ARTICLE AD BOX
"The authors give eight ways to rectify the 'colonisation,' all of them involving sacrificing merit for ethnicity, replacing modern science with 'other ways of knowing,' and demanding both professional, monetary, and territorial reparations, even from those who never oppressed anybody. ...
"[A]s I’ve written about in extenso, 'indigenous knowledge' is never on par with modern science. Yes, indigenous people can contribute empirical truths to science, but indigenous 'science' almost invariably consists of local knowledge helping people to live in their specific environment (in New Zealand, for example, it consists of stuff like knowing how to harvest mussels or where to catch eels), and isn’t generalisable to other places. It does not use the tools of modern science and, as in New Zealand, is often imbued with nonscientific aspects like ethics, morality, unsubstantiated lore, and supernatural trappings like teleology and myth.
"Yes, some aspects of indigenous 'science' can and should be worked into science classes, but most of it should be taught in sociology or anthropology class. ...
"As one of my colleagues said after reading this paper, 'The authors’ decolonisation/indigenisation ideology is not only antithetical to science, it’s also anti-Enlightenment, and as such challenges the whole idea of universities as places where ideas are tested on the basis of reason and evidence without the imposition of cultural authority'.”
~ Jerry Coyne from his post 'The journal Nature calls for “decolonization” of modern science'
English (US) ·