could presumably make room for these classes through twisted logic along the lines of "Actually English Literature is science because we're making empirical observations about the words written on this paper...", but I don't think there is much real utility in this line of reasoning. It's much simpler to simply accept there are some subjects that have value yet aren't science.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

karpierz 5y ago

> The suggestion in the report that science has been used to promote the dominance of Eurocentric views is a particularly egregious example of this misunderstanding. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_racism#Ideological_applications https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_racism#Ideological_... > There is just Science: a process that allows us to understanding how the world works by careful empirical investigation supplemented by rigorous theoretical analysis and predictions that are then subject to additional empirical testing. I take issue with this definition. It uses a lot of words which seem meaningful, but are just arbitrary thresholds: "careful", "rigorous", "testing". How do I know if I'm doing "careful empirical investigation" or just "empirical investigation"? Am I being rigourous enough to be "Science"? How do I tell if my "testing" is valid? Is it "Science" if I think parachutes work? There's evidence, but it could simply be a placebo.