Dr Liz Gordon: On science
There is an academic field of study called the philosophy of science. It is concerned essentially with what constitutes scientific endeavour, and what rules science must play by.
The work of Thomas Kuhn was dominant for many years in this field. He introduced the notion of a paradigm shift. A scientific approach can go on and on until something causes a deep disruption in our thinking, leading to fundamental new approaches to science. The Copernican revolution, for example, was triggered by the publication of a study, in 1543, that posited that the earth revolved around the sun – that the sun, not the earth, was the centre of the universe.
This hugely annoyed the Catholic Church who controlled science at the time, and had built up the theoretical edifice of the earth and the heavens based on an earth-centric model. Fortunately, Copernicus died just before his work was published, thus saving himself from a fate worse than death (and probably death anyway) at the hands of the church.
Kuhn’s view was that science built up its own edifices of discourse that are self-fulfilling and which reject, at any one time, all other views about what science is. He called this ‘normal’ science. Those working within scientific paradigms define science entirely and only by things that take place within their particular paradigm.
Current debates within the philosophy of science are about things such as the question of scientific realism. Can we posit things we cannot see as if they existed, even though their existence can only be theoretically proposed? Yes, of course we can – we do it all the time! Are there any limits to such approaches? Well not so much in the quantum world. Such debates are all within the boundaries we know as the ‘scientific method’, which defines normal science in this age.
I am interested here, then, in reviewing the letter sent in July by a number of senior academics at the University of Auckland. They basically argued that science was ‘normal’ science, in Kuhn’s terms, and other discourses of science would not do.
It was a good letter from jobbing scientists – those who go to their labs and lecture theatres, expound on what they know and burrow away on their own stuff for a lifetime. Some of them are very good at it, too. No, I am not being patronising. These people make great discoveries in their field. They do the business. But, essentially, their view of the world can be somewhat narrow.
This is what has happened in this case. Because the paradigm case of normal science is not adequate to explain the world. In my field, sociology, a lot of the work we do is interpretive and captures stuff that science cannot. We could build a person from organic bits and pieces (probably) but we could never explain things such as likes and loves, art appreciation, the love of literature, historical review, venal motives or so much else about what makes us human.
It is easy to forget this. And also easy to forget is that every culture, every group has its own science. Don Brash makes much of Māori being from the ‘stone age’, which is meant as a commentary on inferior origins. But stone age people need science too. Māori had very efficient systems for cultivating and collecting food, cooking it, defending themselves, transmitting knowledge between generations, reading the sky, winds and currents for navigation purposes. They may have used methods different to scientific norms, but the science cannot be denied.
If this was just a debate about a letter, I wouldn’t bother writing. But these views have real material effects at our largest university. They are far too few Māori professors, a difficult road for Māori graduate students and not nearly enough scientific studies taking place into Māori, our indigenous people.
The scientists who wrote that letter were wrong. This is not about parity of scientific method, but of understanding all the things that we can know about what it is to be human. Recently, scientists have been able to peer behind a black hole in space to see what is on the other side. Yet we know so little still about that unique group, Polynesian people who became the Māori of Aotearoa, and how they helped populate this fine world. Both are important in a post-colonial world, where the point is not to do things in a particular way, but to acknowledge there are more ways that we have known of doing things.
Dr Liz Gordon is a researcher and a barrister, with interests in destroying neo-liberalism in all its forms and moving towards a socially just society. She usually blogs on justice, social welfare and education topics.
Great stuff!
Much of modern science is a plaything of the elite rather than enlightenment of the people. Publicly funded knowledge inaccessible to the public and exploited by the upper classes using ideological manipulation for financial gain. We the people should be thankful that these big brains have given us faster phones and weapons of mass destruction and we must clap and bang pots every evening for their discoveries.
“… where the point is not to do things in a particular way, but to acknowledge there are more ways that we have known of doing things.”
What a fine conclusion. Contemporary societies, particularly those who hold the so-called scientific method in high esteem, tend to discount the knowledge of indigenous people. Yes, for sure, the scientific method has resulted in huge gains in knowledge, as has more interpretative inquiry – although it might be fair to say that such knowledge hasn’t always made us any the wiser. Take the issue of planetary heating for one.
What people find hard to accept I think is that indigenous knowledge is often too closely aligned with myth, historically passed down orally through stories over generations – now increasingly codified in written language. And myth is for a good many part of the dark ages, too closely aligned with supernatural beings or events to be considered legitimate knowledge – and I might add has often been associated with legitimization of ideologies of power. But in the case of ideologies of power, could one argue that the knowledge derived from the scientific method is doing much the same?
Those who know more about myth (or indeed the relationship between knowledge and idelogies of power) than I do might want to add to this, as I suspect myth plays an important role somewhere. Perhaps it is useful to distinguish between knowledge as myth from knowledge as observation and lived experience, although for the epistemologies of indigenous knowledge this may well be a false dichotomy.
The philosophy of science is not my strong point Liz, fascinating as it is, but thank you for raising it. Its important.
There is scientific method and there is non scientific method.
Within science there are things that are well proven and there are things that are theoretical backed by varying degrees of evidence. At the outer edges of physics or subatomic particles where evidence and testability are thin, there is a blurring to philosophy – by necessity- otherwise attempts to blend philosophy and science are likely poisonous: deliberate bias in a method that tries to reduce it.
Attempting to blur the lines of what is science and worse, attempt to infuse it with any particular culture are not going to take the world to a better place:
Maui did not fish up the North island – we know this from the actual sciences of physics and geology- but feel free to test the hypothesis.
Did God create the world in six days? Scoffing at others’ belief systems is a pretty low blow, don’t you think?
That’s a strange thing to say; why not question belief? Isn’t that what you’re doing in this essay
“In the realm of facts science reigns supreme, in the realm of values we have to look elsewhere” J B Peterson
Our aim should be to encourage our youngsters and, try and become ourselves, a people of sufficient moral character to manage the distinction. The difficulty arises when unfalsifiable belief is conflated with science.
Without a commitment to objective truth pre scientific man lived with superstition and in fear of a pantheon of invisible ghosts and goblins. Be careful what you whish for.
Scoffing at people in 2021 living in a modern secular society who fully believe in the idea that a sky wizard created the world in 6 days 6000 years ago is perfectly fine.
I tolerate people with such beliefs, but that does not mean I respect such beliefs nor believe that such beliefs are a positive force in the world.
If a professor at a university was to uncritically teach that Scottish Highland/Gaelic music has magical powers that can heal people or cause someone to die (as is the traditional belief in Gaeldom), do you believe that it would be racist to criticise the professor’s teaching and their lack of application of the scientific method?
MacRiada
Dál Riata
I should add that I think we should be teaching our kids the ancient myths, Maui and all, just not in science. In fact we should go further and include the great stories from cultures in special lessons at school.
The Maui legend is an example of the classic, archetypal, heroes journey common to all cultures: the reclaiming of habitable order (the land) from undifferentiated chaos (the sea). St George and the dragon is essentially the same; what you seek will be where you least want to look. What a great message for our young people as they set off on the great adventure of life. Joseph Campbell’s The Heroes Journey and The Hero With a Thousand Faces are a great examination of these various legends and their very real implications.
There are people foolishly looking for the remains of Noah’s Ark. Why? The truth of that story is there for the seeing, it’s a meta-truth: Allow yourself, or your society, to be characterised by lies and corruption and you will drown in chaos.
We’re failing to introduce our kids to these ancient wisdoms; they’re lost and nihilistic, suicidal even as a consequence. I’ve been teaching my eleven year old grandson some of this and showed him this great wee animated story. He was enthralled, they’re starving for this sort of thing. Best Lessons Learned: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJrEaLYacwc
“Did God create the world in six days? ”
No evidence of that at all. Furthermore, all evidence suggests not – and it is a non-falsifiable claim. It is therefore a scientifically untenable hypothesis.
It follows that your question is as valid as asking if it is fair to scoff at claims that invisible purple gnomes burped the universe into existence.
Which certainly reinforces my view that sociology isn’t science.
Yes
Sometimes it’s spoken of as “hard” science, and “soft” science.
Hard, for example:
The periodic table (and a nod to the utter brilliance of 19th century Russian scientist Dmitri Mendeleev)
Force = mass x acceleration (Newton)
E = mc2 (Einstein)
DNA (Watson, Crick, Wilkinson, Franklin)
Virology
Science is exploring and interpreting the nature of reality using observation and evidence.
If a stone-age culture employs elements of scientific method it is still science, it’s not “stone-age science”. It is simply science practised within a certain cultural context.
Attempts to culturally appropriate science are flawed.
About a hundred years ago the great Carl Jung spent a lot of time among African hunter-gatherer-herder tribes trying to discover how modern “scientific man” and pre scientific man differed in the way they thought about things. He wrote about it in a chapter of his book Modern Man in Search of a Soul.
He spoke Swahili so was able communicate directly, what he found was quite remarkable; how we had changed more than anything perhaps. Archaic man (his words) seemed to have no concept of random chance, everything had to have an explanation. When there was no obvious causal explanation one was, essentially, fabricated. Random events with no apparent connection recalled, connected and given authority by a hierarchy of medicine men. This the people believed; I guess un-falsifiable bullshit is better than no explanation at all. We often do it too, the connect-the-dots conspiracy theorists, astrologers and bullshit artists of every stripe have their legion of followers. Unfortunately much of, so called, indigenous knowledge is in this category.
The trick is to separate that which has value, that offers lessons on life, appreciate it and incorporate those lessons for their moral value. The Lion King is a great moral story as well; the hero’s journey. Perhaps we should include analysis of that as a lesson for the kids . Your life is a journey and you can be it’s hero?
Put the rest up for proper scientific falsification and, if it withstands scrutiny, incorporate into the body of knowledge we call science for the benefit of all of humanity.
That’s not what this is about though is it. The motivation is to make specifically Maori knowledge somehow special, the deification of their particular brand of woo-woo. The reason for that is the really interesting question.
Economics is touted as a social science….just saying
Liz, you have managed to misrepresent both Thomas Kuhn and the seven Auckland Uni professors.
Kuhn was describing how one dominant paradigm in science is overturned by a new dominant paradigm. He describes how scientists beaver away refining and improving a theory (normal science) until irrefutable evidence emerged that makes it untenable (ie revolutionary science).
That establishes a new paradigm that then becomes normal science.
Kuhn wrote a sociology of science — as the title of his book indicates: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.
The professors were defending the scientific method.
There is a big difference.
You seem also not to understand the difference between knowledge (which includes matauranga Maori and Creationism and any other belief system) and science (which is a method of discovery that is always being tested and refined, and often overturned).
Indeed.
There is increasingly good reason to defund the humanities at university- they are contributing to misinformation and mistrust of actual science by politicizing science.
Cases in point : Maori lore as science, sex as gender, Critical Race Theory.
Up is down and black is white, they are actively undermining cohesive society.
Whatever Imelda it is it’s not scientific.
Having been a defender of the arts and humanities I say we follow Australia’s lead and defund the humanities , they are making society worse not better.
*Should read “whatever else it is”
Not at all. What I am against is the notion that proper science is limited to a certain narrow set of methods and that anything else is not science or is lesser science. The relationship between science and belief is a really interesting one. Sir Mason Durie tells a very interesting story about this in relation to mental illness. Was it the pills or was the curse removed to cause the cure? Yes, have read Kuhn, thanks, although admittedly thirty-mumble years ago. What I think we need to do to be grown up about science is to always consider what we do, and what others do, within a broader framework that yes, including cultural framing among other forms. The one best system for understanding the world is not one system. Current scientific method by no means explains all that needs to be explained, though it is great at what it does well Thanks for all your views and comments on this. Interesting debate.
“We could build a person from organic bits and pieces (probably) but we could never explain things such as likes and loves, art appreciation, the love of literature, historical review, venal motives or so much else about what makes us human.”
It seems to me that the above is at least as dogmatic as the viewpoint it is intended to criticise.