Science can't be Pākehā or Māori, it's just science

Monday, 2 August 2021

Kyle Gibson says no group or culture has special claim to science.

OPINION: Science is not a Western European invention and should not be contrasted with cultural knowledge.

Pākehā do not do Pākehā science, and Māori do not do Māori science.

We all do the same science and no one group has special claim to it.

Seven Auckland University professors recently wrote an open letter denouncing a Government working group report that advises teachers to discuss 'the notion that science is a Western European invention and itself evidence of European dominance over Māori and other indigenous peoples'.

They denounce the working group's aim “to ensure parity for mātauranga Māori with other bodies of knowledge”. The backlash has been immense and one of the professors has stepped down from one of their roles at Auckland University.

This debacle is alarming and I think we should all be concerned. These professors are taking a stand against racism; the backlash is as ironic as it is problematic.

Mātauranga Māori cannot be given parity with science, because it is not the same kind of thing as science.

Mātauranga Māori should be given parity with other bodies of knowledge by being regarded with the same weight and respect afforded to all cultural knowledge. There is no respect in pretending that it is something that it can not be and should not try to be.

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Dividing science along cultural lines is a misunderstanding of the subject.

The problems that this misguided approach intends to solve are very real. For example, the study of science is dominated by people from particular backgrounds.

This causes harm to all of us, especially those groups under represented. While the problem is real, the proposed solution is not fit for purpose.

We can not solve under representation in science by declaring it European and promoting alternatives. Doing so is inaccurate and harmful.

Inaccurate, because science is not, and has never been, the exclusive domain of Europeans. Harmful, because it denies so many their heritage.

Science belongs to all of us and it is not an enemy of any culture.

Notice how difficult and heated this conversation becomes when we allow ourselves to understand science as something Western and European.

It becomes an issue of truth vs culture, Mātauranga Māori vs the modern scientific world view.

This conversation will never be productive, because it arises from an absurdity. The modern scientific world view is not Western or European, it cannot be understood as mine and not yours. It is the result of untold lifetimes of struggle, involving all cultures, that unifies us all and belongs to no one person more than another.

Science is uniquely capable of unifying our perspective by revealing the way the world really is.

No cultural knowledge could compare to this, Pākehā, Māori, or otherwise.

Supposing that any cultural knowledge should compete or contest in any regard with science is absurd.

Science is not given parity with other forms of knowledge, science is revised when falsified.

No culture is harmed by such a development, because scientific claims should not be understood as cultural claims or compared to them.

If Einstein's theory of relativity comes to be replaced, in light of some new findings, Jewish culture will have suffered no slight. There is no room for slight or insult because the theory of relativity is not Jewish science, it is just science.

Science, as it is practiced here and around the world, faces no shortage of cultural challenges.

It is a tool and it can be used to do wrong. University departments, research laboratories, and funding bodies are political and cultural by their very nature. For this reason, they are appropriate targets for the forms of criticism being discussed, but this does not extend to science itself.

A department can be European, but science can not. The dominant culture in a lab can be intolerant or discriminatory, but science can not.

Funding bodies can foster systemic racism, but science cannot.

Science cannot be Pākehā or Māori, just like math and logic cannot.

Reducing science to mere culture removes any hope of understanding each other, because it denies us the universal language we all share.

Casting any culture as distinct from science harms all involved. There are, of course, important changes that need to be made to facilitate widespread engagement with science, especially in our education system.

The misuse of science in our history and around the world is an important topic that should be included in our curriculum.

We cannot teach these issues by claiming that science belongs to Western Europeans, doing so is antithesis to science and exacerbates the very harm we need to address.

Kyle Gibson has a PhD in philosophy, and is a tutor at the University of Canterbury.