9 ms·

In this world view it is not insulting to suggest non-Europeans prefer ‘other ways of knowing’ to rationality and science. This reminds me of that "racial sens

• bryanrasmussen 4y ago
  >it is not insulting to suggest non-Europeans prefer ‘other ways of knowing’ to rationality and science. yeah I got news for you about most Europeans there also.
  • zozbot234 4y ago
    How the West was won: https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/07/25/how-the-west-was-won/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/07/25/how-the-west-was-won/
    • eternalban 4y ago
      " In the 17th century, philosophers were remarking (in Latin, the universal language!) about how Descartes from France had more in common with Leibniz from Germany than either of them did with the average Frenchman or German. Nowadays I certainly have more in common with SSC readers in Finland than I do with my next-door neighbor whom I’ve never met." The crux of the issue/problem. Distribution is non-uniform and very chunky. At this point I am convinced that if there exists natural 'types' of mindset and behavior, they cross cut (far less intrinsic) ethnic and cultural boundaries.
      • bryanrasmussen 4y ago
        yeah, rationality and science are already here, but they're not evenly distributed yet. Starting to think that they might not ever be evenly distributed.
• ericjang 4y ago
  Can you link the source? My google search of "punctuality and logical objectivity were "white expectations" not to be applied to persons of color" didn't find any exact matches so I'm curious which guide you're referring to.
  • causi 4y ago
    It was actually the National Museum for African American History and Culture. https://i.imgur.com/jFSGqnl.png https://i.imgur.com/jFSGqnl.png
    • WindyMiller 4y ago
      But this doesn't say what you said, and isn't a "racial sensitivity guide" for employees.
      • causi 4y ago
        It'd been quite a while since I saw it. I misremembered.
        • yrro 4y ago
          Would you mind editing your original post with a clarification? Most will read it but not the replies...
          • fleetwoodsnack 4y ago
            The user “causi” might as well delete it. The whole premise of their top-level comment was characterizing a “racial sensitivity guide” of which they have no adequate recollection, and cannot provide evidence that it even existed as they described. A more cynical person might say they’ve injected a red herring into the thread, wasting others’ time.
        • WindyMiller 4y ago
          Fair enough. I think a lot of these concerns are based on misrememberings and misunderstandings. I think it would have been helpful to mention when you posted the link that you had misremembered it, though.
• zztop44 4y ago
  The sister comments showing that the “racial sensitivity guide” was actually a random infographic that didn’t even remotely imply what you said it did made me curious so I looked over the New Zealand syllabus, too. I can’t see anything whatsoever indicating they teach the existence of a non physical life force. What I do see is some use of te reo Māori which I expect, like any language, will influence the way that students learn chemistry. That doesn’t necessarily sound like a bad thing to me, especially given it’s one of Aotearoa New Zealand’s official languages. Edit: forgot to link the doc: https://ncea.education.govt.nz/science/chemistry-and-biology?view=learning https://ncea.education.govt.nz/science/chemistry-and-biology...
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • GameOfFrowns 4y ago
    >What I do see is some use of te reo Māori which I expect, like any language, will influence the way that students learn chemistry. Reminds me of the time when I had a software tutorial Google-translated from Farsi to English and it sounded like a magical incantation.
    • Ancapistani 4y ago
      If you’ve not seen it, I present to you the lyrics to the song “All Star”, by Smash Mouth - translated from English to Aramaic, then back to English: There was one who said unto me that the universe was going to cause me to tremble, That I am not the sharpest cutting implement in the storehouse. She had the appearance unto me as a stupid one, With her finger and her thumb In the frame of a Greek gamma upon her forehead. Behold, the years begin coming, and do not cease from coming. Fed unto the axioms, and I fell upon the earth and ran. It was not acceptable if not to live for the sake of pleasurable things. Your brain increases its wisdom, but your heart increases its stupidity. A great amount to do, a great amount to see, Therefore, there is no difficult problem if we take the streets of the backside. You will not know if you do not go. You will not shine if you do not glow. Behold currently! You are entirely a star child! Begin your power! Go! Laugh! Behold currently! You are a master of the music! Begin your singing! Acquire your wages! All that sparkles is gold! Comets alone shatter the frame!
• zozbot234 4y ago
  > has been decolonised and now invokes the concept of mauri, or life force, to give the atomic theory a new spiritual dimension. Uh, last I checked, Euro-centric biology or chemistry didn't involve talking about Wille zum Leben or élan vital. Why does 'decolonized' science need to get involved with this totally unscientific woo?
  • viraptor 4y ago
    I've definitely been taught about a few of the early ideas around biochem. Alchemy, will to live, the misunderstanding around ether in physics, the various conflicts around how life begins, and probably others I forgot. You don't learn "the unscientific woo", you learn the historical context of how we got to the current understanding.
    • TheLoafOfBread 4y ago
      Alchemy is unscientific by its nature - let's mix random substances to get gold.
      • shrthnd 4y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goethean_science https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goethean_science => https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Failure_mode_and_effects_analysis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Failure_mode_and_effects_analy...
      • viraptor 4y ago
        You missed the point. Yes, it's unscientific, (well, not entirely - the attempts given knowledge at the time were very scientific, claims of success weren't) but the historical context about how chemistry evolved is still valuable. The whole idea of why it didn't work is scientific information. We didn't learn alchemy. We learned about alchemy.
      • Joker_vD 4y ago
        ...okay, forget all the physical and chemical knowledge you have that was discovered after the year 1300 and propose a better method to learn how to produce gold. Where would you even start?
• rayiner 4y ago
  > punctuality To be fair there’s something to this. My dad told me a story of meeting a Danish person in Bangladesh (where we’re from) who observed that, given my dad’s fastidiousness about punctuality and standing in line “he probably didn’t fit in [there].” I tell my kids we got kicked out of our home country because “your grandpa couldn’t stand people showing up late to everything.”
  • Ancapistani 4y ago
    Culture != race (to the degree that “race” is a definable thing to begin with…) I was born and raised in a Southern US state, and moved to the East Coast for a job in my 20s. On my first day I showed up at 7am because I wasn’t given a start time. The next person arrived at 9:20am. I was later told “we start at 9”. Where I’m from, showing up twenty minutes after the “start time” for a job without excuse or apology would have a decent chance of getting you fired on the spot. Both places could definitely be described as “white” - and for that matter, it’s even more pronounced now that I’m working mostly for California companies. Working hours are at best a suggestion.
• gupe 4y ago
  There is a recent post by Jerry Coyne on this New Zealand issue: https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2022/11/01/richard-dawkins-is-interviewed-in-nz-on-maori-ways-of-knowing-is-grossly-misunderstood/ https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2022/11/01/richard-dawkins-is...
• hintymad 4y ago
  The western people should really lean a chapter from China. Chinese took it a great humiliation for losing the Opium Wars and for being "invaded" (by their own words) by multiple countries in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Yet, the Chinese didn't seek ridiculous terms like "decolonization of science". Instead, their moto is know your shame and you will have courage. So, their education systems kept telling students that Qing lost to the modern civilization and therefore they should learn from it. They kept telling students that Chinese was left behind in the last century because they fell behind on science and political systems. They paid great respect to modern science. They made it clear that there was no "Chinese medicine" versus "Wester medicine"[1]. There is only modern medicine and ancient medicine. Famous scientists are household names because they show up in textbooks, in popular science books, in bed stories, and in state-owned media. Nobel laureates are treated like demi-gods in China. Compared to Chinese, some people in the western worlds really do not know how to respect the great civilization pioneered by the west. [1] I was talking about the official message. Large number of Chinese people still believed in Chinese medicine
  • jhanschoo 4y ago
    Also see: Japanese modernization in the Meiji era
    • hintymad 4y ago
      Exactly. They produced one Nobel laureate a year for the past 10 years. They could compete with the US on manufacturing. They have a working democracy. And by the way, democracy was created by western elites, no? Shall we call it white-supremacy and go back to the primitive social structures? And Japanese didn't lose their culture identity. Heck, they've been exporting their culture. They didn't even need to translate their language. We say Tempura instead of deep-fried shrimps. T
• Ancapistani 4y ago
  > I went to high school and college so deep in the bible belt you could put an empty Coke can to your ear and hear banjo music and our textbooks still didn't have anything like that bullshit. I can honestly say that I do see a “spiritual dimension” to a lot of things that are accepted science. I can’t imagine trying to get that into a textbook. Science is about objective reality. Belief is by definition subjective, so it can’t be “science”. If it’s not science, it shouldn’t be in a science textbook. If you want to teach it, teach it in world religions, theology, anthropology, or philosophy. If you have to, make an essay on the topic part of “language arts”. Just don’t try to dress it up as “science”, because it’s not.
• hintymad 4y ago
  > In this world view it is not insulting to suggest non-Europeans prefer ‘other ways of knowing’ to rationality and science. What other ways? Can we all agree that there is only science or no science? What possibly can I learn from "other ways"? Case in point, what can I possibly learn from aboriginal maths, as advocated by the Seattle school board? Do they offer insights that I can understand category theories better? Do they offer insights so I can speed up my matrix multiplication? Do they offer insights so that modern mathematics can be easier to understand to undergrads? On the other hand, we didn't admire Ramanujan because he came from an "oppressed country" but because of his ingenuity in developing amazing math insights. Is that so hard to understand to the left? Can we just make peace that western culture was incredibly lucky and admirable that they invented modern science, and other cultures should catch up? What's wrong with admitting that some culture contributed more to civilization and some culture could only play cargo-cult science?
  • kaba0 4y ago
    > Is that so hard to understand to the left? What ‘left’? Let’s not bring America’s two right-wing parties into the picture.