Indigenous knowledge and western science: The possibility of dialogue

Race and Class

Volumn 49, Issue 1, 2007, Pages 39-61

  Bala, Arun ^a   Gheverghese Joseph, George ^b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO   (Canada)

^b NONE

Author keywords

Cross cultural dialogue; Eurocentrism; History of mathematics; History of science; International Council for Science; Philosophy of science

Indexed keywords

EID: 34250317797     PISSN: 03063968     EISSN: 17413125     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0306396807080067     Document Type: Review

References (54)

1. US National Committee for the International Union of the History and Philosophy of Science, 'Position paper on science and indigenous knowledge' (June 2001), 〈http://www7.nationalacadcmics.org/usnc-iuhps/ Indigenous_Knowledge.html〈.
2. Their significance is often greatest in the healthcare, agricultural and ecological sectors of many developing economies.
3. International Council for Science, 'Science and traditional knowledge', report from the ICSU Study Group on Science and Traditional Knowledge (2002), 〈http://www.icsu.org/Gestion/img/ICSU_DOC_DOWNLOAD/ 220_DD_FILE_Traitional_Knowlcdge_report.pdf〈.
4. World Bank, 'Indigenous knowledge' (2003), 〈http://go.worldbank.org/ CFZJDCEDM0〉.
5. Canadian International Development Agency, 'Selected list of centers of indigenous knowledge' in Handbook of CIDA Project Planning and Indigenous Traditional Knowledge (2002), 〈http://www.kivu.com/CIDA%20Handbook/ cidacentres. html〉.
6. American Association for the Advancement of Science, Traditional Ecological Knowledge Prior Art Database, 〈http://shr.aaas.org/tek/tekpad. htm〉.
7. International Council for Science, 'Science and traditional knowledge', Traditional Ecological Knowledge Prior Art Database, op. cit.
8. Actually, the problem of demarcation has been formulated in different ways: how to separate science from pseudo-science, how to separate science from non-science, from myth and so on. Each would involve different criteria. Here, all demarcation problems are treated as being concerned with separating science from pseudoscience and pseudo-science is regarded as becoming an anti-science when it attacks science.
9. Karl Popper, Conjectures and Refutations: the growth of scientific knowledge (London, Routledge, 1963).
10. The case of the patent on turmeric given to two scientists in the US is exemplary. Turmeric had been used as a spice for a long time, as well as an important ingredient in medicines, cosmetics and dyes in India. In 1995, two individuals in the US were granted a patent on the use of turmeric in wound healing - something known to Indian physicians for centuries. In a legal action against this privatisation of indigenous public knowledge, the Indian government produced documentary evidence from an ancient Sanskrit text and an early paper in the Journal of the Indian Medical Association, which documented the traditional use of turmeric for healing wounds. The patent was subsequently revoked but only after much expenditure of time and effort by a national government with the resources to fight such bio-piracy. Other attempts to patent indigenous knowledge include the use of neem to control fungi on plants, patented in Europe by a corporation registered in the US. The application of neem as a fungicide was widely known in India. Similarly, the patenting by a major company of the hoodia cactus as an appetite suppressant exploited knowledge of the San in the Kalahari, who traditionally employed it to stave off hunger pangs. For a more comprehensive discussion of these issues,
11. see the World Intellectual Property Organisation's Traditional knowledge, genetic resources and traditional cultural expressions/folklore' webpage at 〈http://www.wipo.int/tk/en〉.
12. International Council for Science, 'Science and traditional knowledge', World Intellectual Property Organisation's Traditional Knowledge, Genetic Resources and Traditional Cultural Expressions/folklore' Webpage, op. cit., p. 3.
13. Activities where traditional knowledge has an important role include: hunting, fishing, gathering, agriculture and husbandry; preparing, conserving and distributing food; locating, collecting and storing water; interpreting meteorological and climatic phenomena; healing injuries and combating diseases; making clothing and tools; constructing and maintaining shelters; orientating and navigating on land and sea; managing ecological relations between society and nature; and adapting to environmental and social change.
14. Paul Feyerabend, Against Method: outline of an anarchistic theory of knowledge (London, New Left Books, 1975).
15. There is much that philosophers, historians and sociologists of knowledge may want to criticise in the way that the ICSU report developed its arguments and formulated its demarcation criteria. However, we will not address these problems here. What we wish to document is that the questions raised by these scientists are philosophical questions which philosophers of science have yet to address seriously. The very nature of these questions tells us that novel problems arise for the philosophy of science when old enemies like science and indigenous knowledge become new friends.
16. Arun Agrawal, 'Indigenous and scientific knowledge: some critical comments', Indigenous Knowledge and Development Monitor (Vol. 3, no. 3, 1995).
17. See 'Comments on articles by Arun Agrawal', Indigenous Knowledge and Development Monitor (Vol. 4, no. 1, 1996).
18. This lack of awareness of the problems involved is what has led Ziauddin Sardar to describe them as part of the 'invisible science wars'. See Ziauddin Sardar, 'Above, beyond and at the center of the science wars: a postcolonial reading', in Keith M. Ashman and Philip S. Baringer (eds), After the Science Wars (London, Routledge, 2001), p. 120.
19. See especially Joseph Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, Vol. 2: history of scientific thought (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1956).
20. Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Science and Civilization in Islam (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1968);
21. D. M. Bose, S. N. Sen and B. V. Subbarayappa, A Concise History of Science in India (New Delhi, National Commission for the Compilation of History of Sciences in India, 1971);
22. Martin Bernai, Black Athena: the Afroasiatic roots of classical civilization (London, Free Association Books, 1987);
23. George Gheverghese Joseph, The Crest of the Peacock: the non-European roots of mathematics (Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 2000).
24. For an environmentally oriented reading of many Fourth World traditional cultures, see J. Baird Callicott, Earth's Insights: a survey of ecological ethics from the Mediterranean basin to the Australian outback (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1994).
25. One important question, much discussed by historians and sociologists of knowledge, is derived from Needham's grand question: why did modern science develop in Europe and not in China? This has often been debated in the wider context - 'Why did science develop in Europe and not in civilisation X?' - where X is often a marker for Chinese, Indian or Arabic civilisations. This grand question itself only came to be seen as important after the recognition of the contributions of these trans-European cultures to modern science; it made it seem reasonable to ask why they did not also create modern science. This question will not be addressed here because, although it originated only after the transmissions of Chinese science and technology to their modern counterparts came to be acknowledged, it is not strictly a dialogical question. The question could be asked even if there had been no Chinese contributions to modern science but would then seem as pointless as asking why modern science developed in Europe but not in Argentina.
26. Science and Civilisation in China, Vol. 2, op. cit., p. 70.
27. In all common law systems, the standard of proof in civil cases is on a 'balance of probabilities', while in criminal cases, where the prosecution bears the burden of proof, the standard is proof 'beyond reasonable doubt'. For a clear statement of this difference in a relatively recent English case, see R v Ewing [1983] QB 1039 CA.
28. Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1996);
29. Imre Lakatos, The Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1978);
30. Against Method, op. cit.
31. James Robert Brown, Who Rules in Science? An opinionated guide to the wars (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 2001), pp. 184-6.
32. Indeed, the bias of the double standard set for dialogical and Eurocentric historical theories becomes more evident if we take into account an important fact noted by Needham concerning cross-cultural transmissions, namely that 'the details of transmission are difficult to observe'. (See Science and Civilisation in China, Vol. 2, op. cit., p. 83.) Even when there is direct documentary evidence, in the form of fulsome acknowledgements by the ancient Greeks of their debt to Egyptian science, modern scholars have expressed doubts about these Greek acknowledgements by wondering whether the Greeks exaggerated their debt to Egypt or overestimated the Egyptian knowledge they inherited. If cases of direct expression of debt to transmissions by those who claim to have received them are still not beyond reasonable doubt, especially given the number and authority of the Greek thinkers who made them, the standard dialogical historians are required to meet itself seems subject to reasonable doubt. Dialogical historians must be allowed to adopt the same standards that are deemed acceptable for Eurocentric historians dealing with intra-European and West-to-East transmissions. The best they can achieve, and should be expected to achieve, is to show their account to be better than its competitor on the balance of probabilities.
33. George Saliba, A History of Arabic Astronomy: planetary theories during the golden age of Islam (New York, New York University Press, 1994);
34. B. V. Subbarayappa and K. V. Sarma, Indian Astronomy: a source hook (Bombay, Nehru Centre, 1985).
35. The Crest of the Peacock, op. cit.
36. Indian Astronomy, op. cit.
37. Correct results could have been independently discovered. But incorrect results and approximations that match arc less likely to have been independently discovered.
38. Otto Neugebaucr, The Exact Sciences in Antiquity (New York, Harper, 1962).
39. B. L. Van der Waerden, Geometry and Algebra in Ancient Civilizations (Berlin, Springer, 1983).
40. B. L. Van der Waerden, 'Pell's equation in Greek and Hindu mathematics', Russian Math Surveys (No. 31, 1976), p. 210. An example of a simple Diophantine equation in two unknowns (x and y) is 3x + 4y = 50, which has a number of positive whole number (or integer) solutions for (x, y). For example, x = 14, y = 2 satisfies the equation, as do the solution sets (10, 5), (6, 8) and (2, 11).
41. B. L. Van der Waerden, Russian Math Surveys, Ibid., p. 221.
42. 2) is a misnomer originating with Euler, who mistakenly named this group of indeterminate quadratic equations after the English mathematician George Pell (1610-85).
43. Brahmagupta had also given the same equation in the eighteenth chapter, entitled Kuttaka, of his Brahma Sphuta Siddhanta. A translation of that text had introduced the Arabs to Indian mathematics and astronomy. And he arrives at the smallest solution set of x = 226,153,980 and y = 1,766,319,049! This particular numerical solution was known to European mathematicians before Euler, although they were not aware of a general method for solving such equations. This would lead us to infer that European mathematicians came to know this solution through the Arabs, although no documentary evidence of such knowledge is as yet available.
44. In a letter, Fermat wrote: 'I demand a general rule - given a non-square number, find squares which multiplied by the given number, and with unity added, make squares. What is, for example, the smallest square which, multiplied by 61, with unity added, makes a square?' He then adds: 'We await these solutions which, if England or Belgic or Celtic Gaul do not produce, then Narbonese Gaul will.' Narbonese Gaul was the area around Toulouse where Fermat lived. For a useful reference to this challenge, sec David Eugene Smith, A Source Book in Mathematics, Vol. 1 (New York, Dover Publications, 1959), pp. 214-16.
45. 'Pell's equation in Greek and Hindu mathematics', A Source Book in Mathematics, Vol. 1, op. cit., p. 221.
46. John J. O'Connor and Edmund F. Robertson, 'Pell's Equation' in The MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive (2002), 〈http://www-history.mcs.st- andrews.a-c.uk/history/HistTopics/Pell.html〉.
47. John J. O'Connor and Edmund F. Robertson, 'Pell's Equation' in The MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive (2002), 〈http://www-history.mcs.st- andrews.a-c.uk/history/HistTopics/Pell.html〉. Ibid.
48. Susantha Goonatilake, Aborted Discovery: Science and Creativity in the Third World (London, Zed Press, 1984), p. 160.
49. Susantha Goonatilake, Aborted Discovery: Science and Creativity in the Third World, Ibid., p. 163.
50. World Bank, 'Indigenous knowledge', Aborted Discovery: Science and Creativity in the Third World, op. cit. The distinction between foraging and legitimising strategics might be clarified by analogy with the distinction between the hard-core central principles and the peripheral protective belt of a Lakatosian research programme. Foraging a programme does not involve a concern with preserving its hard core but is solely interested in the evidence it gives to developing another research programme. Legitimising a research programme involves showing that its hard-core principles can explain and predict new phenomena which may have been identified by another research programme. However, Lakatos would not allow for the possibility of legitimising the methodologies of traditional cultures - since he himself offers a universal methodology for science.
51. This fear is documented in Paul R. Gross, Norman Levitt and Martin W. Lewis (eds), The Flight from Science and Reason (New York, New York Academy of Sciences, 1997).
52. Goonatilake stresses this point: I do not wish to replace the Western Doctor of Philosophy with the witch doctor. I believe, however, that there are elements that the witch doctor - or in our more sophisticated cases, 'civilizational knowledge carrier' - can contribute to the knowledge base of doctors in the different sciences. Some of these contributions may yield completely fresh and sophisticated approaches, as in the case of civilizational knowledge. Thus there may be strict limits attainable through a solely Mullah-driven science [or, for that matter, Vedic-based or Biblical-based science], but on the other hand there would be many elements in the great Islamic scientific traditions that could still be drawn upon. Very probably there are important nuggets that did not get translated into Latin from Arabic in the manuscripts in Cordoba and elsewhere, concepts still worth examining. Similarly, in the other great civilizational areas like East Asia, and lesser ones [sic] like the pre-Columbian Americas, there are mines of knowledge yet to be adequately explored. Clearly we need to separate multicultural thinkers like Goonatilake from the post-modern multiculturalists scientists love to hate.
53. Brown, Who Rules in Science?, op. cit.
54. Paul R. Gross and Norman Levitt, Higher Superstition; the academic Left and its quarrels with science (Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994).