Course to Graduate Students on Critiques of Neoclassical Economics
Tsinghua University,
Beijing, China
Lecture, Academy of Marxism; Chinese Academy of Social Sciences
Beijing, China
August 11, 2009
Saturday, August 29, 2009
Friday, August 28, 2009
Spirals of Causality: Imperialism,
The "Logic" of Capitalism and Imperialism
The Imperial Expansion Spiral
The Imperial Decline Spiral
Indigenous Approaches to Economic Development: Lecture Given at Yunnan University, Kunming, China, July 25, 2009
Indigenous Approaches to Economic Development and Sustainability
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Lecture/Paper Delivered to the Faculty of Anthropology and
Ethnology, Yunnan University, Kunming, China, July 25, 2009
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By James M. Craven/Omahkohkiaayo I’poyi
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Professor of Economics and Geography, Clark College, Vancouver, WA. USA
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Member, Blackfoot Nation
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Introduction
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Introduction
I began my studies of Political Economy over 40 years ago. In my first classes in Economics, in 1965, economic growth (increases in real GDP per person) was considered as either equivalent to economic development (qualitative improvements of the overall quality of life for the average person) or at least the major necessary conditon of economic development. There was no notion that economic growth in the short-run, or of a certain nature involving certain types of “goods” and services, or of benefit only to a small group and not everyone, or that involved massive and unaccounted for negative externalities[1] , could potentially harm, not enhance, overall economic development (the overall quality of life faced by the average person).
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As for the causes of economic growth, the models I was taught all noted that it takes inputs to produce output, and, that the major inputs were land, labor and capital. Of the major inputs, it was assumed that capital was the most decisive as it was said to be fundamental to augmenting and making operative the potentials, capabilities and productivity of the other inputs land and labor. And “capital” was defined as a physical capital or a “stock” [a fixed quantity in time and space] of “things” that had been produced specifically in order to produce something else for profitable exchange[2] . And finally, since physical capital was defined as the central ingredient of economic growth, which was seen as almost equivalent to economic development, obviously then, the owners and/or controllers of capital, capitalists and managers, were seen as central players or originators of economic growth and development.
As for the causes of economic growth, the models I was taught all noted that it takes inputs to produce output, and, that the major inputs were land, labor and capital. Of the major inputs, it was assumed that capital was the most decisive as it was said to be fundamental to augmenting and making operative the potentials, capabilities and productivity of the other inputs land and labor. And “capital” was defined as a physical capital or a “stock” [a fixed quantity in time and space] of “things” that had been produced specifically in order to produce something else for profitable exchange[2] . And finally, since physical capital was defined as the central ingredient of economic growth, which was seen as almost equivalent to economic development, obviously then, the owners and/or controllers of capital, capitalists and managers, were seen as central players or originators of economic growth and development.
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When I asked some basic questions in class, I was often given a blank stare by the professors: What capital (machines, tools etc) can think or plan its own use or fix itself when it breaks down? If capital and land make operative and productive the capabilities and potential of labor, why is the reverse also not true—that labor makes operative and productive the capabilities and potential of capital and land? If a given machine is involved in production and productivity, why should the owners or controllers of that machine (who are often themselves deeply in debt and do not really own that machine free and clear) entitled to grossly disproportionate returns (profits) from the sales of what that machine produces relative to what labor (without which nothing could be produced by any machine and nothing produced by the machines could be bought on a mass level) has been paid? Are all commodities produced by economic growth really good for those who demand them and do they really improve rather than sabotage the quality of life for the average person? These were but some of the questions I posed and to which I still await answers from some of the esteemed professors.
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Then came the 1970s and I was finishing graduate school and began teaching economics. Someone figured it out that no machine, without skilled labor that is able to effectively utilize all the capabilities of it, and, that is able to fix that machine when it breaks down, and, that has the right work ethic and attitudes, will produce much of anything. So this suggests that experience, skill, training and motivation by labor is a critical ingredient in economic growth. There was also now the suggestion that economic growth and development were not synonymous. But what about the central role of capital and the capitalist in economic growth and economic development? The answer was defintional and with some sleight of hand. Since “capital” is defined as any “thing” that is produced and used to produce something else, well, the skills, experience, education and even work attitudes are all “produced” by an educational system as well as family environment, and, they are used to produce something else, so we can just call all those produced and aquired skills, experience and attitudes of labor, all “human capital”; and so the textbooks now began to discuss “human capital” (not labor or skilled labor that had to make the conscious decision and effort to acquire or not acquire, and apply or not apply, those skills) as another critical “factor” in economic growth which was said to be a critical factor (a necessary if not sufficient condition) in overall economic development. The 1970s and 80s passed, as did my years of teaching Economics and other subjects, and then in the late 1980s the textbooks added something new again. Even if you have potentially productive machines and tools (physical capital), and even if you have highly skilled, experienced and motivated workers who know how to get the best out of those machines (human capital), what if those workers have no hope in the future and no reason to be motivated?; what if the workers feel they are being exploited by the system and those who run it?; what if the workers or the capitalists no longer accept the dominant values, beleifs, traditions and myths of the system that cause them to invest, save, get an education, take risks etc? That led to the concept of “social capital”[still barely mentioned in the texts] that refers to institutions that foster trust, hope, cohesion, cooperation, belief in the system, reciprocity, etc and cause people to sacrifice in the present for a possible future, take risks, save, invest and do all those activities critical to economic growth and development.
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Then came the 1970s and I was finishing graduate school and began teaching economics. Someone figured it out that no machine, without skilled labor that is able to effectively utilize all the capabilities of it, and, that is able to fix that machine when it breaks down, and, that has the right work ethic and attitudes, will produce much of anything. So this suggests that experience, skill, training and motivation by labor is a critical ingredient in economic growth. There was also now the suggestion that economic growth and development were not synonymous. But what about the central role of capital and the capitalist in economic growth and economic development? The answer was defintional and with some sleight of hand. Since “capital” is defined as any “thing” that is produced and used to produce something else, well, the skills, experience, education and even work attitudes are all “produced” by an educational system as well as family environment, and, they are used to produce something else, so we can just call all those produced and aquired skills, experience and attitudes of labor, all “human capital”; and so the textbooks now began to discuss “human capital” (not labor or skilled labor that had to make the conscious decision and effort to acquire or not acquire, and apply or not apply, those skills) as another critical “factor” in economic growth which was said to be a critical factor (a necessary if not sufficient condition) in overall economic development. The 1970s and 80s passed, as did my years of teaching Economics and other subjects, and then in the late 1980s the textbooks added something new again. Even if you have potentially productive machines and tools (physical capital), and even if you have highly skilled, experienced and motivated workers who know how to get the best out of those machines (human capital), what if those workers have no hope in the future and no reason to be motivated?; what if the workers feel they are being exploited by the system and those who run it?; what if the workers or the capitalists no longer accept the dominant values, beleifs, traditions and myths of the system that cause them to invest, save, get an education, take risks etc? That led to the concept of “social capital”[still barely mentioned in the texts] that refers to institutions that foster trust, hope, cohesion, cooperation, belief in the system, reciprocity, etc and cause people to sacrifice in the present for a possible future, take risks, save, invest and do all those activities critical to economic growth and development.
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The term social capital was first coined in 1916 by L. Judson Hanifan[3] to refer to social networks and institutions/norms of reciprocity (goodwill, fellowship, sympathy and social intercourse) associated with them. Hanifan, by his own admission, employed the term “capital” (anything that has been produced and used to produce—for profitable exchange—something else) to catch the eye--and patronage--of the business community. Hanifan suggested that these social networks and institutions could, on micro as well as macro levels, enhance productivity, competitiveness, employment and income creation, etc. in some of the same ways that physical capital and human capital can, also, produce the same effects.
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Subsequent to Hanifan’s apparent introduction of the term social capital, the term and concept was reintroduced—and partly redefined—at least six times up to the present:
The term social capital was first coined in 1916 by L. Judson Hanifan[3] to refer to social networks and institutions/norms of reciprocity (goodwill, fellowship, sympathy and social intercourse) associated with them. Hanifan, by his own admission, employed the term “capital” (anything that has been produced and used to produce—for profitable exchange—something else) to catch the eye--and patronage--of the business community. Hanifan suggested that these social networks and institutions could, on micro as well as macro levels, enhance productivity, competitiveness, employment and income creation, etc. in some of the same ways that physical capital and human capital can, also, produce the same effects.
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Subsequent to Hanifan’s apparent introduction of the term social capital, the term and concept was reintroduced—and partly redefined—at least six times up to the present:
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1) in the 1950s by sociologist John Seeley[4] to refer to ‘memberships in clubs and associations’ that act just like negotiable securities in producing career advancement and tangible returns to individuals;
1) in the 1950s by sociologist John Seeley[4] to refer to ‘memberships in clubs and associations’ that act just like negotiable securities in producing career advancement and tangible returns to individuals;
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2) In the 1960s, by urban economist Jane Jacobs[5] to refer to the collective value and effects of informal neighborhood ties and associations;
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2) In the 1960s, by urban economist Jane Jacobs[5] to refer to the collective value and effects of informal neighborhood ties and associations;
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3) in the 1970s by economist Glenn Loury[6] to refer to wider social ties lost by African Americans as one of the legacies of slavery;
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4) In the 1980s by social theorist Pierre Bourdieu[7] to refer to the actual or potential resources linked to durable networks of institutionalized relationships of mutual recognition and assistance;
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5) In the mid-1980s by economist Ekkehart Schlicht[8] to refer to the economic value and productivity-enhancing effects of organizations, moral order, cooperation and cohesion;
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6) in the late 1980s by James Coleman to refer, as Hanifan[9] had done, to the social arrangements, relationships and institutions creating and shaping the environment or social contexts of education.
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The above-mentioned definitions of social capital are all closely related and narrow in their focus. They focus on immediate relationships—institutionalized or informal—and the networks, and norms of reciprocity that serve as tangible assets and have economic impacts not only on the micro level (personal career advancement, obtaining employment, political influence, personal safety etc) but also on the macro level in terms of enhancing productivity, reducing information and transactions costs, enhancing competitiveness, enhancing community safety and reducing crime, encouraging cooperation, limiting destructive forms/levels of competition. These definitions of social capital are designed to rescue neoclassical economics from the internal contradictions of methodological individualism in that they show how supposedly atomistic and individualistic utility and profit maximizing individuals might be acting cooperatively and obeying social norms and laws, appearing to be socially aware and consciousness individuals, while all the while, only appearing to be social, in order to maximize and attain individual utility and profitability imperatives and goals. It was in this area that John Walsh got the Nobel Prize in Economics for his work in Game Theory showing how apparent social cooperation and social consciousness “versus” individual atomistic utility and profit maximization behaviors and activities might not be contradictory.
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Again the focus is on a new form of “capital” as a central ingredient in economic growth and development. In Indigenous societies, social harmony, mutual respect, cooperation, respect for law as well as law worthy of respect, absence of alienation, social cohesion, are all considered essential for collective survival, economic growth and economic development. Reciprocity is considered a virtue on its own and not, as an instrument for or of, personal gain or maximization of individualism and individualistic preferences.
Again the focus is on a new form of “capital” as a central ingredient in economic growth and development. In Indigenous societies, social harmony, mutual respect, cooperation, respect for law as well as law worthy of respect, absence of alienation, social cohesion, are all considered essential for collective survival, economic growth and economic development. Reciprocity is considered a virtue on its own and not, as an instrument for or of, personal gain or maximization of individualism and individualistic preferences.
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So the Eurocentric and capitalist-based models of economic growth gradually incorporated and refined five Basic ingredients to economic growth[10] but said little about the concept of sustainability:
So the Eurocentric and capitalist-based models of economic growth gradually incorporated and refined five Basic ingredients to economic growth[10] but said little about the concept of sustainability:
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1) Capital Accumulation;
1) Capital Accumulation;
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2) Available Resources;
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3) Growth Compatible Institutions (Markets, Property Rights, Monetary Systems, Government Policies and “Proper” Roles of Government);
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4) Technology;
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5) Entrepreneurship
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These Eurocentric and capitalist models of economic growth and development basically set up a tautology or circular argument. By defining the goals of economic growth and development as equivalent with those values and goals most common to capitalism (materialism, conspicuous consumption of expanding volumes of goods and services, etc.), by measuring economic growth and development in narrow monetized terms (real GDP per capita with no comment on the types of goods and services making up that GDP or on the social costs of producing and distributing them) and by making, as key ingredients to growth and development, those inputs that are central to capitalism as a system (monetary system, private property rights, markets, profit incentives), we wind up with a virtual tautological equivalence[11] between capitalism and economic growth and development.
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These Eurocentric and capitalist models of economic growth and development basically set up a tautology or circular argument. By defining the goals of economic growth and development as equivalent with those values and goals most common to capitalism (materialism, conspicuous consumption of expanding volumes of goods and services, etc.), by measuring economic growth and development in narrow monetized terms (real GDP per capita with no comment on the types of goods and services making up that GDP or on the social costs of producing and distributing them) and by making, as key ingredients to growth and development, those inputs that are central to capitalism as a system (monetary system, private property rights, markets, profit incentives), we wind up with a virtual tautological equivalence[11] between capitalism and economic growth and development.
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So a society that produces, on the average or per capita (without any allowances for the fact that the de-jure or on paper statistical average per capita may well not represent the typical de-facto situation for the average person due to outliers and de facto asymmetric distributions of incomes, wealth and goods and services) more goods and services, even if those goods and services have corrupting influences as in the case of drugs, pornography, alcohol, tobacco etc, and even if producing those goods and services involves waste of non-renewable resources and massive negative externalities, such a society is said to be experiencing and promoting both economic growth and development according to the Eurocentric and capitalist-based models of growth and development. And this system is seen as a kind of perpetual motion machine with little or no friction: new spending creates new incomes which create new spending creating new incomes (multiplier effects); new incomes and consumption spending create new jobs, tax revenues, savings leading to new investment spending (multiplier and accelerator effects) leading to even more incomes and multiplier effects etc.; the so-called “Virtuous Upward Spiral”.
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This is but one example of one of the new growth theories:
So a society that produces, on the average or per capita (without any allowances for the fact that the de-jure or on paper statistical average per capita may well not represent the typical de-facto situation for the average person due to outliers and de facto asymmetric distributions of incomes, wealth and goods and services) more goods and services, even if those goods and services have corrupting influences as in the case of drugs, pornography, alcohol, tobacco etc, and even if producing those goods and services involves waste of non-renewable resources and massive negative externalities, such a society is said to be experiencing and promoting both economic growth and development according to the Eurocentric and capitalist-based models of growth and development. And this system is seen as a kind of perpetual motion machine with little or no friction: new spending creates new incomes which create new spending creating new incomes (multiplier effects); new incomes and consumption spending create new jobs, tax revenues, savings leading to new investment spending (multiplier and accelerator effects) leading to even more incomes and multiplier effects etc.; the so-called “Virtuous Upward Spiral”.
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This is but one example of one of the new growth theories:
(From: Parkin, Michael, Macroeconomics 7th Edition, Pearson, Addison-Wesley, Instructor’s Resource Disk, Chapter 7, Reprinted Under Fair Use Doctrine for Educational and Scholarly Exchange purposes only.) -
Now here are some other models that illustrate the typical Indigenous views of survival, development (seen to be about more than economics) and sustainability that differ markedly from those typical of Western, Eurocentric and in particular capitalist economies. The economy is seen as an inseparable part of the total society. Present-day activities are always with the Seventh future generation and sustainability in mind. Spirituality is seen as a key ingredient in both social stability and development. The types of goods and services and their impacts and implications on the survival of the culture, along with the true costs of producing and distributing them are considered critical factors in the basic decisions of What, How and For Whom to produce and distribute the means of subsistence.
Now here are some other models that illustrate the typical Indigenous views of survival, development (seen to be about more than economics) and sustainability that differ markedly from those typical of Western, Eurocentric and in particular capitalist economies. The economy is seen as an inseparable part of the total society. Present-day activities are always with the Seventh future generation and sustainability in mind. Spirituality is seen as a key ingredient in both social stability and development. The types of goods and services and their impacts and implications on the survival of the culture, along with the true costs of producing and distributing them are considered critical factors in the basic decisions of What, How and For Whom to produce and distribute the means of subsistence.
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Core Values
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Western(Capitalist) vs. Indigenous[12]
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Competition vs. Harmony
Materialism vs. Prudence
Acquisition vs. Reciprocity
Accumulation vs. Distribution
Ownership vs. Kinship
Growth vs. Sustainability
Immediacy vs. Caring for Future Generations
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Materialism vs. Prudence
Acquisition vs. Reciprocity
Accumulation vs. Distribution
Ownership vs. Kinship
Growth vs. Sustainability
Immediacy vs. Caring for Future Generations
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These core values of course do not represent the values of all members of each group held and practiced respectively, but are meant to represent and convey fair generalizations of some of the different traditions and core values celebrated in the literature and traditions of the respective systems and cultures—Eurocentric and capitalist vs. Indigenous and communalist—that are typically presented and advocated by their advocates and adherents. It is very clear from the internal documents of the U.S. and Canadian Governments, as well as from the internal documents, diaries and memoirs of the missionaries and “Indian Agents”, that the core and defining values, institutions, practices, priorities, relationships and other dimensions of the culture of Indigenous nations, were not simply regarded and dismissed as “inferior” or backward; rather, they were first and foremost regarded as direct challenges (without any evangelical intentions by Indigenous Peoples to do so) to the core values, practices, relations, theologies and institutions—cultures—of capitalism and those of the settlers. Just as some capitalist nations have regarded the mere existence of socialism and socialist values as an existential threat, without any alleged overt or covert acts of aggression by socialist social formations like China, so Indigenous cultures and systems, with definite communalist and non-capitalist practices and values, were regarded as existential threats and banned. Even many Indigenous prayers, with communalist values, were seen as a threat to cultures—and interests—built on capitalism. Here are but two of many examples from the archives of the Department of Indian Affairs in Canada and the Bureau of Indian Affairs in the U.S. that show the real nature and intentions of their policies. For example, in many traditional societies, there is the sacred practice of “Potlatch” or “Give Aways” (Blackfoot) in which prized personal possessions are given away; they are not, by the way forms of “gambling” or “lotteries”. These ceremonies are designed to teach: the transient nature of all material possessions; not to become a slave to personal possessions; community spirit; compassion and that happiness of others is more important than individualistic and selfish desires and possessions. These traditional values are decidedly not consistent with market-based economies that are commonly based upon—often celebrated in elements of their social capital—greed, selfishness, ultra-individualism, competition, materialism, acquisitiveness, competition, narcissism and the logic of profits-for-power-and-power-for-profits. That the conflicting core values, relationships and institutions of traditional Indigenous societies were in direct conflict with—and seen not co-exist with—those of market-based societies was seen early on in U.S. and Canadian histories. For example:
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DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR
Office of Indian Affairs-Washington
Supplement to Circular No. 1665 February 14, 1923
Indian Dancing
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To Superintendents:
Office of Indian Affairs-Washington
Supplement to Circular No. 1665 February 14, 1923
Indian Dancing
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To Superintendents:
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At a conference in October, 1922, of the missionaries of the several religious denominations represented in the Sioux country, the following recommendations were adopted and have been courteously submitted to this office:
At a conference in October, 1922, of the missionaries of the several religious denominations represented in the Sioux country, the following recommendations were adopted and have been courteously submitted to this office:
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1. That the Indian form of gambling[sic] and lottery[sic] known as the "ituranpi" (translated "Give Away") be prohibited.
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2. That the Indian dances be limited to one in each month in the daylight hours of one day in the midweek, and at one center in each district; the months of March and April, June, July, and August be excepted.
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3. That none take part in the dances or be present who are under 50 years of age.
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4. That a careful propaganda be undertaken to educate public opinion against the dance and to provide a healthy substitute.
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5. That there be close cooperation between the Government employees and the missionaries in those matters which affect the moral welfare of Indians.
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…After a conscientious study of the dance situation in his jurisdiction, the efforts of every superintendent must persistently encourage and emphasize the Indian's attention to these political, useful, thrifty, and orderly activities that are indispensable to his well-being and that underlie the preservation of his race in the midst of complex and highly competitive conditions.
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The instinct of individual enterprise and devotion to the posterity and elevation of family life should in some way be made paramount in every Indian household to the exclusion of idleness, waste of time at frequent gatherings of whatever nature, and the neglect of physical resources upon which depend food, clothings[sic] , shelter, and the very beginnings of progress. [13]
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"It is readily acknowledged that Indian children lose their natural resistance to illness by habitating[sic] so closely in these schools, and that they die at a much higher rate than in their villages. But this alone does not justify a change in the policy of this Department, which is geared towards the FINAL SOLUTION OF OUR INDIAN PROBLEM." [14]
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And it is more than irony that the term “Final Solution of ‘our’ the Indian Problem” in the DIA memo of D.C. Scott is the exactly language used by the Nazis as in “Final Solution to the Jewish Problem”. The Alberta Sterilization Act of 1928[15], and the Eugenics Laws of 27 states of the U.S. were specifically cited by the German Nazis as the direct “inspirations” for their own 1933 Race Hygiene Law and 1935 Nuremberg Race Laws.”[16] According to John Toland, biographer of Adolf Hitler:
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And it is more than irony that the term “Final Solution of ‘our’ the Indian Problem” in the DIA memo of D.C. Scott is the exactly language used by the Nazis as in “Final Solution to the Jewish Problem”. The Alberta Sterilization Act of 1928[15], and the Eugenics Laws of 27 states of the U.S. were specifically cited by the German Nazis as the direct “inspirations” for their own 1933 Race Hygiene Law and 1935 Nuremberg Race Laws.”[16] According to John Toland, biographer of Adolf Hitler:
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Hitler's concept of concentration camps as well as the practicality of genocide owed much, so he claimed, to his studies of English and United States history. He admired the camps for Boer prisoners in South Africa And for the Indians in the Wild West; and often praised to his inner circle the efficiency of America's extermination-by starvation and uneven combat-of the 'Red Savages' who could not be tamed by captivity.[17]
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And from an internal document of the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs:
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"Set the blood-quantum at one-quarter, hold to it as a rigid definition of Indians, let intermarriage proceed, and eventually Indians will be defined out of existence. When that happens, the federal government will finally be freed from its persistent Indian problem."[18]
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Thus it has been made clear by the U.S. and Canadian governments that Indigenous institutions, values and practices, Indigenous cultures and systems, are considered not only as “existential threats” to their own orders, institutions and values, but are considered fundamentally inconsistent with what they define as economic growth and development and the fundamental conditions and ingredients necessary for economic growth and overall development.
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Now let’s explore the model of Indigenous development and sustainability given below. The first thing that must be noticed is the four points of the model that correspond with the four primary directions of the compass: North, or Control of Assets; East, or Spirituality; South, or Kinship; and West, or Personal Efficacy. These imperatives are considered fundamental to overall development and sustainability in Indigenous terms.
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(click on picture to enlarge)-
Why are these four[19] core values and imperatives considered fundamental to development and sustainability in Indigenous terms? There is an old saying that sums it up: “It is better to know where to go and not know how, than to know how to go and not know where.” Technology, “Capital” even “land” and “Labor”, are part of the how to go and not where to go. Without Sovereignty and Control of Assets and critical resources, without Vision informed by Spirituality[20] , without Kinship and healthy families and Clans and Bands, without Personal Efficacy (health and viability) of individuals, no nation, especially one surrounded by hostile forces that consider its mere existence a “threat” of some sort, will grow, develop or even survive and be sustained. This is no different for China than it is for any Indigenous society and vice-versa. Since its inception in 1949, the People’s Republic of China, with its own sovereign and socialist institutions and roads to growth, development and sustainability with Chinese characteristics, has been: encircled; threatened with nuclear annihilation; attacked internally by secessionist and separatist forces acting as proxies for foreign powers; hit with repeated embargos and denials of critical technologies and goods and services; slandered, demonized and isolated among the community of nations . [21]
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Social systems engineering, to which all Indigenous nations, along with socialist nations like China have been subject, involves putting targeted nations under such siege from external and internal pressures that have been manufactured and/or exacerbated, that the targeted nation winds up in a straight jacket, forced to divert precious scarce resources into defense and away from development and sustainability, that the targeted nation appears to “conform”, and thus the “proof” has been engineered, of the caricatures that have been made of that targeted nation: “backward”; “repressive”; “inefficient”; “undemocratic”; “stagnant”[22] etc. But in a fair fight, or peaceful competition between systems, socialism beats capitalism any day, even in terms of capitalism’s own definitions and measurements of “efficiency”, just as traditional Indigenous societies beat modern-day assimilated BIA-DIA controlled and capitalist influenced Indigenous societies, in terms of all the requisite ingredients to development and sustainability shown in the traditional Indigenous model of development and sustainability, any day. That is why they were put under siege with their core institutions and values slandered, demonized and marginalized historically and in the present: in a fair and peaceful competition between systems, socialism beats capitalism, as Traditional ways are far superior, even in terms of levels of science and technology, than what has become of Indigenous societies in North America and elsewhere under capitalism and “modernity.” [23]
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This is why I have urged young Chinese students who ask me about getting to go to school in the West to consider that they have some very fine teachers and schools in China and I have urged them, as a foreigner, not to worship things foreign. I have given the metaphor that if I were given a basic test of Economics in Mandarin, which I do not read, write or speak, it would appear that I know nothing of economics even though I have taught it over thirty years. This is only because I have been given a test and criteria of “success” that were designed and intended for me to fail and thus my “failure” and “proof” of my lack of knowledge of economics were “engineered” by those with the power to do so. The same holds for Indigenous societies put under siege by colonial and imperial powers to engineer the “proof” of their supposed “backwardness”, “stagnation” lack of “civilization”, etc; and thus my advice to Indigenous students, who seek capitalist “civilization” and “progress” away from Traditional Ways, is the same as my advice to Chinese students seeking supposed “advanced education” in the West: perhaps take a good look at, and then appreciate, what you have right in front of you.
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Notice in the Indigenous model of development and sustainability the focus is not on conquering or subduing nature but in working in harmony with nature. In Indigenous terms there is no such thing as Humankind versus Nature or the Environment as whenever humankind works against, or tries to conquer, the forces of that of which humankind is an integral part—“Nature”—then “Nature” is destined to win the battle as is evidenced by present-day global climate change and a whole host of threats to the planet that come from capitalist greed, myopia and disrespect for that—environment—of which humankind is an integral part of a delicate web of life froms and matter. Notice also that “Hope”, “Future Orientation”, “Cultural Integrity”, “Social Respect” and “Civic Participation”, all the elements of the overall construct of “social capital” to which modern-day Economics is only beginning to mention as critical to growth and devleopment, has been a part of Traditional Indigenous thinking for thousands of years. Notice in the Indigenous model, the focus on Health and Safety, on Vibrant Initiatives, and on individuals taking “Personal Responsibility” for the “Consequences” of their actions, in addition to “Incomes” (how they are earned and used), “Productivity” and “Trade” as critical to development and sustainability. The Indigenous model includes, holistically, factors that are clearly critical to development and sustainability and yet are nowhere to be found and/or are only newly-emerging, in the Western and capitalist-based models of growth, development and sustainability.
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Here is another Indigenous model of development and sustainability that manifests the some of same concepts and constructs:
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(Source: Sustainomics and Sustainable Development—adapted from Munasinghe 1992, 1994 Reprinted under Fair Use for Educational and Academic Exchange Purposes Only)
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The warning against abuse of Nature and all that humankind is an integral part of has come from Indigenous Peoples over many years. Chief Sealth, of the Dwamish and Suquamish nations gave the following warning to U.S. President Franklin Pierce in 1855:
Here is another Indigenous model of development and sustainability that manifests the some of same concepts and constructs:
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-(Source: Sustainomics and Sustainable Development—adapted from Munasinghe 1992, 1994 Reprinted under Fair Use for Educational and Academic Exchange Purposes Only)
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The warning against abuse of Nature and all that humankind is an integral part of has come from Indigenous Peoples over many years. Chief Sealth, of the Dwamish and Suquamish nations gave the following warning to U.S. President Franklin Pierce in 1855:
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" The Great Chief in Washington sends word that he wishes to buy our land. How can you buy or sell the sky--the warmth of the land. The idea is strange to us. Yet we do not own the freshness of the air or the sparkle of the water. How can you buy them from us. Every part of this earth is sacred to my people.
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We know that the White Man does not understand our ways. One portion of the land is the same to him as the next, for he is a stranger who comes in the night and takes from the land whatever he needs. The earth is not his brother but his enemy, and when he has conquered it he moves on. He leaves his father's graves and his children's birthright is forgotten.
We know that the White Man does not understand our ways. One portion of the land is the same to him as the next, for he is a stranger who comes in the night and takes from the land whatever he needs. The earth is not his brother but his enemy, and when he has conquered it he moves on. He leaves his father's graves and his children's birthright is forgotten.
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There is no quiet place in the White Man's cities. No place to hear the leaves of spring or the rustle of insect wings. But perhaps because I am savage and do not understand--the clatter only seems to insult the ears. And what is there to life if a man[sic] cannot hear the lonely cry of the whippoorwill or the arguments of a frog around the pond at night.
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The Whites too, shall pass--perhaps sooner than other tribes. Continue to contaminate your bed and you will one night suffocate in your own waste. When the buffalo are all slaughtered, the wild horses tamed the secret corners of the forest heavy with the scent of many men, and the view of the ripe hills blotted by talking wires. Where is the thicket. Gone. Where is the eagle. Gone. And what is it to say goodbye to the swift and the hunt. The end of living and the beginning of survival. " [24]
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Chief Sealth 1855
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I once gave a lecture at Tsinghua University entitled Socialism versus Capitalism: Which Will Win? I answered the central question of the lecture that I do not know which will win; but I do know which must win for the planet and humankind to survive: Socialism (and some Traditional Indigenous values that closely parallel socialist values). Capitalism, simply, has destroyed and will destroy this planet.
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Footnotes
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[1] Externalities are costs or benefits that accrue to society as a result of private or public transactions and activities by individuals or entities within that society. Environmental destruction, social alienation, citizen cynicism and distrust are all examples of negative externalities with social costs, that result and “spillover” on society from private or public activities. Externalities can also be positive such as the health benefits on many people from use of a public park or perhaps a private gymnasium. In “mainstream” neoclassical economic theory, without the very government intervention that they neoclassical economists often decry, there is a tendency for unregulated markets, coupled with greed and competitive imperatives, to cause less than all the true (private plus social) costs to be assessed and paid by those causing them and less than the true benefits (private plus social) to be assessed and paid by those receiving them. Thus unregulated markets tend to over-production and under-pricing when negative externalities are present, and under-production and under-pricing when positive externalities are present.
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[2] Capital is usually defined as any “thing” that has been produced specifically in order to produce something else. But capital is also a social relation in the sense that under capitalism and private property, those who own and/or control capital are, by virtue of their ownership and control, able to hire and fire and make basic decisions about the use or non-use, employment or non-employment of that capital while those who labor, who have nothing to sell but their labor power or capacity to work, are, by virtue of their lack of ownership and/or control of capital, the ones who are the hired and fired and the ones whose ability to sell their labor power is dependent upon the decisions of those who own and/or control the capital. Capital stands in relation to and is defined by Labor and vice-versa.
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[3] Hanifan, Lyda Judson, “The Rural School Community Center”, Annals of the American Academy of Political Science, 67 (1916): pp. 130-138. Note: An excellent overview of the development of the concept of social capital, for which I am indebted, can be found in: Putnam, Robert D. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, Simon and Schuster, N.Y. 2000 and also in Putnam, Robert D (ed), Democracies in Flux: The Evolution of Social Capital in Contemporary Society, Oxford University Press, N.Y. 2002
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[4] Seeley, John R, Sim, Alexander and Loosley, Elizabeth; Crestwood Heights: A Study of the Culture of Suburban Life, Basic Books, N.Y. 1956
[4] Seeley, John R, Sim, Alexander and Loosley, Elizabeth; Crestwood Heights: A Study of the Culture of Suburban Life, Basic Books, N.Y. 1956
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[5] Jacobs, Jane, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Random House, N.Y. 1961
[5] Jacobs, Jane, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Random House, N.Y. 1961
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[6] Loury, Glenn, “A Dynamic Theory of Racial Income Differences” in Women, Minorities and Employment Discrimination, Wallace, P.A. and LeMund, A (eds), Lexington Books, Lexington Mass. 1977
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[7] Bourdieu, Pierre, “Forms of Capital” in Handbook of Theory and Research for The Sociology of Education Richardson, John (Ed), Greenwood Books, N.Y. 1983
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[8] Schlicht, Ekkehart, “Cognitive Dissonance in Economics” in Normengeleitetes Verhalten in den Sozialwissenschaften, Duncker and Humblot, Berlin, 1984
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[9] Coleman, James, “Social Capital in the Creation of Human Capital” in American Journal of Sociology, 94 (1988)
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[8] Schlicht, Ekkehart, “Cognitive Dissonance in Economics” in Normengeleitetes Verhalten in den Sozialwissenschaften, Duncker and Humblot, Berlin, 1984
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[9] Coleman, James, “Social Capital in the Creation of Human Capital” in American Journal of Sociology, 94 (1988)
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[1o] See Colander, David, Economics 7th Edition, Power point slide 24-15, McGraw-Hill, N.Y. 2006; quote of Edward Denison who saw U.S. economic growth 1928-2005 as a function of 4 basic sources: Physical Capital 19%; Human Capital 13%; Labor 33% and Technology 35%
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[11] A Tautology is a circular argument or definition. Examples include “Science is what scientists do and scientists are those who do science.” Or, science is that which builds upon a foundation of what was generally regarded by a community of scientists as science.” Here by defining as economic growth and development what is in essence central to capitalism and its survival (conspicuous consumption of ever expanding material goods and services per capita) and by defining as essential to achieving economic growth and development that which is defining in capitalism (production of commodities by means of commodities, markets, property rights, wage labor) we wind up with a tautology that capitalism = economic growth and development and/or only capitalism can best and most efficiently promote and achieve economic growth and development.
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[12] Adapted from Seib, Rebecca, “Culturally Appropriate Community Economic Development: Aboriginal Land Development Conference”, June 22-25, 2004, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan under Fair Use Doctrine.
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[13] Long Standing Bear Chief, “Ni Kso Ko Wa: Blackfoot Traditions and Spirituality” pp. 8-9, Spirit Talk Press, Browning, Montana, 1992
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[14] Department of Indian Affairs, Superintendent D.C. Scott to B.C. Indian Agent-General Major D. McKay, DIA Archives, RG-10 series, April 12, 1910 (emphasis added)
[14] Department of Indian Affairs, Superintendent D.C. Scott to B.C. Indian Agent-General Major D. McKay, DIA Archives, RG-10 series, April 12, 1910 (emphasis added)
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[15] The 1948 UN Convention on Genocide, to which Canada became a signatory in 1953 and to which the U.S. still remains not a full signatory because of the Hatch, Helms and Lugar “Sovereignty Amendment of 1988, in Article II defines a five-part test, any one of which, not all required to constitutes genocide: a) Killing members of the group; b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; c) Deliberately inflicting upon a group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; d) Imposing measures designed to prevent births within the group; e) Forcibly transferring children of one group to another group.
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[16] Black, Edwin, “War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America’s Campaign to Create a Master Race” Thunder’s Mouth Press N.Y. 2003; Alberta Sterilization Victims Also Used as Guinea Pigs Revelation Comes as 40 victims win $4M settlement; Marina Jimenez National Post 10/28/98
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[16] Black, Edwin, “War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America’s Campaign to Create a Master Race” Thunder’s Mouth Press N.Y. 2003; Alberta Sterilization Victims Also Used as Guinea Pigs Revelation Comes as 40 victims win $4M settlement; Marina Jimenez National Post 10/28/98
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[17] Toland, John, “Adolf Hitler”, Vol II, p. 802, Doubleday and Co. N.Y. 1976
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[18] Limerick, Patricia Nelson, “The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of American West” WW. Norton and Co. N.Y. 1987 p. 338
[17] Toland, John, “Adolf Hitler”, Vol II, p. 802, Doubleday and Co. N.Y. 1976
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[18] Limerick, Patricia Nelson, “The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of American West” WW. Norton and Co. N.Y. 1987 p. 338
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[19] In most Indigenous cultures, the number four is not merely a quantity or cardinal magnitude, without quality or force as in many Eurocentric cultures (four of what?); it has its own power, symbolism and force giving it quality in addition to quantity. The number four stands for: the four principle directions of the compass (North, South, East and West); the four principle colors of the human family (Black White Red and Yellow); the four forms of balance that all humans must seek to survive and prosper (Physical, Emotional, Mental and Spiritual); the four basic elements of Nature (Wind, Fire, Earth and Water). In this model, there are four basic dimensions of development and sustainability that illustrate the dialectical unity of the macro and the micro levels of existence: control of assets and kinship (macro) and personal efficacy and spirituality (micro).
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[20] In most Indigenous cultures, “Spirituality” (more an individual matter) is differentiated from religion which is about organized dogma and rituals shared by a community of the religious. “Spirituality” means being guided by the “spirit” of something transcendent and beyond oneself. When indigenous people refer to “spirit” they are referring to the potential energy (as specified in the four laws of thermodynamics) embodied in all things and thus one reason why Indigenous peoples do not differentiate “animate” and “inanimate” aspects of the cosmos.
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[21] The so-called Republic of China or Taiwan is currently only recognized by 23 nation states including the Vatican, as the supposed “legitimate government” of all of China whereas up until the 1970s, the reality and legitimacy of the People’s Republic of China as the sole and legitimate government of all of China was denied except by a handful of nations yet the objective reality of and international law supporting, the PRC as the sole and legitimate representative of the whole nation of China was never in question by any honest and thinking person or government.
[20] In most Indigenous cultures, “Spirituality” (more an individual matter) is differentiated from religion which is about organized dogma and rituals shared by a community of the religious. “Spirituality” means being guided by the “spirit” of something transcendent and beyond oneself. When indigenous people refer to “spirit” they are referring to the potential energy (as specified in the four laws of thermodynamics) embodied in all things and thus one reason why Indigenous peoples do not differentiate “animate” and “inanimate” aspects of the cosmos.
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[21] The so-called Republic of China or Taiwan is currently only recognized by 23 nation states including the Vatican, as the supposed “legitimate government” of all of China whereas up until the 1970s, the reality and legitimacy of the People’s Republic of China as the sole and legitimate government of all of China was denied except by a handful of nations yet the objective reality of and international law supporting, the PRC as the sole and legitimate representative of the whole nation of China was never in question by any honest and thinking person or government.
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[22] For example: "I don’ t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves." (Henry Kissinger); "Not a nut or bolt shall reach Chile under Allende. Once Allende comes to power we shall do all within our power to condemn Chile and all Chileans to utmost deprivation and poverty." (Edward M. Korry, U.S. Ambassador to Chile, upon hearing of Allende"s election) "Make the economy scream [in Chile to] prevent Allende from coming to power or to unseat him"(Richard Nixon, orders to CIA director Richard Helms on September 15, 1970) "It is firm and continuing policy that Allende be overthrown by a coup. It would be much preferable to have this transpire prior to 24 October but efforts in this regard will continue vigorously beyond this date. We are to continue to generate maximum pressure toward this end, utilizing every appropriate resource. It is imperative that these actions be implemented clandestinely and securely so that the USG and American hand be well hidden..." (A communiqué to the CIA base in Chile, issued on October 16, 1970.) Also quoted in :Neoclassical Economics and Neo-liberalism as Neo-Imperialism” by James Craven/Omahkohkiaayo I’poyi, Lecture to Academy of Marxism of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, August 11, 2009, Beijing, China.
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[23] See: Weatherford, Jack, “Native Roots: How the Indians Enriched America”, Fawcett Columbine, N.Y. 1991;”Indian Givers: How the Indians of the Americas Transformed the World 1988; “Savages and Civilization: Who Will Survive?” 1994. Peat, F. David “Blackfoot Physics”, Weiser Books, Boston, 2002 pp 191, 193-96, 216
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[23] See: Weatherford, Jack, “Native Roots: How the Indians Enriched America”, Fawcett Columbine, N.Y. 1991;”Indian Givers: How the Indians of the Americas Transformed the World 1988; “Savages and Civilization: Who Will Survive?” 1994. Peat, F. David “Blackfoot Physics”, Weiser Books, Boston, 2002 pp 191, 193-96, 216
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[24] This was based on a translation of a speech by Chief Sealth from Suquamish into Chinook jargon and then into English. Its authenticity has been questioned and that of Chief Sealth only on the basis that he sounded “too articulate” to be the real author and that “thus” it “must have been” written by a screenwriter.
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Sunday, August 23, 2009
Indigenous Epistemology and Science: Some Parallels and Contrasts with Neoclassical Theory(NT), Chaos Theory(CT) and Dialectical-Materialism(DHM)
Indigenous Epistemology and Science: Some Parallels and Contrasts with Neoclassical Theory (NT), Chaos Theory (CT) and Dialectical-Historical Materialism (DHM)
Presented at the 16th Congress of the IUAES, Kunming, China July 26-31
By James Craven/Omahkohkiaayo I’poyi
"If the construction of the future and its completion for all time is not our task, all the more certain is what we must accomplish in the present; I mean, the ruthless criticism of everything that exists—the criticism being ruthless in the sense that it neither fears its own results nor fears conflict with the powers that be."
(Karl Marx, from Letter to Arnold Ruge, 1843)
Presented at the 16th Congress of the IUAES, Kunming, China July 26-31
By James Craven/Omahkohkiaayo I’poyi
"If the construction of the future and its completion for all time is not our task, all the more certain is what we must accomplish in the present; I mean, the ruthless criticism of everything that exists—the criticism being ruthless in the sense that it neither fears its own results nor fears conflict with the powers that be."
(Karl Marx, from Letter to Arnold Ruge, 1843)
Introduction
In his extensive treatise on “Native science” Gregory Cajete notes that in “all” Indigenous languages, there is no word for “science”:
“In Native languages there is no word for ‘science’ nor for 'philiosophy', ‘psychology’ or any other foundational way of coming to know and understand the nature of life and our relationships therein. Not having, or more accurately, not needing, words for science, art, or psychology, did not diminish their importance in Native life. For Native people, ‘seeking life’ was the all encompassing task. While there were tribal specialists with particular knowledge of technologies and ritual, each member of the tribe in his or her own capacity was a scientist, an artist, a storyteller and a participant in the great web of life.”[1]
That begs important questions for some, like Thomas S. Kuhn[2] , one of the most frequently consulted and cited authorities who wrote on the nature and history of science[3] : If certain cultures, say Indigenous cultures (not discussed by Kuhn) do not even have a word for science, how could it be possible, no matter what their purported achievements, that what they were doing that yielded those achievements, could be considered “science”? Can we arrive at a comprehensive and objective definition of “science” that transcends culture, who is doing the defining, his or her interests or motives in doing science, and the paradigm he or she employs in arriving at the definition? Or, are we stuck, like a blind person trying to define and give an image of the totality of an elephant in the abstract, by simply feeling and listing its separate parts or aspects?
Albert Einstein noted that the business of science is reality. One definition of science has to do with the purported goals of science versus non-science. Science is that which seeks not simply facts or “knowledge” in some abstract sense, but seeks to discover of the essences under the surfaces of phenomena of an objective reality, and, the ultimate laws governing those phenomena and aspects of that reality. But that notion of what is science leaves us in a dilemma: Since old notions of the essences of and even laws governing, various phenomena, discovered in the past by what was then considered “science”, are often challenged, modified or even refuted by new notions about the essences of and laws governing those phenomena, then can we ever have “science” since one of the essential purposes of science is to continually challenge and test its own notions and conclusions to find new and more universally valid ones? Kuhn has an answer for that dilemma that is somewhat tautological. He notes that science is that which builds on a foundation of what was generally considered to be science that preceded it, and is not dependent upon how fixed and universal are its purported conclusions about phenomena, but on the methods, approaches, tools, standards, validity tests, and paradigms employed to arrive at those notions and conclusions. Indeed for Kuhn, the term “science” appears to be more of a noun [4] than a verb or adjective although at times he did recognize science as a process. Kuhn appears to see science more as a “constellation of facts, theories and methods collected in current texts”[5] ; and his views sometime border on pure tautology.[6]
Yet Kuhn also went through a bit of a change between the first and third editions of his essay. In his original 1962 first edition, he makes the following remarkable statement:
“But only the civilizations that descended from Hellenic Greece possessed more than the most rudimentary science”[7]
I say that this statement of Kuhn is remarkable because his essay has nothing about views, approaches to or definitions of, science, not from the “Classical” or Eurocentric sources and perspectives. The closest he gets to exploring that non-Eurocentric approaches and discoveries might have also been “science” and possibly advanced over some contemporary Eurocentric contributions is in the following:
“In recent years however, a few historians of science have been finding it more and more difficult to fullfil[sic] the functions that the concept of development-by-accumulation assigns to them. As chroniclers of an incremental process, they discover that additional research makes it harder, not easier, to answer questions like: When was oxygen discovered? Who first conceived of energy conservation? Increasingly, a few of them suspect that these are simply the wrong sorts of questions to ask. Perhaps science does not develop by accumulation of individual discoveries and inventions. Simultaneously, these same historians confront growing difficulties in distinguishing the ‘scientific’ component of past observation and belief from what their predecessors readily labeled ‘error’ and ‘superstition’. The more carefully they study, say, Aristotelian dynamics, phlogistic chemistry, or caloric thermodynamics, the more certain they feel that those once current views of nature were, as a whole, neither less scientific nor more the product of human idiosyncrasy than those current today. If these out-of-date beliefs are to be called myths, then myths can be produced by the same sorts of methods and held for the same sorts of reasons that now lead to scientific knowledge. If, on the other hand, they are to be called science, then science has included bodies of belief quite incompatible with the ones we hold today. Given these alternatives, the historian must choose the latter. Out-of-date theories are not in principle unscientific because they have been discarded. That choice however, makes it difficult to see scientific development as a process of accretion. The same historical research that displays the difficulties in isolating the individual inventions and discoveries gives ground for profound doubts about the cumulative process through which these individual contributions to science were thought to have been compounded.”[8]
So we still have a ways to go to arrive at a generalized definition of science that allows us to proceed to determine if Indigenous cultures have indeed been doing and contributing to science and the parallels and contrasts with other paradigms purporting to be scientific. Samir Amin notes:
“Scientific theory is, after all, not theory that merely takes account of facts, but theory that proceeds from facts in order to integrate them into a coherent system”
[9]
That “coherent system” would have to include, as a key component, core principles and postulates of its own epistemology [10]; on what basis can we say we “know” something to be a fact before taking account of or proceeding from what we believe to be facts. That “coherent system” would have to include concrete approaches, criteria, methodologies, instruments, standards and tests for establishing the likely validity and reliability of facts, generalizations, theories, axioms and laws as well as criteria for selecting what to analyze in the first place. And that “coherent system” would have to have its own essential or foundational postulates and axioms about the essential nature of reality that must be accepted prior to any discussions about or approaches to understanding the essences of that reality. These foundational and guiding postulates may or may not be explicit but must be consistently applied. These “coherent systems” make up what Kuhn calls “paradigms” [11] and what others call schools of thought or “a science”. Since these paradigms include epistemologies, they should also contain postulates about the roles and limitations of human beings (biases, psychological filters, interests, constraints, physiology and contexts) involved in doing science and knowing as well.
Classical and Neoclassical Paradigms of “Science”
Neoclassical approaches in Economics that have been increasingly applied in other social sciences such as Anthropology, Ethnology, Sociology, History and Political Science draw heavily from the basic postulates about reality and knowing that originate from the classical-Greek-based and Newtonian notions of science and reality. For example, in Newton’s Three Laws of Motion and in the four Laws of Thermodynamics, we can see the focus on closed systems, clock-like mechanics, on reductionism (the notion that the task of science is to reduce all phenomena to their “essential” elements and building blocks) but also other foci and postulates central to Classical and Neoclassical notions of “Science”[12]:
1) Focus on equilibrium states--static or dynamic--disturbed only by Exogenous (external) forces followed by endogenous processes creating new equilibriums;
2) Focus on ultimate Independent (Causal) and Dependent (Effect) variables in causality;
3) Focus on systems as morphostatic or endogenously self-correcting and self-equilibrating systems.;
4) Focus on unidirectional causality (X --> Y --> Z) and process;
5) Focus on negative (equilibrating) feedback effects.
6) Focus on closed systems;
7) Focus on a-priori sources and indirect proofs of knowledge;
8) The whole (macro) is merely the sum of its parts (micro) and the micro is a concentrated expression or microcosm of the whole;
9) Phenomena may be experimentally isolated and analyzed independent of the contexts and interactions with other variables with which they interact in reality;
10) Philosophical positivism: the only test of the validity hypotheses (including the validity of assumptions in hypotheses and deduction) is prediction (hypothetico deductivism);
11) As there is an objective reality independent of subjective biases and their causes, so there can be scientific methods and tools that are objective and value-free of any interests or biases on the part of scientists using them;
12) All hypotheses must be potentially falsifiable and all variables potentially measurable;
13) Aspects of reality may be analytically separated and studied in specialized disciplines;
In his extensive treatise on “Native science” Gregory Cajete notes that in “all” Indigenous languages, there is no word for “science”:
“In Native languages there is no word for ‘science’ nor for 'philiosophy', ‘psychology’ or any other foundational way of coming to know and understand the nature of life and our relationships therein. Not having, or more accurately, not needing, words for science, art, or psychology, did not diminish their importance in Native life. For Native people, ‘seeking life’ was the all encompassing task. While there were tribal specialists with particular knowledge of technologies and ritual, each member of the tribe in his or her own capacity was a scientist, an artist, a storyteller and a participant in the great web of life.”[1]
That begs important questions for some, like Thomas S. Kuhn[2] , one of the most frequently consulted and cited authorities who wrote on the nature and history of science[3] : If certain cultures, say Indigenous cultures (not discussed by Kuhn) do not even have a word for science, how could it be possible, no matter what their purported achievements, that what they were doing that yielded those achievements, could be considered “science”? Can we arrive at a comprehensive and objective definition of “science” that transcends culture, who is doing the defining, his or her interests or motives in doing science, and the paradigm he or she employs in arriving at the definition? Or, are we stuck, like a blind person trying to define and give an image of the totality of an elephant in the abstract, by simply feeling and listing its separate parts or aspects?
Albert Einstein noted that the business of science is reality. One definition of science has to do with the purported goals of science versus non-science. Science is that which seeks not simply facts or “knowledge” in some abstract sense, but seeks to discover of the essences under the surfaces of phenomena of an objective reality, and, the ultimate laws governing those phenomena and aspects of that reality. But that notion of what is science leaves us in a dilemma: Since old notions of the essences of and even laws governing, various phenomena, discovered in the past by what was then considered “science”, are often challenged, modified or even refuted by new notions about the essences of and laws governing those phenomena, then can we ever have “science” since one of the essential purposes of science is to continually challenge and test its own notions and conclusions to find new and more universally valid ones? Kuhn has an answer for that dilemma that is somewhat tautological. He notes that science is that which builds on a foundation of what was generally considered to be science that preceded it, and is not dependent upon how fixed and universal are its purported conclusions about phenomena, but on the methods, approaches, tools, standards, validity tests, and paradigms employed to arrive at those notions and conclusions. Indeed for Kuhn, the term “science” appears to be more of a noun [4] than a verb or adjective although at times he did recognize science as a process. Kuhn appears to see science more as a “constellation of facts, theories and methods collected in current texts”[5] ; and his views sometime border on pure tautology.[6]
Yet Kuhn also went through a bit of a change between the first and third editions of his essay. In his original 1962 first edition, he makes the following remarkable statement:
“But only the civilizations that descended from Hellenic Greece possessed more than the most rudimentary science”[7]
I say that this statement of Kuhn is remarkable because his essay has nothing about views, approaches to or definitions of, science, not from the “Classical” or Eurocentric sources and perspectives. The closest he gets to exploring that non-Eurocentric approaches and discoveries might have also been “science” and possibly advanced over some contemporary Eurocentric contributions is in the following:
“In recent years however, a few historians of science have been finding it more and more difficult to fullfil[sic] the functions that the concept of development-by-accumulation assigns to them. As chroniclers of an incremental process, they discover that additional research makes it harder, not easier, to answer questions like: When was oxygen discovered? Who first conceived of energy conservation? Increasingly, a few of them suspect that these are simply the wrong sorts of questions to ask. Perhaps science does not develop by accumulation of individual discoveries and inventions. Simultaneously, these same historians confront growing difficulties in distinguishing the ‘scientific’ component of past observation and belief from what their predecessors readily labeled ‘error’ and ‘superstition’. The more carefully they study, say, Aristotelian dynamics, phlogistic chemistry, or caloric thermodynamics, the more certain they feel that those once current views of nature were, as a whole, neither less scientific nor more the product of human idiosyncrasy than those current today. If these out-of-date beliefs are to be called myths, then myths can be produced by the same sorts of methods and held for the same sorts of reasons that now lead to scientific knowledge. If, on the other hand, they are to be called science, then science has included bodies of belief quite incompatible with the ones we hold today. Given these alternatives, the historian must choose the latter. Out-of-date theories are not in principle unscientific because they have been discarded. That choice however, makes it difficult to see scientific development as a process of accretion. The same historical research that displays the difficulties in isolating the individual inventions and discoveries gives ground for profound doubts about the cumulative process through which these individual contributions to science were thought to have been compounded.”[8]
So we still have a ways to go to arrive at a generalized definition of science that allows us to proceed to determine if Indigenous cultures have indeed been doing and contributing to science and the parallels and contrasts with other paradigms purporting to be scientific. Samir Amin notes:
“Scientific theory is, after all, not theory that merely takes account of facts, but theory that proceeds from facts in order to integrate them into a coherent system”
[9]
That “coherent system” would have to include, as a key component, core principles and postulates of its own epistemology [10]; on what basis can we say we “know” something to be a fact before taking account of or proceeding from what we believe to be facts. That “coherent system” would have to include concrete approaches, criteria, methodologies, instruments, standards and tests for establishing the likely validity and reliability of facts, generalizations, theories, axioms and laws as well as criteria for selecting what to analyze in the first place. And that “coherent system” would have to have its own essential or foundational postulates and axioms about the essential nature of reality that must be accepted prior to any discussions about or approaches to understanding the essences of that reality. These foundational and guiding postulates may or may not be explicit but must be consistently applied. These “coherent systems” make up what Kuhn calls “paradigms” [11] and what others call schools of thought or “a science”. Since these paradigms include epistemologies, they should also contain postulates about the roles and limitations of human beings (biases, psychological filters, interests, constraints, physiology and contexts) involved in doing science and knowing as well.
Classical and Neoclassical Paradigms of “Science”
Neoclassical approaches in Economics that have been increasingly applied in other social sciences such as Anthropology, Ethnology, Sociology, History and Political Science draw heavily from the basic postulates about reality and knowing that originate from the classical-Greek-based and Newtonian notions of science and reality. For example, in Newton’s Three Laws of Motion and in the four Laws of Thermodynamics, we can see the focus on closed systems, clock-like mechanics, on reductionism (the notion that the task of science is to reduce all phenomena to their “essential” elements and building blocks) but also other foci and postulates central to Classical and Neoclassical notions of “Science”[12]:
1) Focus on equilibrium states--static or dynamic--disturbed only by Exogenous (external) forces followed by endogenous processes creating new equilibriums;
2) Focus on ultimate Independent (Causal) and Dependent (Effect) variables in causality;
3) Focus on systems as morphostatic or endogenously self-correcting and self-equilibrating systems.;
4) Focus on unidirectional causality (X --> Y --> Z) and process;
5) Focus on negative (equilibrating) feedback effects.
6) Focus on closed systems;
7) Focus on a-priori sources and indirect proofs of knowledge;
8) The whole (macro) is merely the sum of its parts (micro) and the micro is a concentrated expression or microcosm of the whole;
9) Phenomena may be experimentally isolated and analyzed independent of the contexts and interactions with other variables with which they interact in reality;
10) Philosophical positivism: the only test of the validity hypotheses (including the validity of assumptions in hypotheses and deduction) is prediction (hypothetico deductivism);
11) As there is an objective reality independent of subjective biases and their causes, so there can be scientific methods and tools that are objective and value-free of any interests or biases on the part of scientists using them;
12) All hypotheses must be potentially falsifiable and all variables potentially measurable;
13) Aspects of reality may be analytically separated and studied in specialized disciplines;
(Source Henderson, Hazel, http://www.hazelhenderson.com/visual.html; reprinted under Fair Use Doctrine)
Classical approaches to science have yielded impressive discoveries that have made both positive and negative impacts on the planet and on humankind. As prediction and application are concrete tests of the “science” that went into yielding the particular predictions and applications, then discoveries of new drugs to extend human life, sending people 246,000 miles to land on a particular spot on the moon and return, and many other such achievements are testimonies to the power and methodological approaches embodied in what is known as “normal” of Classical and Neoclassical “science”. But then again, we could also chronicle some of the achievements, many unknown until recently, of Indigenous Science. The concept of Zero was first developed and used by the Mayans, many centuries before its recognition and application in the Near East and Europe. [13] The uses of natural medicines like Quinine for Malaria and Tubocurarine used today in abdominal surgery are but two of many examples.[14] There are achievements like Machu Picchu that represent advanced and integrated applications of principles of architecture, engineering, physics and cosmology that could not be duplicated by “modern” or “normal” science today.[15] In his trilogy, Jack Weatherford documents Indigenous pioneering achievements, “discovered” only centuries later by “normal science” in the areas of constitutions and governance, military tactics, agriculture and agronomy, cosmology, long distance navigation, architecture, engineering, medicine including even neurosurgery, unified monetary systems for long distance trade, preservatives for foods, mathematics and symbolic logic, flora and fauna management and breeding, effective education and pedagogy, law and constitutions, meteorology, immunology, and the list goes on.[16]
Theoretical physicist F. David Peat, who lived among the Blackfoot and studied Blackfoot ceremonies like the Sun Dance as well as symbols, allegories and even language structure, found evidence of very advanced constructs of Quantum Mechanics, some “discovered” only in the early 20th century by “normal science”. These include: Superpositionality; Subtle Energy and Matter; Electrons; Wave-Particle duality; Entanglement; Bose-Einstein Condensates; Mass-Energy Equivalence; Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle; Fractals; The Four Laws of Thermodynamics; Grassmann Algebra. [17] From his studies of both Indigenous and what Kuhn called “normal” science, Peat concludes:
“During the first contact, Europeans were confident that they were the bearers of truth, truth about religion and government, truth about science and law. But today that confidence has been shaken. For some people, the truths of institutional religions are no longer self-evident, or even credible. And science, which has been through two great revolutions—quantum theory and relativity—is much less confident about the nature of objective truth.” [18]
More and more Classical science’s own concrete tests of validity of theory, prediction and application, are calling into question, the fundamental and defining postulates or asserted axioms, along with the often myopic reductionism, of Classical science itself. The most obvious example is global climate change about which there is not only disagreement by normal science and its scientists, as to its dimensions, dynamics, impacts and causes, but one may easily argue, that global climate change, which threatens the planet itself, is itself partly, or even largely, the product of the ultra-reductionism, ultra-specialization, myopia and non-holistic nature of what passes as “normal science”—especially when coupled and driven by the short-run, profit, competitive-survival imperatives of capitalism. Some argue that the paradigm of Classical science, that includes the notion that the whole is simply the sum of its parts, coupled with ultra-reductionism and ultra-specialization among various academic disciplines, leads easily to the “Fallacy of Composition” (“What is true in the particular must be true in general”) and the “Tragedy of the Commons” (individuals acting competitively and individualistically in what they think is rational self-interest in the short-run, destroying scarce and vital common resources necessary for collective as well as individual survival in the long-run) are being manifested and played out on national, regional and global scales with potentially disastrous consequences.[19]
In the social sciences, in attempts to gain legitimacy as “sciences”, there have been attempts to deal with some of the more glaring contradictions in neoclassical economics while preserving the essential postulates of the paradigm, and to extend Neoclassical constructs into other disciplines such as Sociology, History and even in Ethnology and Anthropology. Just like impersonal and “value-free” particles in perpetual motion in time-space, or the basic elements of all matter, of Physics and Chemistry, human beings are assumed to be “economic agents” or “Homo Oeconomicus” (Economic Man”)[20] driven by bundles of propensities that are part of some immutable iron-laws and eternal “Human Nature”, to engage in predictable behaviors with ultimate causes or independent variables for all behavior (e.g. maximization of utility). The behaviors of these human particles (agents) in time-space, are asserted to arise irrespective of such “fuzzy” and “immeasurable” (or not cardinally quantifiable) variables or factors such as historical context, type of socioeconomic system, personal histories, social class, race, ethnicity, religion, age, ideology, culture or any other real-world differences that are manifested among human beings. And since the social sciences are increasingly loaded with higher level mathematics to make them appear more scientific and rigorous[21], and since mathematics is assumed to be “value-free”, these disciplines increasingly argue that they only do “Positive” analysis (from Philosophical Positivism at the core of their epistemology: What is pure value-free cause and effect or how the world actually works) instead of “Normative” analysis (How the world “should” work).
What is interesting about many scientists of the Classical and Neoclassical persuasions is the lack of interest they appear to have on evolving research on the biological, chemical, psychological and physiological mechanisms and factors that cause human perception and other senses to be as shaped by what they think (paradigms) as what they think is shaped by what they see, hear, smell, touch and taste. In other words not only “seeing is believing”, but “believing is seeing.”Indeed the different paradigms that shape even what we choose to study, along with the sources and methods we use and consider legitimate, not only “explain the world differently, but also induce us to see a different world to explain.”[22]
These are issues dealing with limitations of the senses and roles of ideology in shaping perceptions and interests, not traditionally covered in epistemology, but certainly part of the problem of “knowing”, that are now being covered by some evolutionary biologists, cognitive psychologists and neurobiologists, that have long been incorporated into “Native Science” as well as more sophisticated versions of Dialectical-Historical Materialism. They have not been brought into the overall epistemologies of the Classical-Neoclassical or even Chaos-Complexity paradigms.
Indigenous Science
When speaking about what some call “Native Science” and what others call “Indigenous Science we faced several limitations. First of all, different Indigenous nations are exactly that: different nations with different histories, land bases, cultures, languages, socioeconomic structures etc that have some things in common but also some forms and levels of diversity as well. Secondly, the accounts we have are for the most part from those who study Indigenous societies but are not from or a part of the objects (cultures and paradigms) of their research.[23]
Is there some kind of evolving body or “coherent system”, of core principles and methods, tests of validity and reliability, procedures, axioms etc that would allow us to speak of Indigenous or Native “science” or a distinctive Native paradigm? We can list some of the core principles, axioms etc that form a coherent system that, as science is supposed to do, can be used not only to establish correlations and recurring patterns in aspects of reality, but also provide narratives and explanations as to why various predictable patterns and cycles occur with regularity in the cosmos on the one hand, versus highly conditional probabilities but not certainties on the quantum levels of reality.[24] In Native science, the supposed contradiction between mere probabilities at the quantum or sub-atomic level of reality, as studied by Quantum Mechanics, versus regular, predictable and certain patterns and cycles of celestial bodies at the level of General Relativity Theory, is no contradiction. In all of what appears to be “chaos” of multiple-dimensions and probabilities but no certainties at the quantum level, there is often embodied the potential for order; and in all of what appears to be predictable, certain and recurring “order” at the macro level, there are contradictions and delicate webs of interdependency with the potential for chaos and implosion. In this respect and in others we shall discuss, Native science has more in common with Chaos Theory and Dialectical-Historical Materialism, which is not to say that Native science rejects all of Classical science.[25]
Some Principles and Approaches of Native Science
• The only constant is change (CT and DHM);
• Mathematics important but not foundational; mathematics not value free (CT and DHM);
• No ultimate independent (causal) or dependent (effect) variables (CT, DHM);
• All phenomena in process; thus phenomenon A can both be and yet not be (CT, DHM);
• All variables are endogenous (internal) depending upon scope/angle of analysis (CT, DHM);
• Reality is non-linear, causality is multidirectional and multi-faceted, development is not unidirectional from lower to higher orders; (CT and DHM);
• What Native People mean by “Spirit” is concentrated energy-matter, that is neither created nor destroyed but transformed from form to form and level to level in accordance with what amounts to the four Laws of Thermodynamics,[26];
• There is an objective reality outside of our consciousness but the relationships between ontology (existence) and epistemology (knowing) or between being and consciousness, are dialectical two-way as part of any reality involves the perceptions and interactions of those immersed in that reality. (CT, DHM);
• The notion that everything is interrelated, that there are no ultimate causes and effects of any phenomena, that all of the Cosmos involves extensive and delicate webs of interrelationships, actually aids rather than inhibits effective working models and narratives about how and why a particular phenomenon occurs, or why something works a certain way, or what will likely happen from given actions in Nature; (CT, DHM);
• The purpose of science is not to attempt to conquer, subdue or mitigate the forces and interrelationships of nature, but to understand them and work in accordance with them to achieve survival and subsistence; (CT, DHM);
• Phenomena may appear self-equilibrating and Morphostatically stable, but they are in reality, continually in motion, subject to negative and positive feedback effects, driven by internal contradictions and interrelationships, to produce morphogenetic systems and outcomes that often represent qualitative leaps or volatile changes from relatively small quantitative changes over time.[27](CT,DHM);
• The context within which a given phenomenon being studied is never constant and can never realistically be treated as “a constant” or a “given” but it is an essential part of understanding what a given phenomenon within and part of—forming—that context is doing and why. (CT,DHM);
• The task of science is not simply to establish correlations between apparent or surface phenomena, or even to posit cause and effect, but to explain, with various kinds of narratives, why, with what periodicity, patterns and effects these interrelationships occur and in what directions are they changing; (DHM some CT);
• There is a dialectical unity between apparent Chaos and Order in that they are not only definitionally related, each defines the other, but are functionally related as in all apparent order is the potential for breakdown into chaos and in all apparent chaos there is underlying order to be discovered. (CT and DHM);
• Constructs and distinctions between time and space, animate and non-animate, individual and society, dreams and visions, perception and reality, causality and synchronicity, and time and eternity are our own constructs, imposed on reality because of, and manifesting, our own epistemological and other limitations more than the intrinsic nature of the reality.[28];
• The task of science is to discover both the implicate as well as explicate orders of reality [29];
• The task of science is not to dismiss from analysis anomalies that occur outside of or in contradiction to validating or nullifying predictions of hypotheses, but to explain them also without fear or favor to their implications on established interests (DHM)[30];
• Spirituality is not religion; it is being guided by the “spirit” (potential energy) of something beyond oneself and to understand the relationships of the phenomena of reality; part of scientific epistemology [31];
• All equations and models are symbolic representations or symbolic narratives (stories) about aspects of reality as much as story narratives; story narratives may be expressed in forms of equations—and vice versa--and may well capture more of the totality and essence of an aspect of reality than mathematical equations. (CT and DHM);
• True science must not merely be “interdisciplinary” but trans-disciplinary as reality is an indivisible totality and not simply social, economic, physical chemical or whatever.(DHM)[32];
• “Nature “ is not simply a collection of objects, but rather a dynamic, ever-flowing river of creation inseparable from our own perceptions…the creative center from which we and everything else have come and to which we always return.”[33] (CT, DHM)
• “As we experience the world, so are we also experienced by the world.”[34](CT, DHM)
• In understanding phenomena, science can never effectively remain, or claim to remain, detached from that of which it is an integral part; total integrated immersion of the five senses plus cognition are required at all times; “controlled” experimentation, abstraction, simplification, instrumentation and the search for uniformity and “laws” are limited and said to be of limited value;
• Stories, trans-cultural symbols, allegories, metaphors serve as the same functions as theories, models and equations in normal science; languages are verb rather than noun-based emphasizing science as process rather than as a body or stock of tools and approaches; (CT, DHM)
• All of existence, including science, has purpose and the calling of science as with all activity, is to serve the community and its survival and sustainability. (DHM)
• The question of who is to benefit and who is to lose—for whom—is a central question for all science (CT, DHM)
These are but some of the core or foundational or defining ontological and epistemological principles of Indigenous science and how they parallel and/or contrast with Classical Science or what Kuhn calls “normal science” as well as with Chaos Theory and Dialectical-Historical Materialism as distinct paradigms. Of course in this exposition, some abstractions and simplifications have to be made for purposes of brevity and summarizing in a space-constrained exposition.
It would be a mistake to simply and summarily dismiss, as mere superstition, folkways, myths, and metaphysics what is increasingly being recognized as a whole and coherent system that qualifies as Native science and that has indeed produced some achievements that “modern” and “normal science” have no existing means or technologies to duplicate. In the symbols, rituals and ceremonies, structures like the Medicine Wheel, and numbers like the Sacred “Number Four”[35] one can find, and many Indigenous people understand, complex algorithms about the order of the Cosmos that guide everyday events and practices. Applying the tests of prediction and application favored by “normal science”, then Native science can make every claim to be science and perhaps more so than Classical science. How many pharmaceuticals in use today were first developed and used by Indigenous cultures and were then only considered to have been “discovered”, like the “discoveries” of Columbus, when obtained by Eurocentric forces and cultures? How do we explain the precision of the Mayan Calendars if some kind of “science” was not going on? How do we explain the democratic institutions, agricultural practices, animal husbandry, cosmology, engineering of the likes of Macchu Pichu, and indeed warnings of the past that turned out to be very prophetic for the present and future that went unanswered and at our own peril [36]:
Letter from Chief Sealth to President Franklin Pierce--1855
" The Great Chief in Washington sends word that he wishes to buy our land. How can you buy or sell the sky--the warmth of the land. The idea is strange to us. Yet we do not own the freshness of the air or the sparkle of the water. How can you buy them from us. Every part of this earth is sacred to my people.
We know that the White Man does not understand our ways. One portion of the land is the same to him as the next, for he is a stranger who comes in the night and takes from the land whatever he needs. The earth is not his brother but his enemy, and when he has conquered it he moves on. He leaves his father's graves and his children's birthright is forgotten.
There is no quiet place in the White Man's cities. No place to hear the leaves of spring or the rustle of insect wings. But perhaps because I am savage and do not understand--the clatter only seems to insult the ears. And what is there to life if a man[sic] cannot hear the lonely cry of the whippoorwill or the arguments of a frog around the pond at night.
The Whites too, shall pass--perhaps sooner than other tribes. Continue to contaminate your bed and you will one night suffocate in your own waste. When the buffalo are all slaughtered, the wild horses tamed the secret corners of the forest heavy with the scent of many men, and the view of the ripe hills blotted by talking wires. Where is the thicket. Gone. Where is the eagle. Gone. And what is it to say goodbye to the swift and the hunt. The end of living and the beginning of survival. "
Chief Sealth 1855
Just as with losses of all sorts of flora and fauna species due to global climate change and other factors is causing losses of potential medicines for present and emerging diseases [37], so losses of whole Indigenous cultures represent losses for all of humanity of knowledge, values, practices and approaches to science that have produced and are producing many achievements that attest to their worth. It is not only flora and fauna diversity that will save this planet, preservation of cultural diversity is a survival imperative for the planet and humanity.
Where will the Classical Science take us? The answer is partly revealed in the products of the so-called “‘The’ [as if there were only one] “Scientific Method” (for good and bad) when coupled with the nature, logic and dynamics of various types of social systems that drive and utilize it.
(Architects and Engineers for Truth Slideshow)
Footnotes
[1] Cajete, Gregory; “Native Science: Natural Laws of Interdependence”, Clear Light Publishers, Santa Fe, N.M. p.2
[2] Kuhn, Thomas S. “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions: Third Edition”, University of Chicago Press, 1996
[3] Kuhn, Thomas Ibid. Kuhn wrote specifically on what he called “normal science” or a concept of science originating in Hellenic Greece and expressed in the foundations and traditions developed by Newton. Kuhn did not explore or even explicitly mention any non-Eurocentric notions or examples of science or scientific-like methods and approaches.
[4] “English, and for that matter French, German, Italian and the other European languages are noun-oriented. They are employed to divide the world into physical objects (nouns) and thinking into separate concepts (again nouns). Many Native American languages do not work this way. They are verb-based. Thus, when in English we speak of “medicine” we automatically seek a referent, a substance, an object, something tangible, and something that can be conceptualized. But suppose we begin with something verbal, with activity, process, a movement of harmony and balance. Medicine could then be felt in the beating of the heart, sensed as a movement around the sacred circle, the wind blowing through the leaves of the tress, the growing of green plants, and the astronomical alignments of the medicine wheel.” Peat, F. David, “Blackfoot Physics” Weiser Books, Boston, MA. 2005, p. 128
[5] Kuhn, Thomas S. op. cit. . p. 1
[6] A Tautology is a circular argument or definition. Examples include “Science is what scientists do and scientists are those who do science.” Or, science is that which builds upon a foundation of what was generally regarded by a community of scientists as science.”
[7] Kuhn, Thomas, op. cit, 1962 Edition, pp. 167-68
[8] Kuhn, Thomas S. op cit, Third Edition, pp. 2-3
[9] Amin, Samir, “Accumulation on a World Scale: A Critique of the Theory of Underdevelopment” Vol I, Monthly Review Press, N.Y. 1974 p. 2
[10] Epistemology means a Theory of Knowledge (also a coherent system) from the Greek “episteme” meaning knowledge or science and “logos” meaning theory of. A branch of philosophy dealing with the scope, limitations and tests of knowledge. What is knowledge? How is knowledge acquired? ; What do people know? How do we know what we know? Why do we know what we know? “Propositional knowledge” or knowledge that is distinguished from knowledge how. Knowledge involves belief but knowledge about a belief does not endorse the truth or accuracy of the belief. According to Aristotle:"To say of something which is that it is not, or to say of something which is not that it is, is false. However, to say of something which is that it is, or of something which is not that it is not, is true." Socrates, via Plato defined “knowledge” as “true belief that has been given an account of.” Edmund Gettier proposed thought experiments (Gettier cases) to show that a given belief may be justified and true and yet not count as knowledge. Another doctrine is called “infallibilism” that says to qualify as knowledge, a belief must be not only true and justified, but that the justification for it must necessitate its truth. Another doctrine is that of “indefeasibility” employed in indirect proofs that says there must be no overriding or defeating truths against the reasons for the belief. “Reliabilism” is a doctrine that says a belief is justified only if it is established via a process that yields a sufficiently high ratio of true to false beliefs. Knowledge may be gained A-priori or outside of experience or A-posteriori via experience. Knowledge may be “analytic” or gained by knowledge of what terms mean in a proposition, or, may be “synthetic” or gained through propositions that have a distinct subject and predicate.
[11] “The dramatic changes of thinking that happened in physics at the beginning of this century have been widely discussed by physicists and philosophers for more than fifty years. They led Thomas Kuhn to the notion of a scientific "paradigm," defined as "a constellation of achievements—concepts, values, techniques, etc.— shared by a scientific community and used by that community to define legitimate problems and solutions." Changes of paradigms, according to Kuhn, occur in discontinuous, revolutionary breaks called "paradigm shifts." Capra, Fritjof. The Web of Life. New York: Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, 1996. P. 5
[12] Newton’s Three Laws of Motion: Law I: “Every object in a state of uniform motion tends to remain in that state of motion unless an external force is applied to it.”; Law II: “F = ma” or Force equals mass times acceleration (acceleration and force are vectors and thus direction of the force vector is the same as the direction of the acceleration vector); Law III: “For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction” And the Four Laws of Thermodynamics: Zeroth Law: “If two thermodynamic systems are each in thermal equilibrium with a third, then they are in thermal equilibrium with each other”; First Law: “Energy can neither be created nor destroyed. It can only change forms.”; Second Law: “Energy systems have a tendency to increase their entropy rather than decrease it."; Third Law: “As temperature approaches absolute zero, the entropy of a system approaches a constant minimum.”
[13] Peat, F. David “Blackfoot Physics”, Weiser Books, Boston, 2002 pp 191, 193-96, 216
[14] Restivo, Sal P. “Science Technology and Society: An Encyclopedia”, Oxford U Press, N.Y. 2005 pp 213-16
[15] Wright, Kenneth and Alfredo Valencia, Machu Picchu: A Civil Engineering Marvel. ASCE Press, Reston. 2000
[16 Weatherford, Jack, “Native Roots: How the Indians Enriched America”, Fawcett Columbine, N.Y. 1991;”Indian Givers: How the Indians of the Americas Transformed the World 1988; “Savages and Civilization: Who Will Survive?” 1994.
[17] Peat, F. David, op cit. pp 45-46, 130-34, 157, 170-71, 175, 261, 265-68
[18] Peat, F. David Ibid p. 45
[19] Garrett Hardin, "The Tragedy of the Commons", Science, Vol. 162, No. 3859 (December 13, 1968), pp. 1243-1248.
[20] “The concept of ‘economic man’ of the classical economists has long since been discarded as inadequate to reality—except by a few of the most ardent ‘welfare theorists’. Meanwhile, the ‘scientific man’ is not even defined. He exists only implicitly in the form of a virtual taboo on raising the psychological and sociological problems of how research activity is conditioned.” Myrdal, Gunnar, “Sociology and Psychology in Social Science” in “Against the Stream: Critical Essays on Economics” Pantheon Books, N.Y. 1973 p. 54
[21] The economist Robert Heilbroner once quipped that “mathematics has brought to economics rigor—and alas, also mortis.”
[22] Wolff, Richard and Resnick, Stephen A, Economics: Marxian Versus Neoclassical, Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore, 1987 p. 18. Other works on this subject include: Ariely, Dan, “Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions”, Expanded Edition, Harper Collins, 2009; Shermer, Michael “The Science of Good and Evil: Why People Cheat, Gossip, Care, Share and Follow the Golden Rule” Holt, N.Y. 2004 and “The Mind of the Market: How Biology and Psychology Shape Our Economic Lives”, Holt, N.Y. 2008; Deutsch, David, “The Fabric of Reality” Penguin, N.Y. 1997; Deloria, Vine, “Spirit and Reason”, Fulcrum Publishing, Golden, CO 1999; Myrdal, Gunnar, “Against the Stream” op cit; Westen, Drew, “The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation”, Public Affairs, N.Y. 2008; Gardner, Daniel “The Science of Fear: How the Culture of Fear Manipulates Your Brain”, Plume Books, N.Y. 2008
[23] Cajete, Gregory, op cit. p. 4 “As is true of all lenses, what we can see depends upon the clarity of the images made possible through the use of a particular lens. In the past five hundred years of contact with Western culture, Native traditions have been viewed and expressed largely through the lens of Western thought, language and perception. The Western lens reflects all other cultural traditions through the filters of the modern view of the world. Yet in order to understand Native cultures one must be able to see through their lenses and hear their stories in their voice through their experience. In other words to know the taste of a pear one must bite into it.
[24] Peat, F. David, op cit p 157: “The ability to place an opening so that it will be aligned with the rising sun at the solstice or equinox, or with some other event, clearly implies the ability to predict and calculate the location of these events in the sky. Indeed, the design of a building represents a perfect integration of mathematics, astronomy, surveying and architecture.”
[25] Cajete, Gregory, op cit. p.2: “Native science is a metaphor for a wide range of tribal processes of perceiving, thinking, acting and ‘coming to know’ that have evolved through human experience with the natural world. Native science is born of a lived and storied participation with the natural landscape. To gain a sense of Native science one must ‘participate’ with the natural world, to understand the foundations of Native science one must become open to the roles of sensation, perception, imagination, emotion, symbols, and spirit as well as that of concept, logic and rational empiricism.”
[26] Little Bear, Leroy Into to Cajete, Gregory op. cit p. p. x; Deloria, Vine, “Spirit and Reason”, Fulcrum Books, Golden, Co 1999; Peat, F. David, op. cit
[27] Symbolized by the famous “Trickster” in many Native stories of various nations. In Peat, David F. op cit: “The sacred figures of the People—Raven, Coyote, Napi, Nanabush and the rest—are all tricksters, beings who turn the world on its head. Even our own Western science has its trickster: entropy or disorder. ..In scientist’s terms the overall entropy of a system and its environment must increase or, to put it another way, if we insist upon generating order, this can only be done at the expense of creating disorder somewhere else.” P. 83
[28] Peat, David F. Ibid p. 4
[29] According to physicist David Bohm, the “implicate” or enfolded order is a deeper order in which the whole of a phenonmenon is enfolded or embodied in each part. (like the commodity was a concentrated expression or microcosm or the macrocosm of capitalism was for Karl Marx) while the explicate order is the surface immediately perceived by our senses. Bohm, David, “Wholeness and the Implicate Order”, Routledge and Kegan Paul, Boston, 1981
[30] Kuhn, Thomas S. op cit. p. 6 “…normal science repeatedly goes astray…when it does—when, that is, the [scientific] profession can no longer evade anomalies that subvert the tradition of existing scientific practice…
[31] Deloria, Vine, “Spirit and Reason” op cit. p. xiii
[32] Amin, Samir, op cit p. 5
[33] Cajete, Gregory, op cit pp 15-16
[34] Cajete, Gregory, Ibid. p.20
[35] In Blackfoot culture, as in most Indigenous cultures, the number four is not merely a quantity or cardinal magnitude, without quality or force as in many Eurocentric cultures (four of what?); it has its own power, symbolism and force giving it quality in addition to quantity. The number four stands for: the four principle directions of the compass (North, South, East and West); the four principle colors of the human family (Black White Red and Yellow); the four forms of balance that all humans must seek to survive and prosper (Physical, Emotional, Mental and Spiritual); the four basic elements of Nature (Wind, Fire, Earth and Water). In this model, there are four basic dimensions of development and sustainability that illustrate the dialectical unity of the macro and the micro levels of existence: control of assets and kinship (macro) and personal efficacy and spirituality (micro).
[36] This was based on a translation of a speech by Chief Sealth from Suquamish into Chinook jargon and then into English. It’s authenticity has been questioned only on the basis that Chief Sealth sounded too articulate to be the real author and that it must have been written by a screenwriter.
[37] Scientists estimate there are 10 to 30 million plant and animal species on the planet, most of them unidentified. Each year as many as 50,000 species disappear; Olson, Dan “Species Extinction Rate Speeding Up”, Minnesota Public Radio, Feb. 1, 2005 http://news.minnesota.publicradio.org/features/2005/01/31_olsond_biodiversity/
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