Talk:Indigenous science

'Proper' indigenous science

The science that they use for themselves - eg not having full access to 'modern western medicine and agriculture' etc knowing which herbs and soil additives (seaweed etc) to use: and that 'the proper length of cooking time is that required to say these three prayers slowly.' Anna Livia (talk) 17:43, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

This page is bullcrap

and it seems to have been written by an Australian, so I'm not surprised. Just because indigenous science practices have been deliberately destroyed by colonisation in most non-Afroeurasian countries doesn't mean they weren't and aren't legitimate forms of science. Some people are so culturally arrogant they act like the human mind was invented in ancient Greece.^{— Unsigned, by: 121.98.70.28 / talk / contribs}

We're pretty big on empiricism and the scientific method here--Hastur! (talk) 11:25, 14 September 2020 (UTC)

What the hell is this nonsense doing here?

This looks pretty irremediable to me. Unless someone can give me a good reason why not I'm going to start an AFD shortly.Bob^{"Life is short and (insert adjective)"} 15:00, 14 July 2022 (UTC)

The page is not that good, with no major additions since 2020. It is a missional subject, with both legitimacy (Australia's premier science agency, CSIRO)[1] and limitations that could be better detailed. Bongolian (talk) 17:35, 14 July 2022 (UTC)

"Science" is a particular process involving hypothesis, testing, disproof, peer review etc.

I wouldn't doubt that indigenous people have a vast amount of knowledge about their environment, ecology etc. But I seriously doubt that they have arrived at this by any method which we would regard as "scientific" in the modern western sense.

I quote from the article: " All of nature is considered to be intelligent and alive, thus an active research partner."; "IS is holistic, drawing on all senses, including the spiritual and psychic."

This does not sound like anything I would recognize as "Science".Bob^{"Life is short and (insert adjective)"} 18:01, 14 July 2022 (UTC)

I don't disagree with that. That is something that could be better critiqued on the page. CSIRO does have a more measured view of the topic of indigenous science. "Indigenous science" could be more accurately described as a protoscience. Some parts of modern science have been largely descriptive, such as taxonomy (particularly before modern genetic analysis became available). Also the field of ethnobotany, and the larger field of ethnobiology, have blended indigenous knowledge with modern analytic tools such as chemistry. Bongolian (talk) 18:37, 14 July 2022 (UTC)

I see that WP has an article on "Traditional knowledge" AKA "Indigenous Knowledge". I would be fine with renaming it to something like that and treating it appropriately. But treating it as though it is has equal standing with stuff based on what we have come to know as the "scientific method" is simply wrong.

It's like saying that Traditional Chinese Medicine should be treated on par with established treatments because it calls itself "medicine". it may (or may not) have a long history and be recognized by some international bodies - but it's not the same thing.Bob^{"Life is short and (insert adjective)"} 18:54, 14 July 2022 (UTC)

Actually, looking at the edit log I understand now what happened.

We had it a "pseudoscience" until a relatively new editor recently decided to add some rather ill-worded text and substantially change the tone.Bob^{"Life is short and (insert adjective)"} 19:03, 14 July 2022 (UTC)

I've returned it something more like its previous state.Bob^{"Life is short and (insert adjective)"} 06:38, 15 July 2022 (UTC)

I see that you guys are debating my edits. Well, the thing is that I don't really care about Indigenous "science". The reason I made the edit is because Wikipedia thinks it's Eurocentric. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RationalWiki#Analysis Heisenberg Enter into the rabbit hole 15:45, 15 July 2022 (UTC)

So? Firstly I'm not sure that WP does "think" that. Secondly, if you want a list of other people who don't like our articles go to RationalWiki:Pissed at us. We are certainly not going to edit all our articles so that they don't offend anyone.Bob^{"Life is short and (insert adjective)"} 16:18, 15 July 2022 (UTC)

Personally, I think if we can't at least say something about the flip side of the issue (after all, given that all those indigenous societies didn't die in droves from disease their methods couldn't have been completely worthless, and it appears that their methods have been consistently useful when it comes to preserving their local ecosystems) we may as well delete it outright. If we can't do the subject justice, it would be an insult to just leave it as a biased oversimplification. --Logos (talk) 03:47, 13 August 2022 (UTC)

This article is a strawman at best

I know it might be hard to fathom, but science was not exclusively a Western phenomenon. For example, this video by Rebecca Watson details the existence of a pre-colonial Maori scientist who helped adapt traditional Polynesian agricultural methods to an environment that said methods were not optimized for (New Zealand is fucking cold compared to, say, Tahiti). Furthermore, the amount of environmental knowledge needed for Polynesian navigation was ludicrous, and the only way they could've gotten said knowledge was from a method that's pretty close to the scientific method. You know, actual in the field experimentation. The language used to describe the science may have been different, but to use an analogy: many of the classical scientists of the Scientific Revolution regularly coached their findings, their science, in decidedly religious terms. What's with the double standard?

The way this article dismisses indigenous knowledge in its entirety is quite frankly absurd. Vee (talk) 15:33, 3 November 2022 (UTC)