Decolonizing Science?
When reading (and listening) about the fallist movement in South Africa, a student movement in 2015-2016 that started with protests of "Rhodes must fall" and morphed into "Fees must fall"-student protests (which btw in the end were moderately successful), I stumbled to a rather strange debate of "decolonizing science".
In the South African context, this isn't suprising, as the country has the difficult past with apartheid. And mostly the debate is what in other places would be seen as a normal debate about pedagogy and modernization of the curriculum, which naturally is an important topic in the educational sciences, in learning theory and so on. However sometimes this debate becomes quite odd, like with "decolonizing mathematics" with "ethnomathemics" (see here). In Canada a similar discourse of "decolonizing science" has emerged and the argument isn't anymore about pedagogy, but science itself and it being culturally dominated by Europe (or basically by whites).
The argument of science or the scientific method being Eurocentric becomes very odd. Here's a quote from Glen Aikenheads and Dean Elliots article "An Emerging Decolonizing Science Education in Canada":
Terms like "canonical knowledge" and "values" of science are strange as the scientific method seeks to be first and foremost to be objective. And if learning science, physics, chemistry or math, that is referred as "behaving like a scientist", is hard, Aikenhead and Elliot have a view on why this is:
So math or chemistry being hard means that you aren't comfortable with the identity taught to you. And of course the answer is non-Eurocentric science, Indigenous science or knowledge, that differs from the Eurocentric science according to the view of the authors the following way:
The normative statement and agenda is quite obvious from the definition of Indigenous knowledge "emphasizing living in harmony with Mother Earth for the purpose of survival". It's obvious that the scientific method is willfully misunderstood and simply viewed basically as a tool of political power. Because arguing that the scientific method is an objective way to study reality and isn't a normative endeavour (and is quite international) would just be seen as a proof of eurocentrist views! In my view this can lead to similar nonsense as creation science, scientific humbug that has an agenda. It is as if missunderstanding Kuhn's scientific paradigm in a vulgar way likely emerging from ignorance.
As one Asian academic discussing the subject put it well: "In order to critisize Western Science, you do have to know Western Science".
So my question (thanks if you have made it so far) is if this is just an academic red herring or an example of how academic knowledge has fallen? Or am I just a believer in Eurocentrist science that doesn't get the point of decolonization of science?
In the South African context, this isn't suprising, as the country has the difficult past with apartheid. And mostly the debate is what in other places would be seen as a normal debate about pedagogy and modernization of the curriculum, which naturally is an important topic in the educational sciences, in learning theory and so on. However sometimes this debate becomes quite odd, like with "decolonizing mathematics" with "ethnomathemics" (see here). In Canada a similar discourse of "decolonizing science" has emerged and the argument isn't anymore about pedagogy, but science itself and it being culturally dominated by Europe (or basically by whites).
The argument of science or the scientific method being Eurocentric becomes very odd. Here's a quote from Glen Aikenheads and Dean Elliots article "An Emerging Decolonizing Science Education in Canada":
Shool science usually attempts to enculturate all students into the culture of
academic Eurocentric science, replete with its canonical knowledge, techniques, and values.
Many science teachers want all their students to be able to think like a scientist, behave like a scientist, and believe what scientists are purported to believe
Terms like "canonical knowledge" and "values" of science are strange as the scientific method seeks to be first and foremost to be objective. And if learning science, physics, chemistry or math, that is referred as "behaving like a scientist", is hard, Aikenhead and Elliot have a view on why this is:
But teachers certainly fail to meet this goal; except for the small proportion of students who, like the authors, have worldviews that harmonize with the worldviews endemic to Eurocentric sciences. Most students’ worldviews differ, to varying degrees, from the worldview conveyed by conventional school science. - Students who do not feel comfortable taking on a school science identity (i.e., being able to think, behave, and believe like a scientist) represent the vast majority of any student population.
So math or chemistry being hard means that you aren't comfortable with the identity taught to you. And of course the answer is non-Eurocentric science, Indigenous science or knowledge, that differs from the Eurocentric science according to the view of the authors the following way:
Indigenous ways of knowing nature combine the ontology of monism and spirituality with the epistemology of place-based, holistic, relational, and empirical practices in order to celebrate an ideology of harmony with nature for the purpose of community survival. Knowledge in Eurocentric science expresses an intellectual tradition of thinking, while Indigenous knowledge expresses a wisdom tradition of thinking, living, and being (Aikenhead & Michell, 2011). Broadly speaking, an intellectual tradition emphasizes individual cognition, while a wisdom tradition emphasizes group-oriented ways of being as practised by living in harmony with Mother Earth for the purpose of survival.
The normative statement and agenda is quite obvious from the definition of Indigenous knowledge "emphasizing living in harmony with Mother Earth for the purpose of survival". It's obvious that the scientific method is willfully misunderstood and simply viewed basically as a tool of political power. Because arguing that the scientific method is an objective way to study reality and isn't a normative endeavour (and is quite international) would just be seen as a proof of eurocentrist views! In my view this can lead to similar nonsense as creation science, scientific humbug that has an agenda. It is as if missunderstanding Kuhn's scientific paradigm in a vulgar way likely emerging from ignorance.
As one Asian academic discussing the subject put it well: "In order to critisize Western Science, you do have to know Western Science".
So my question (thanks if you have made it so far) is if this is just an academic red herring or an example of how academic knowledge has fallen? Or am I just a believer in Eurocentrist science that doesn't get the point of decolonization of science?
Comments (77)
It looks that way...? :chin:
Seeks to be, but perhaps fails to achieve this aim? I think that's the issue, isn't it? :chin:
The scientific method is just that: a method. It doesn't seek to do anything, it's either correct or it's not. While some particulars of the scientific method can be debated, I can't see anyone arguing that it's entirely wrong.
Quoting ssu
As with many current discussion relating to gender, race and identity I think it's interesting to consider the specific cultural norms and prejudices that might be enshrined in the way we perform, view and teach science. No doubt it is interesting to contrast the approaches of different cultures to concepts like reality, knowledge and truth.
Where these kinds of approaches go astray is if they start to argue for an uncritical, or total, cultural, moral or epistemological relativism. I skimmed the article you linked, and the authors point out that relativism is not the point. It does, however , sound like this particular line of argument necessarily leads to it. Sentences like:
Certainly don't help.
Neither can I. :chin:
I'll have a short go at arguing this to be the case. Let's assume for now that there is a scientific method, a blueprint that applies universally to anything one might wish to study. And let's grant that it is impartial and objective in all the relevant senses. Still it is the case that scientific practice is subject to other considerations and forces. Take medicine, for example. It is much easier to get funding to research a field that promises to produce a patentable remedy, than one that might produce an equally effective remedy that is un-patentable - eg a diet.
Now consider how much research effort has gone into looking for racial and sexual differences of intelligence, personality, and so on. Allow that it has all been done with impeccable scientific methodology, still one can ask why this is the thing that matters, or rather who does it matter to?
In other words, science is not just method, it is institutions, it is embedded in society that directs its enquiring gaze howsoever objective and impartial, at some questions and not others. And here is how it can be used against a culture :
"There is no scientific evidence that...XYZ"
But if the society that controls science finds it convenient not to know XYZ, there will never be any scientific evidence, though another culture may have known it informally for millennia.
Except that it's not as if, for instance, the Chinese do not perform science as we know it in the West. When they launch a space probe, they presumably rely upon the same equations as does NASA. There is no "Chinese physics," any more than there is a "Jewish physics," as someone once fulminated. The fact that the modern scientific method arose relatively recently in the West (let us semi-arbitrarily say in the 16th century), it doesn't follow that there's something essentially Eurocentric about the entire affair.
I believe it was Carl Sagan who wrote about modern African hunter-gatherers tracking their prey, and being able to discern the the approximate size of the animal, the direction in which it's traveling, how recently it passed by, etc by the characteristics of its footprints, and noted the similarity to the work of planetary astronomers who study impact craters on distant worlds.
David S. Landes in "Why Europe and the West? Why Not China," (Journal of Economic Perspectives – Volume 20, Number 2 – Spring 2006) describes "the seventeenth-century European mania for tinkering and improving." Together with Jared Diamond, the two describe what is now known as the East-West Technological Inversion in macro-history. Professor Raymond Birn in Crisis, Absolutism, Revolution: Europe 1648 to 1789 describes generally a similar process in European orientalism:
"Not only did the Jesuits bring Christianity to China, but they also brought China to Europe. In doing so, they impelled an intellectual mutation that had been taking root since the Thirty Years War. To the troubled European society of the late seventeenth century, the Jesuit image of a near utopian civilization governed by moral sages uncorrupted by intolerance, passion, or material desire, offered a refreshing contrast. Kangxi was viewed as a philosopher king whose sense of justice and virtue made Leopold I or Louis XIV seem like moral pygmies. Europe swallowed fact and fancy about China. For the first time, a significant body of Western intellectuals cast doubts on the ethical superiority of their own civilization. Paradoxically enough, this was occurring at the moment when the very same thinkers were producing rational explanations about the physical universe that Eastern sages could not hope to match." (2nd Edition, p. 169).
It comes down to this: Because of European colonization and exploitation over the course of 500 years, a significant part of which (but not solely) was due to technological superiority, anything associated with the West is suspect (look up the actual meaning of "Boko Haram"), and science and technology in particular (and a form of materialism, consumerism) are seen as belonging to the West and not to humanity in general in much of the world, and thus, we now have discussions under various guises of how to separate science from the West. Science is associated with both racism and with bad history, and with the uncertain changing world in which the youth of those places find themselves. This is a huge barrier to education in those places, as opposed to the West where science can easily be presented in primary schools as beneficial.
Certain interpretations of Islam, for instance, would clearly have to change if Western science was accepted completely. I'm sure Muslim scientists are fine but the general populace's interpretation of Islam clearly runs contrary to what we've learned through the scientific method. If someone wanted to teach that "the scientific method and testing shows both genders to be of equal intelligence" since that would undermine certain interpretations of Islam, would we be surprised if such people didn't want that? Would it be surprising if they rejected that being taught because they don't want their children to be "Westernized"?
They are also arguing against is the use of science as an interpretative focus in their cultures. For things to be true or not true based on the scientific method completely changes how people look at things.
It's also a power thing because if children go to school and learn about Western science and start to focus on those ideas, their parents don't have the same chokehold on knowledge that they used to. Indigenous "elders" who don't verify their beliefs using the scientific method is going to be in competition with teachers who do. It's a war over the child's mind.
Just some ideas based on bits and pieces I understand, I can't speak to the validity of them with regards to the people referred to in the articles provided.
that's such a huge fuck you to a skeptical reader. It's just 'You won't, I know you won't.' I'll have to steal it.
The article doesn't actually say Western science (whatever that is) is wrong or produces falsehoods, it's a critique on an institutional level. The goals of their argument are to support the following notion:
So what they'd like is more inclusive teaching practices along ethnic lines, a greater emphasis on practical demonstration, and an introduction of 'Indigenous knowledge' as a cluster of practical methodologies for doing... stuff. Doing stuff nowadays requires familiarity with technology; engaging with any research team or technology developer group requires being in accord with 'Eurocentric science' - or at least being able to adopt its vocabulary and methods of thinking.
In the authors' view (it seems to me), what they want, is to remove cultural identity based alienation's effect on people's developmental prospects, and they think that incorporating education about such cultures into the curriculum would help address that.
I don't agree that teaching cultural practices or ideology alongside normal science in the science classroom is particularly appropriate; not because I think 'indigenous knowledge' is worthless or whatever, but because I see some basic level of technical understanding over most scientific fields as a necessary goal of education which expands people's developmental potential more than the alternative 'indigenous wisdom' that competes with it for science classroom time.
But I would like to see a greater emphasis on cultural/historical/anthropological/social/political education in curricula, and would also like to see more practical demonstrations incorporated into teaching especially with regard to 'Eurocentric science'. An overemphasis on decontextualised theory breeds boredom and then ignorance.
I mean, the worldview that school history taught me is that before William Wallace there were dinosaurs and then another bloke called William stopped slavery, someone else who surprisingly wasn't named William discovered antibiotics, and now we have an understanding of reality down to its fundamental constituents and somehow that required trade, which is capitalism. Hitler came along at some point and killed a lot of people, but everything's back to normal now. Eventually because of an unfortunate incident with planes and buildings we were told about a writhing sea of angry brown people who weren't Indians because Indians are our friends and have this cool light festival thing. Outside of the classroom I was surprised to learn the Indians were only our friends when they weren't stealing our jobs.
Edit: though it does seem the kind of paper that would probably cite agricultural field studies to establish that cultural pluralism is more sustainable (#sneering academic jokes).
The 'uniformly' there is important. I'm too ignorant of the data to weigh the specifics of 'improved schooling' that incorporates more practical demonstration and social/cultural pedagogy vs one which focusses on 'indigenous knowledge' to provide those improvements in the way the paper advocates.
Quoting Arkady
I think this is my point too, but unfortunately arguing that there is no "Chinese physics", that there's only physics, will obviously sound to those believing the Eurocentrism of science argument obviously as eurocentric view. And when it comes to fields like mathematics, the argument that math has to be decolonized has to start from apparent ignorance of mathematics. Starting from the fact that we use the Hindu-Arabic numeral system. Just try to quickly count what is MCMXCI + IX is (it's MM, obviously).
Historically this kind of argumentation, that science has another agenda than just being a method of inquiry and hence we have to have a different kind of science, has had dire consequences for science especially in totalitarian systems where being "politically correct" takes a whole new meaning. You already mentioned "Jewish physics", which was then opposed with Deutsche Physik in the Third Reich (and actually earlier), which is a perfect example of mixing race ideology with a natural science. Lysenkoism in biology is another perfect example from the Soviet Union, which truly set back Russian genetics research (and research in other socialist countries too). And many times scientific research is portrayed to have a separate normative agenda, just look at the opposition to stem cell research or one of the biggest scientific topics of today, climate change. We lose something when science is seen as a political statement.
Basically the problem aren't the well argumented views that want to take into consideration local culture, non-European science history or local traditions, the problem is the vulgar and basically ignorant views that take purging science of "Eurocentrism" literally. And when these ideas go a bit too far, it's very difficult then for academic community to respond that "this is nonsense" when it has accepted that science ought to be decolonized.
Take for example two food crops on which much of the world depends: corn (maize) and potatoes. The indigenous hunter-gatherer populations of North America did not find these plants in a form anywhere close to their modern presentation. The plants had to be bred up to their much larger, modern (as of 1492) size and form.
Tomatoes are another western hemisphere food crop that had to be improved to be useful. And then there is chocolate which maybe required plant breeding, but also required the discovery of non-obvious methods of processing to become delicious.
Every culture on the planet did pretty much the same thing--all without "Science" as the contemporary world knows it.
Yes. I didn't mean to suggest they were empty of content or insight.
Any human endeavour has it's societal aspects.
I think that this is well explained by Kuhn's theories, yet Kuhn basically as a historian of science doesn't at all to say that science would be just a social construct.
My leftist friend, this shouldn't be anything new to you either.
I'll try to give an example:
Let's assume that there would be a new socio-economic model that would describe how our World works far better than anything else before and for some reason people would understand and accept the model. The problem is that we wouldn't look at it like "Now there's a nice objective model on how the World economy works...", no, the immediate response would be "How can we solve the current problems? how can we make the World better with this model?". And those are normative statements, how can we make things better. Hence they aren't at all just about applying the scientific method anymore. As I've said earlier, the old name of economics, political economy, was much more informative and truthful.
I'm just skimming this paper you linked, but I'd encourage you to look at it again with a different idea in mind tham relativism.
I ran a quick search on your Canadian paper and the combination "social construct" does not appear in that paper.
The Canadian paper seems concerned with integrating indigenous knowledge into the wider scientific curriculum, focusing on Saskatchewan in particular as an example of what this looks like in practice. The problem is that the social stuff is getting in the way of teaching the science stuff.
Objectively speaking this isn't about social construction at all, but how to help students to learn. They note that there is a general problem with scientific pedagogy in that it alienates the student from the subject matter, and that this alienation is more pronounced in the cases where the social world has experienced European colonization.
They state:
So, really, this is mostly about getting students to learn given the real obstacles teachers face, and very little about the social construction of science or something like that.
I was taught in school that the ancient European people (never mind everybody else) were pretty much ignorant and incapable of scientific thinking. It seemed to me then, it still seems to me, that this was not the case, and could not be the case. Hunter gatherers, and then agriculturalists, later metal workers, then builders and so on, all had to be good observers and had to apply analytical thinking to survive, first, and then improve their operations.
Grafting of trees started in China t least 4000 years ago. Grafting one variety of apple or pear onto a related but different variety is a non-obvious procedure, which requires skill and patience -- several seasons may be required before the grafted tree delivers the intended fruit. The 'primitive' arborist also has to understand something about the physiology of the tree. What he knows may not sound like "physiology" but the right kind of plant tissues have to be in contact with each other for a graft to be successful.
What seems like backwardness was usually a lack of the right material. Western Hemispheric and Australian aboriginal people didn't develop the wheel because they didn't have suitable draft animals. (this is out of Guns, Germs, & Steel). Hitching kangaroos to a wagon would have been an unhappy experience for everybody concerned. Buffalo were big and strong enough to pull loads, but they are not inclined to cooperate. It was the misfortune of horses and oxen to be cooperative enough to end up hitched to wagons until the internal combustion engine came along.
Farmers did without plows for millennia; it wasn't that they were too stupid to use plows -- they used what they could make. A good plow (like The Plow That Broke The Plains) required steel, which happened to be in short supply until the Industrial Revolution. A craftsman could make a steel sword, but actually beating one's swords into sod-turning plows proved to be impractical.
There ARE instances of raw stupidity. The miasma theory of disease, for instance, remained stuck in the brains of medical doctors for decades after it was obvious that something other than vapors caused disease. Our contemporary anti-vaxxers are another example of raw stupidity.
I think it's still widely accepted, though, that the vapors are the primary cause of swooning and of female hysteria.
Yet this isn't just about that the pedagogy isn't the best possible one and hence students are lagging behind. The paper, as other similar ones talking about decolonization of science, start from the premiss that Eurocentric science is used as a tool of opression against the colonized, marginalized indigenous people. Quote from the paper:
Hence the call for "decolonization" assumes that science education has a neocolonialist ideology. This is not at all just your 'ordinary' call for improving educational methods, but also a deliberate accusation that science is deliberately used as a tool against certain people.
This is just pseudo-academic gobbledygook.
"Neo-colonial ideology" is a generalized bogeyman that portrays all western progress as dependent on the intentional or reckless rape of all other cardinal directions (juxtaposing it with science is an exaggeration within an exaggeration). When perceived as a western invention, through the intersectional looking glass, ontologically it becomes defined as a tool of oppression for any way that it does not approach people or political issues with with absolute emotional sensitivity and on bended knee.
It's nice to have critical-sounding rhetoric that uses words good, but unless it has some substance then it's just a fashionable trend.
Quoting ssu
Fallism is less about science in any tangible way, and more about the general dissatisfaction with social disparities between perceivably western and non-western ethnicities. There's an emotional debate going on, and science has been dragged into it (and unfairly accused of taking sides) like some kind of unlucky brother-in-law.
Something is indeed rotten in the state of academia, and social "sciences" directs it...
STOP THE HYSTERIA!
This woman's uterus has managed to find its way into her hair -- you can see what disastrous consequences a wondering uterus can have.
Fallism came and went in the South African university circles just like Occupy Wall Street movement in the US. Both aren't anymore active in a major way, but the undertones haven't gone away for sure. To say that science has been just dragged to this as an innocent by-stander might accurately describe the situation. The Apartheid era education system where a minority had a good education system while the black majority had a lousy one won't naturally correct itself without investment and a lot of hard work. But that surely isn't the fault of science itself. To argue that science is Eurocentric or Western can have true repercussions, if the views would go as so far as with Boko Haram. Naturally South Africa is very different from Northern Nigeria.
Either the rocket makes it to the moon or it doesn't. If a study of nature that rejects the political views of Western society sends rockets straight to the moon, with our rockets meandering and never quite finding their way, or at least doing so less efficiently, I'll subscribe to the anti-West system. Science is the study of the empirical and its verification is based upon empirical observations.
Science is the single most powerful way we have of discovering knowledge about our world. As the oppressed duly note, knowledge is power and without it comes weakness. The solution is not to delegitimize science in order to level the playing field so that those ignorant of science have the same power as those who do not, but it's to educate oneself and gain the knowledge one lacks. The great equalizer is education, not denying one's ignorance and celebrating one's stupidity.
I suspect you agree with all this?
Fallism, like Occupy, came and went, but their underlying emotional discussions have been going on for over a hundred years (the Marxist perspective begat a century of socialist romance as a reaction to the gross and novel inequality created by the industrial revolution, and the economic/social/democratic emancipation of African Americans, along with the South African and Pan-African struggles against exploitation and discrimination, has been the central issue in Black intellectual communities since the late nineteenth). Fallism, as far as I can gather, was a short-time business end of this larger and older movement and emerged mainly in redress to academic inequality. Given that democratic equality and academic opportunity for Black South Africans has only relatively recently become a reality, it makes sense for a cultural movement to address any extant disparity directly (though they certainly chose the wrong vector of approach). The Occupy Wall-street movement in a way encapsulated the self-same dissatisfaction, but it took a more general perspective by not overtly focusing on race (although, Occupy did suffer from its own unique problems: what they called "the progressive stack of virtue based leadership", others others might call a headless chicken. What happens when you put 10 anarchists in a room and tell them to plan to implement their ideas? Cat herding for 400, Alex).
Despite the zoo of failed or malformed social movements aimed at addressing economic and social forms of inequality, they keep (d)evolving because there are there are genuine disparities and injustices that persist (and because solving these problems in practice is immensely complex). The ever looming wealth gap, at a time when we're on the verge of a second industrial revolution (the AI revolution), and when the long term costs of industry are more and more deferred to the people (especially their children), is a serious threat to our long-term stability. (It's no wonder Marx is making a comeback). So there is indeed a need for these kinds of movements, just more practical and useful ones.
Like so many reactionary movements it was full of vim and vigor but it had no coherent direction or practical vision. Ironically a scientific approach could have been very useful to them in identifying the most effective objectives and methods; creation through destruction is not always helpful.
Education is a great equalizer indeed. So great, that even if one can argue that our intellectual abilities differ as does our abilities in sports, where physical training is good for everyone, but not all can be top athletes, it still is so overwhelmingly important that in larger groups of people the difference doesn't show. What matters is how much resources are put into education, what is the ability of the teacher and how positive environment towards learning the school gives to pupil.
Let's take an example, my country, Finland, which has many times been marketed as a country where school education is great and has been top of the line for some time (although it has fallen a few places) in international rankings. Even Michael Moore has come here to be in awe about it. However even here in Finland there are differences between schools and those differences have become bigger. If you would take just Southern Finland, the country would be in PISA science performance rankings there alongside with Singapore (1st place), but add up the schools in Northern and Eastern Finland and Finland is at 8th place. Btw the US is 23rd place. And the biggest reason is basically money. The larger cities and municipalities of Southern Finland can invest more into education than poorer rural areas as we don't have oil as Norway does. Of course this is a rather meaningless difference as obviously any education system ranked in the top 10 or so in the World is quite OK, but it does show that even in a country where the education system is extremely homogenous, the teachers are quite the same, you still get differences. Then how bad the situation is when there are truly huge differences in schools? In the US there is a problem with the quite large gap between the best and the worst schools.
Put the focus on Africa and the picture simply is catastrophic. You have teachers that barely now more than their students. You have 1st grade classes of 80 to over 200 children attending. You have the problem that the language used in school isn't the mother tongue of the pupils. You have huge drop out rates and children going through the education system without learning properly to read and write. Less than 10% of the young people get tertiary education. South Africa puts the most into education in Sub-Saharan Africa, but even it is plagued with a dismal system. This has huge effects on the workforce and hence the economy. The lack of engineers, doctors and other professionals means that the continent can only provide low-skill manufacturing and raw materials.
When the differences in the education system are so huge and problems so big, then it becomes quite trivial arguing about 'decolonizing' the education system or science. At worst, the whole 'decolonizing science' argument becomes a scapegoat to cast the blame on somewhere else and at worst, the 'decolonizing' and use of 'Indigenous knowledge' leads to unintentional or intentional lowering the standards of education.
It's hardy that simple. The example of the Washington DC school system being a good example of heavy spending and poor results: https://www.heritage.org/education/commentary/high-public-school-spending-dc-hasnt-produced-desired-outcomes
I don't know the demographics or social economic variations among the various regions of Finland, but I might guess that those more poorly performing schools have students that are from less advantaged families. I wonder if they sent the southern Finnish students to the northern schools and vice versa if you'd really see a decline in the performance of southern Finnish students and an improvement for the northern ones. That is to say, much starts at home. I fully believe that my kids, for example, would have done well even had I not been in a good school district. A real reason my school district is good is because the parents who stress education in the home have sought it out and we've all come together to the same place..
Your African example also makes the point as well. There's abject poverty, war, government instability, disease and all sorts of other things the students are contending with. It's just not reasonable to think that a huge monetary contribution to the educational system is going to put those students on par with Finnish students. It's also not reasonable to think that throwing more money at the inner city schools of Washington DC is ever going to put those students on par with the students within my fairly affluent suburban school system.
Biggest reason, not only reason. And in the example I was talking about, there are factors like homogenous and functioning training of teachers, a functioning public sector that isn't corrupt. And the differences hadn't been there prior in a similar fashion. Are the families different? Of course, I think that there is many times in some schools nearly a hostile attitude among students towards learning. Those who try hard and succeed to get good remarks are "teachers pets", perhaps even bullied. But then again, in every country you do have upper and lower classes and those children that have issues stacked up against them.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
Yet that wouldn't be so galvanizing. With using the Scientific method usually you normally end up with something quite boring. The real problem becomes what then? What do you implement? What to replace "Eurocentric" science with? What is the decolonized science or the decolonized curriculum?
I think this South African academic Jonathan Jansen puts it well when he says that movements like decolonalization of the curriculum have a short half-life and simply run into the "institutional/settled curriculum" of what already exists, what is the norm and how things have been done. Decolonization is an incomplete answer and doesn't solve the real problems that there are. It cannot be a hammer for all needs.
I think that you've hinted at a deeper question: what galvanizes (binds together and sustains) movements in the first place? What ought to?
To paraphrase Dr. M.L.K Jr., without strength and love (or the "strength to love") at the heart of a social movement, resentment begets more resentment, hate begets more hate, and focusing on the negative poisons our own personalities and undermines the movement. Broadly, hate-filled-attack is a purely destructive tool; in the setting of a civilized and civics filled landscape we simply cannot afford to label each-other enemies to be approached with cautious hatred.
The structure and tone of Fallism ensured that they would encounter widespread opposition from the get go, let alone the problem of an absent replacement cirriculum. And I think this is an issue made more prevalent thanks to the the Ponzi scheme of hate-based influence that is social media. Online, groups can cohere and organize around incoherent bluster alone, so long as it is emotionally provocative.
The source of the Fallist movement was presumably a disparity in academic participation and outcomes (which are due to a myriad of complex causes), not that science is discriminatory per se. But through a strong enough intersectional lens, everything becomes suspect in the crime of wanton discrimination. So-called academic departments like "Gender Studies" seek to understand complex systems and how they generate unequal outcomes, but they're so bad at it that all they can really do is produce clever-sounding and emotionally provocative rhetoric. Since sounding scientific and correctly addressing the right emotions are the only requirements of the field, it actually makes sense that science itself should come under fire as a patriarchal or supremacist system.
The Fallist movement didn't actually have anything to replace science with (no indigenous curriculum); they might as well have asked for science-free safe-spaces. Being all bread and condiment with no meat is a symptom endemic to the departments which give rise to these intersectional theories of decolonization in the first place. Ironically all they do is get in the way of achieving their own goals. In true Ouroboros fashion...
I would go further to argue the reason that 'reinventing' science from a different angle, be it the decolonization of science, indigenous science or let's say islamic science have all huge difficulties in this is because basically science is an international global effort. Once a new model or discovery is accepted by the scientific community, it hardly matters where or by whom the discovery or invention was made. And if the argument is of Eurocentric science history, teaching non-western science simply doesn't change the science itself. As I have studied history I do accept that in history we sure have too often focus on our own history and tell a story that could be told in a different way. That said, what happened is the same, so there can be objectivity even in history.
Hence the argument of science being too Eurocentric, too white, too male, too whatever simply doesn't lead to any real advaces rather just gives wrong ideas (or talking points) about science to those that are ignorant about it.
Wrong in relation to what?
As example, nuclear weapons work perfectly well at the task for which they were designed. Working well doesn't automatically equal that being a good thing.
Science works very well at the task for which it was designed, developing new knowledge. This can fairly be labeled a good thing IF the people receiving that new knowledge can successfully manage it. If the recipients of the new knowledge can't successfully manage the power that flows from that knowledge, then the process that handed them that knowledge very reasonably comes in to question.
In the meantime I will look for the borrowers by the skirting boards and we can have a contest to see whose findings are more productive. I might knit some 'small peoples clothes' as annecdotal theatre to the quasai-pseudoscientific examples sure to be produced and argued.
Scientific theory as distinct from technology as the challenge, we can all look at China and say they had gunpowder and mathematics.... We want non-eurocentric science, as in competing hypothesis with the theory of the atom, the periodic table for chemistry.... the entire field of microbiology... these are the Traditional European Sciences.
In order to decolonize it we must get away from the evil white man science. So go and do it... I have found a sock I am turning into a dress by cutting holes in it... I am winning the race to find the borrowers.
The scientific method doesn't seek, people seek. So while the scientific method may well be neutral, say, the scientists or the facultly may have expectations beyond the scientific method. They may make claims, for example, that the scientific method (and implicitly the current ((or even, often, past, models of science are the correct views of reality, and any other view is mere superstition or irrational in some other way))). I've experienced science presented this way, and note these beliefs are not only beyond presenting the scientific method as a tool, they are also not conclusions based on the scientific method. I am not saying I agree with all the conclusions of the poeple whose positions you are critical of. I see no problem with presenting the tools and methods of chemistry, for example. People are free to add these tools and methods and models to their own or not. They could just study literature if they are not interested in all that. I do think, however, that subcultures can promote ideas that go beyond the actual tools they are presenting to their members and we can't always judge the subculture by looking at the tools.
That some people would use this groups arguments as an excuse to avoid the hardness or to avoid being graded rigorously in these subjects is certainly possible and likely has already happened. But that is not what they are saying. It need not, and I doubt it is, what is really going on, period, when they argue this. I think even philosophers coming into science departments will be told that their methods are not meaningful or important, science eradicated the use of philosophy. This may not be said right out, but can be experienced indirectly. I've seen it happen both explicitly and implicitly in academic contexts.
Or, for example, the teaching of the scientific method in the specific academia includes patterns that are similar to colonial patterns, where not scientifically arrived at conclusions are use do dismiss the products and ways of thinking of other cultures. IOW it is not just a tool of political power, but that it can be used as one also.
I’m kind of confused by some of the responses here. The METHOD isn’t culturally driven - unless we’re talking about nature dictating what is or isn’t one metre?
Also, 1+2=3 ... again, not a cultural item. Science is not “western” it is a method used to collect data. It has nothing to say about anything.
Note: Science in terms of hard science as in for degrees marked BSc NOT BA. So “social sciences” are not sciences in this respect. Scientists on the other hand are merely human.
The problem with those crying about "Western" science being colonial, oppressive, against minorities and other cultures and obviously dominated by the white patriarchy (and so on), is that in their fury about science being a tool of political power, they really do believe it to be as a tool of political power and that it ought to be used as such. The agenda is that it has to be used...this time by them.
Where others would see the abuse of the term science or referring to science when the issue doesn't have anything to do with science just as a minor issue, just like Thomas Kuhn was annoyed when George Bush Sr used Kuhn's term "a new paradigm" to portray GOP tax policies, the people worried about science being "Western" see it differently. Those who genuinely believe in "Western" science having to be decolonized believe it's not about just the misuse of the scientific method, they believe science is inherently a political tool of power and not much else.
Let's bring it down to what this is all about: getting new academic positions and openings. In the end "decolonizing science" will really apply to those who get the new 'decolonized' positions. Where others usually would treat job enrollment and equal opportunity as a separate issue from the actual science, that is not the case here. If you will have a "decolonized" science program, you think it will be run by your typical white males that you find in science programs today?
Furthermore, lets look at where the discussion of decolonization of science has taken place. Has it taken place in China? Because China would be the obvious place for this discussion to be taking place as it has a very long tradition of non-Western science. It isn't, at least that I'm aware of, because everybody there is, well, basically Chinese. And Japan we can dismiss by saying it hasn't been a colony (even if it was occupied after WW2). Even if Japanese surely aren't European and do have an own non-Western culture, they haven't at all been insisting that the science they do would be Japanese, not Western.
Quoting I like sushi
This is meaningless to say because those believing in the necessity of decolonization of science don't think about this as you do. What they would see in your answer is just the arrogant and condescending way how those who uphold Western science make their case. And they surely wouldn't care that 1+2=3 is a non-Western number system, because debating science or the history of science isn't their issue here at all.
Of course some just want to preach nonsense. Let them. Reason filters out those that don’t use even the slightest bit of reasoning.
What they see is that when you "Science is not western, it is a method used to collect data." is that you don't even see the dominance of Western science, but simply assume it's the 'natural' way of things.
Quoting I like sushi
Yet is it then good for the field of inquiry, the academia or science in general? It isn't any kind of threat to actual threat to science like lousy primary education is, but still.
People can deny facts but they cannot beat them. Nature don’t give a fuck :)
Look at what Coben says above:
That is a vacuous argument because you could say that about literally anything you like. The difference being science actually helps people understand their environment better unlike religious doctrine - which was much more of a force in destroying cultures and traditions.
As for the random appropriation of a non-explicit pattern as ‘evidence’ ... it just goes to show how basic reasoning is required to put up decent position or you end up spouting meaningless rhetoric like the above.
The basis of the argument is about eurocentrism. That has NOTHING to do with science directly and Coben admits this ... so it is not about science at all. Funnily enough misconceptions are usually realised by the application of science - hence no more burning of ‘witches’ and such. That is not to say scientists still don’t misread the data gathered or make baseless assumptions to suit their world view. Humans are not robots.
Science has also been a strong force in destroying other cultures and traditions. Here is what Feyerabend had to say about it in Against Method, criticizing the idea that there is such a thing as "the scientific method":
The practices of science and religion are cultures/traditions themselves, which have displaced others. Scientific claims are based on underlying beliefs when they are presented as facts, as truth, there are many similarities between the way science is practiced today and organized religion.
The value of science is judged in how well it allows us to predict and to interact with our surroundings in a predictable way. Yet what scientists rarely say, if ever, is that many very different world views can fit the observational evidence, can allow to make predictions that are as accurate, while many of their claims push one particular world view, usually one based on materialism, while strictly speaking there is no scientific evidence for it. They implicitly push beliefs, disguised under the moniker of "scientific" as a synonym for truth, that is as something to believe, which are spread through education, textbooks, news articles and all sorts of media.
Is 1+1=2 true? Yes. Meaning there is no room for opinion.
Was Newton’s observations factually correct? Yes. “True”? No, because science doesn’t deal in ‘truths’ that is the theatre of logic - ‘truths’ are abstract ideals.
“Fact” is not the same as “truth”. People are a problem because they struggle to appreciate and deal with facts. It is not the fault of the scientific method if you view it as a ‘truth’ of reality.
Science has certainly been used to misrepresent facts (purposefully or accidentally) in order to push agendas. The thing about science is that it can self-correct because it isn’t dogmatic; I’m certainly not going to pretend they aren’t ‘dogmatic’ scientists though. Many a woo woo scientist tries to fit some vague set of measurements into their world view. Strictly speaking they are NOT doing science though because the point of the scientific method, and its strength, is that it aims to be objective. Bias is human and the scientific method does a damn good job of curbing our natural tendencies.
Or rather he understood what scientists do much better than you do. Read his book if you ever find the time, and you might get something important out of it, for instance that there is no such thing as "the scientific method". What scientists do and have done to reach their results cannot be summed up under "one method". If you attempt to describe the "scientific method", you can find plenty of examples where scientists did not adhere to the method you describe, and it is precisely by not adhering to it that they formulated such or such theory or made such or such observation that allowed to make more accurate predictions, or build more precise technology. The "scientific method" is a myth.
Would you say that "the Earth revolves around the Sun" is a fact or truth? Or both? And what proof would you give to show that it is a fact or a truth, what observational evidence would you say is proof of it?
You might say that we send spacecrafts into space, based on the world view that the Earth revolves around the Sun, and we are able to make them reach other planets accurately, so surely that world view must be correct? And yet we could have the world view that the Sun and other planets revolve around the Earth, describe the motion of these bodies in the reference frame of the Earth, describe gravity in the reference frame of the Earth, and we could reach these planets with as much accuracy. So what makes "the Earth revolves around the Sun" fact or truth?
It is a constant refinement. An archaeologist working in the field simply records the data and maps the artifacts - that is the science. Interpreting it is pure speculation; the common field of play for armchair philosophers.
That is not an appeal to authority, I could have said I understand what scientists do better than you do, but then you would have called me pretentious. I say what I say based on what I understand, not on what others have said, however I have found that people usually consider what I say more seriously when some renowned individuals have said similar things, but in an ideal world I wouldn't have to do that. But I also mentioned Feyerabend because he has said many insightful things that most people are not aware of when they talk about science, and many discussions about science would take a very different turn if people were aware of these things. Also I referenced his book in case you or others want to learn more about this point of view, and then people can have a more educated opinion based on relevant information and examples that they previously weren't aware of.
There is no universal criterion that allows to demarcate between what counts as science and what isn't science, this is known as the demarcation problem. Popper had proposed the criterion that a theory that is scientific is a theory that is falsifiable, but as it turns out most theories that we call scientific aren't falsifiable. For instance the theory that there is dark matter is not falsifiable. Scientists have carried out experiments to detect dark matter interacting with their instruments, but up to now these experiments have failed. That doesn't falsify the theory however, because scientists can always say that dark matter has properties that makes it undetectable to past experiments and come up with different experiments to attempt to detect it. And if they do detect it, it is always possible to come up with an alternative explanation as to why the signal they detected is not dark matter but something else.
So if we can't even characterize precisely what is science and what isn't science, it is presumptuous to claim that science is better than other practices or traditions, what actually goes on is that many people attempt to push their beliefs by calling them "scientific" as if it gave them a higher status, in essence what they call "scientific" is "what ought to be believed". There is obviously predictive success in identifying apparent regularities in what we observe, and that's the part of what scientists do that brings an ability to predict and technology, but another big part of what they do is pushing their own beliefs in the way they frame their observations and research, and that's the part most people are not aware of, which leads them to see science as this higher objective endeavor devoid of conventions and beliefs, while it is really not so.
Just because people use science for political means it doesn’t mean science is political in essence. Gathering data is not the same thing as interpreting data, and even then the interpretation needs verifying - often to quite a startling degree of precision to be regarded as a scientific fact (not a ‘truth’).
Dark matter/energy is a placeholder used to account for what we expect to be there given our current models. Quite a few physicists are not entirely happy with these terms and a great many more are not very happy with how they’re interpreted in the public eye. Philosophy is the realm of words physicists are not massive concerned with what is or isn’t an appropriate term to put across a particular abstract concept.
As an example you asked about the Sun and Earth. Scientists don’t know what makes the Earth orbit the Sun, we observe that it does though and have over time moved from the view of a “gravitational force” to Einstein’s model of special relativity to account for the phenomenon of ‘gravity’.
Demarcations are important from communicating with each other and for conscious experience. Science isn’t cultural any more than gunpowder is Chinese or cars are German. Where ideas originate doesn’t effect the practical use of the idea and/or the originality of the idea.
But when scientists say that we observe such or such thing because subatomic particles behave in a specific way, or that the light of galaxies is redshifted because the universe is expanding, or that all life is doomed to go extinct forever because the energy of the universe is constant and its entropy increases, they are not doing science, they are not sharing data they have measured or observed, they are pushing a world view based on pure belief.
All the evidence for the existence of unobservable subatomic particles can be explained without invoking subatomic particles, all the evidence for the expansion of the universe can be explained without invoking an expanding universe, and all the evidence that the energy of the universe is constant can be explained without invoking the constancy of its energy, so these kinds of claims are not scientific at all, they are not something that follows from observation, they are one possibility out of many that is pushed as scientific fact, as something to believe in, while other possibilities have widely different implications.
And this is far from inconsequential, for instance when some people become depressed because they are made to accept as true some claims made by scientists, because they are presented as scientific facts based on observation and reason rather than as the pure beliefs that they are.
You say I conflate scientists with science, but what is science if not what scientists do? There is this great ideal of science that is pushed in education but it doesn't match what scientists do.
Because there is no criterion that allows to demarcate between what is science and what isn't science, and because many people, including scientists, impose their beliefs onto others in the name of science, we have the big problem that scientists and their followers force their beliefs onto others while pretending that they are not belief but scientific fact, something that others should accept. They can't pinpoint what makes that fact "scientific" in a coherent way, if they attempt to apply a criterion to demarcate science and non-science then that criterion will include facts that they deem to be non-scientific, and yet they will keep on disregarding or ridiculing claims that they deem to be non-scientific. In that sense science becomes a tool for oppression.
Scientists don't observe that the Earth orbits the Sun, they observe the apparent motion of the Sun, from the Earth or from a spacecraft. That motion can be described in the reference frame of the Earth. We can assume that the Sun and other planets revolve around the Earth and describe their orbits as accurately as we do when we assume that the Earth revolves around the Sun. We can model gravity in a different way to account for these orbits. There is nothing there that shows in any way that the Earth orbits the Sun rather than the other way around, it is just simpler to describe these orbits and gravity in the reference frame of the Sun, but simpler doesn't mean more true. There is not some absolute space we have detected that allows us to say that the Earth really orbits the Sun rather than the other way around. And yet scientists will say it is a scientific fact that the Earth revolves around the Sun, and will ridicule those who dare want to believe that the Sun is revolving around the Earth, and claim that this is a triumph of science over religion, of reason over obscurantism, of fact over belief, which is quite ironical when they are precisely pushing a belief without realizing it. That's one instance where science is a tool for oppression.
Thanks for the replies.
Traditions like belief in there existing witches and black magic. How noble traditions have been destroyed by science. The ugly (ghasp!) Eurocentric / Western colonialist science!!!
Quoting leo
We can't define what science is? Not even a bit? Is it ridiculous even to try?
Quoting leo
Ah!!!! Science is a tool for oppression!!! :death:
Quoting leo
Simply the actual method it is?
Nope? So it's a sinister tool of oppression used by the White patriarchy to enrich the gains of the Capitalists?
Sorry, but you do conflate scientists with science. Especially everything else they can do or think that isn't science. Because they are scientists, they seem to be the new caste of priests in service of power to you, I presume.
Or, you know, spiritual beliefs that saw man as more than a heap of atoms, that saw nature as more than a resource to exploit, that saw love as more than the release of a chemical in the brain, that saw death as more than the end.
Quoting ssu
It isn't ridiculous to try, but come up with a definition, and you will see that some things that are considered science do not fit this definition, or some things that are considered non-science fit the definition.
Quoting ssu
Replace "Science" with "Religion", and I suppose that's something you would have said back when Religion had the status that Science has today.
Quoting ssu
And if so-called scientists do not use that method you have in mind, who practices the science you have in mind? And if no one practices it, what are you talking about?
Sure there is a lot of what they do that fits the method you have in mind, and also a lot that doesn't.
Quoting ssu
They do not practice the science outlined in your method, the science you have in mind exists as an idea, not as a practice. But what they do professionally, people call science. I am not talking about what they do in their private life, I am talking about what they do that they call science and that doesn't follow the "scientific" method that they claim to follow (or that others claim scientists follow).
Science is used as a tool for oppression in the same way that organized religion has been used as a tool for oppression, in that their followers force their beliefs onto others, because they are convinced they are right and everyone else is wrong. Followers of organized religion are convinced they spread the word or wish of God, followers of Science are convinced they spread Truth. God and Truth are seen by their followers as a supreme ideal that ought to be spread to the world. If people don't want to accept the God or the Truth that is imposed on to them, they are ridiculed, attacked, ostracized. Like, you know, what you are doing now.
But you will protest, you will say that science is not like religion, science has brought benefits, it has brought technology! It has brought death and destruction also. Religion has brought benefits as well, and technology in a sense, not a technology that makes you fly around the world or gives you the ability to kill millions of people in seconds, but a method that can make people feel love. Both religion and science have been and can be used for good or for bad, when it becomes dangerous is when their followers stop seeing that their beliefs are beliefs, and not some greater thing that has to be forced onto everyone else.
Wonder what you don't think to be a tool of oppression...
Quoting leo
And with that happy note we can end this discussion. :smile:
It's all just idiocy. That anyone even feels compelled to say this is absurd. "Enculturate", really? These are the same people who say that whites have no culture. How can anyone "enculturate" into an absence of culture? What is anyone even saying anymore, it's all just make-believe? Are we heading into just willful stupidity?
I'm triggered, man, this is just blind hatred. There's no philosophy in it.
Consider that the same set of observations can be explained in various ways, according to various world views. A lack of oppression would be allowing each world view to flourish, rather than saying that world views different from the one accepted by mainstream scientists are unscientific or lack merit and should be discarded, while they account for the same evidence. Science could be free of oppression, but the way it is practiced and communicated is not. One wonders why it elicits such strong reactions to point it out.
Helpful advice: don't get angered about the most heated debate or the most ignorant or ludicrous comments (especially from students that don't know much if anything).
The points that the actual academic people talking about decolonization make are far more subtle and interesting and are open for a serious debate.
There's nothing interesting about it. I'm not angry about comments from students, I'm angry about comments from the adults indoctrinating them.
I cannot fully blame people for being entranced by philosophical rhetoric and misinterpreting the words of others. Philosophy is a problematic game as it shifts between subject matters so easily that people will tend to conflate ideas and points with each other.
It seemed like the quotes in the op were related to science in academia as part of the education. I am not saying some of the complainees are not wanting to throw the whole thing out, but I think you are simplifying the issue.
This is essentially an ad hom.
In both those countries you will find what in the West would be considered outside of science, inside the research, or overlapping with the science. It is openly assumed, by many, in those scientific communities that what in the West is consider the only epistemologically justifiable method of gaining knowledge, as one amongst a number. If you look at actual practices and the history of science in the West it is actually more diverse than these debates would lead one to think. But in the East this is more openly acknowledged.
Really?
Just observe what the discussion of decolonizing the education system has been in let's say in South Africa. It really has been a discussion of the background of those who get the academic positions. Now I would argue that it is a matter of employment policy, not science itself. Yet this is how the academia works: once some subfield gets a lot traction, there is the desire to separate it from the traditional field of inquiry. The down-to-Earth objective: get new jobs, create a new field with it's own jargon (to keep out others). Once you have those positions, then you can start writing articles in your own academic journal and refer to your friends.
Quoting Coben
And just where have I said that it's not diverse? It's the critics who actually don't understand the whole point of what just science is that make the claims of Science being some kind of a unified system.
Those arguing for some kind of specific science, be it indigenous science, islamic science or whatever creationist humbug are politicizing themselves science. And they believe it's totally normal because they start from the idea that science is a tool of political power.
You don't understand their motivations. You fail to see that the science that is taught is not culturally neutral, it is imbued with a set of beliefs that are not necessary to make accurate predictions or build precise technology. Those who hold conflicting beliefs that they cherish and that define them do not want to change them because it is not necessary, rather they want to come up with scientific theories that have a similar predictive power but that are formulated in a way that doesn't conflict with their beliefs. What's wrong with that?
Modern science is imbued for instance with the belief of materialism, that deep down all we are is matter, that consciousness is a byproduct that doesn't cause anything, that we are like machines subjected to unchanging laws. These are not beliefs that follow from observation or experiment, these are beliefs that are arbitrarily imposed and that are not necessary to make accurate predictions or build precise technology. Some people do not want to hold these beliefs, what's wrong with that? Why do you insist on making them change their beliefs so they suit yours?
Quoting leoThose that want to make their own beliefs and ideologies more credible by resorting to proclaiming their beliefs being backed up by science or worse, argue that their beliefs being not beliefs but simply scientific facts are a minority. The vast majority do see the difference beliefs and empirical results of some objective scientific test. The vast majority of scientific research simply has no political or ideological agenda.
The error people typically do here is that they focus on the practical applications, usually a commercial ones, that have been made (possible) thanks to something done in scientific research. The difference between science and technology doesn't matter to them either. And the horror if it's a military application, then it becomes that the scientist who had something to do with the app was deliberately making 'the science' just the app in mind and hence is a wretched person right from the start! And when Science is what scientists do, not a method to be used, then you get the reasoning that science kills. Because....nuclear physics gave us nuclear weapons.
Quoting leo
Leo, that simply isn't science. What you are talking about is Physicalism.
First of all, for many scientists or academic researchers using the scientific method, physicalism simply is totally irrelevant to the issues they are studying. If you are studying sociology or politics, you surely can use the scientific method yet care less about materialism, because the whole topic of what you are studying simply isn't an physical object or matter. Or how about the mathematician? Does he or she care about matter?
Even from the purely academic perspective, research is now rarely funded unless it has a practical application. Maybe practicality is a better demarcation than methodology.
This is one of the pitfalls were modern science veer into, just like it to be seen just as a tool of political power. And that demarcation could be useful.
If the role of science is to give us just practical applications, it isn't anymore about understanding the reality around us better. When that isn't anymore the objective, the applications also are limited to the present scientific paradigm. Like if we wouldn't have relativity, but just Newtonian physics, perhaps we could have still a GPS system guiding us, but it simply wouldn't be so accurate.
Philosophy isn't problematic. The habits of ignorant or malicious people are the problem.
In a recent editorial the science journal Cell, or rather the white males at the journal, join the woke movement:
And what is the journal's response? Few highlights:
See editorial here: Science Has a Racism Problem
And so what does this mean for the new woke Cell journal? Looking at their net pages, the most read articles are: "Tracking Changes in SARS-CoV-2 Spike: Evidence that D614G Increases Infectivity of the COVID-19 Virus" and "Targets of T Cell Responses to SARS-CoV-2 Coronavirus in Humans with COVID-19 Disease and Unexposed Individuals". The journal puts up articles like: "For Black Scientists, the Sorrow Is Also Personal" and "A Commitment to Gender Diversity in Peer Review". And to be fair, the journal links also to it's "Cell Press Coronavirus Resource Hub".
The interest in Covid-19 is obvious, even making a dent in the woke revolution: when the #ShutDownAcademia had it's "strike" in order to make a point for the George Floyd incident, it was pointed out that researchers doing Covid-19 research would be exempt.
From the above comes to my mind a poster I saw in a psychology congress (my wife was participating in it) by some Iranian psychologist. The science itself seemed to be normal, but the only difference was that here and there was added "if God wills" and "God is most great". Yeah, science isn't dying, only another ladder is added to the bureaucracy and the narrative is adjusted.
Its not just science, its the death of reason. Feelings and agenda over facts.
The battlefield should be right here on this forum, but people are still getting only banned for the "normal" reasons. That makes me optimistic. I'm confident that science will prevail. :up:
Well I wouldnt say the end is near...we functioned as a species for a long time on just emotion and tribalism. Even with reason dead, humans will be able to stumble through technological and social advancement so this all keeps ticking along. Its just the dark times that the absence of uniform reasoning that I dont think is possible to avoid right now. The wrong kinds of people are driving the car right now.
Or we simply are letting them drive the car as driving the car seems to be "racist and white privilege". Hence many will eagerly let anybody to drive the car as not to be viewed as racists.
But yes, sometimes these issues become literally crazy:
(See article)
Yes, its all very hard to take seriously.
And it goes on... If the above is "white supremacy culture", as it is claimed, this will not be tolerated. Now to design a culturally sustaining math space or to promote to ethnomathematics might be something refreshing and new like "Intentionally integrate physical movement in math classes", but that issues above like "addressing mistakes" are seen as evidence of white supremacy, I'm not so sure where this will lead. Above all when the issue is something like mathematics and not art history.
But I urge everyone to look at A Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction Dismantling Racism in Mathematics Instruction -Exercises for educators to reflect on their own biases to transform their instructional practice . This is promoted by the Oregon Department of Education (see here)
As the pamphlet states:
Forward with the new glorious education of math!!!
However I fear that the chosen rhetoric has a quite different agenda. To talk about toxic white supremacy and racism in mathematics is a deliberate and open attack especially in the US. To object or to criticize what is said then of course is "upholding toxic white supremacy" and racism. And basically I find it quite racist to divide students like this by race as obviously from the minorities mentioned (Black, Latinx, multilingual) Asians are excluded and native Americans forgotten (as many times happens).
And from a philosophical view, the following idea that is promoted seems bizarre:
How this is unequivocally false and "white supremacist" goes over my head when you think about the foundations of mathematics. And what open conflict is being talked here? Perhaps I think too much that mathematics is linked to logic or set theory. For me, mathematics is different from other sciences...especially from humanities and social sciences. It is rigorous and logical and mathematical statements are either true or false, even if there are obvious limitations on what we can prove to be true or false. There can be various other logical systems used, of course, yet they then follow their own rules (and is something not being taught at schools). I don't think that there is real insight behind these ideas, because the writers of the pamphlet continue with the following line:
Sometimes. Yet in my view an interpretation of a problem in various ways isn't actually math.