Arathain Kelvar wrote:
Reading the linked article, and the first few sections of the paper, I'm curious why you posted the article and not the paper?
There's certainly room to ridicule the paper, but the article linked IMO is a mischaracterization. Clearly it's a biased assessment - did you read the underlying paper?
Yes, the National Review makes no attempt to disguise its bias.
I did, however, read about half the paper before I lost interest in continuing since I found it mostly to be blithering hogwash. I found the article to be fundamentally accurate, it's evident bias notwithstanding.
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As ridiculous as that article's buzzword-heavy theme is, I think there's a legitimate point that an attitude along the lines of, "Ah, those ignorant primitives with their silly beliefs have nothing useful or insightful to offer science, so why bother listening?" has been a long-standing problem in the scientific community. For example, geologists dismissed the so-called "folk history" of native tribes in the Pacific Northwest that described a massive tsunami that took place in the region in the 1600s...until they recently discovered that there is in fact a volatile fault line there and that the tribal histories match up perfectly with the projected periodicity of the fault and written records of a tsunami in that period from Japan. Thankfully, pharma companies seem to know better now, and they're busy searching so-called "folk medicine" for leads to find the next big drug treatment.I'm sure there's similar value to be mined in glaciology. Want to know how a particular glacier has changed over the centuries? Maybe a good starting point, or at least an additional data point to consider, is the oral history of native groups that have lived in the area for a thousand years or so.
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Generally, you don't want to consider such things as assumed fact until you can corroborate it from other, more reliable sources. Similarly with herbal medicines, you wouldn't want to treat an illness with them because some ancient tribe used them. Very, very occasionally there's some substance to some of this ancient "science" - it's rare enough that it becomes something of a curiosity when found. Much like archaeologists have utterly abandoned the concept of "biblical archaeology" (because it misleads them more than it has ever helped), modern methods supercede ancient ones.
I think the ability of primitive people to make basic observations about their world, and determine cause and effect in their everyday lives is much better than that. There's substance in ancient science a lot more often than "very, very occasionally". Almost all of their basic tool use is science, and that's just a starting point. We don't notice it because we are not still discovering how bows and arrows work; we ARE still discovering medicine.
Scientists should no exhibit hubris in discounting the knowledge of primitives and locals about their environment out of hand.
That said, that is just good science - the data is what it is. There is nothing wrong with taking the observations of these people and investigating them further.
The paper goes completely off the rails by trying to make this into some sort of "feminist perspective" that isn't "Eurocentric" and.. well, never mind., you can read all the buzzwords for yourself. If a primitive society's belief is investigated and disproven this is not "Eurocentric", and the idea that it has anything to do with gender at all is preposterous.
The fact of the matter is that the sorts of people who set up this kind of "study" simply do not like the fact that scientists can drop the trump card of reality on their academic fields. By dressing up this sort of garbage as legitimate academic pursuits they give a veneer of respectability to what amounts to an attempt to impose a political agenda on science.
The real question here is, why do these people deserve to be regarded as academics at all? Do universities possess the power to designate literally ANYTHING, no matter how vapid or absurd, a legitimate field of study?
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