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When Scientists “Discover” What Indigenous People Have Known for Centuries
- warrenm 3y ago>Previous accounts of avian use of fire have been dismissed or at least viewed with some skepticism I'm perpetually astonished (or, perhaps, saddened) that "indigenous knowledge" (aka "anecdotes" or "regional mythology") is so quickly dismissed by self-proclaimed "scientists" All legends, lore, mthys, etc have basis in some set of facts - many are notably closer to "reality" than modern "scientists" and our scientism-oriented society realizes
- KingOfCoders 3y ago(I don't want to dismiss peoples knowledge but talk about the scientic method). But there is a difference between science and "peoples knowledge". Accepting things that people say is not science. One would have hoped for the authors at the Smithsonian to have a better understanding of science. While the article makes wide claims of "dismissal" it doesn't provide any examples of wide spread dismissal E.g. in papers. I especially liked "[Or] we can say that the Western scientists finally caught up with Traditional Knowledge after several thousand years." If we assume science starts with Aristotle, it would be ~2k years of science, if Aristotle was ignoring this Traditional Knowledge. If we assume that scientists started with the "arrival" in Australia, it's 200 years.