While it's interesting to learn how indigenous cultures interpret archaeological sites, this article blurs the distinction between scientific and pre-scientific understanding of archaeology. It presents "Western science" (which should be referred to as "science," an international pursuit that happens to have begun in the West) as just another means of interpreting archaeological sites, alongside myths, folk beliefs, etc.
Reading this article (and looking at some of the other articles on the site) reminds me of what I've heard elsewhere about the deep rift in anthropology between the physical and the cultural anthropologists. It appears to me to be a conflict between a scientific worldview and an increasingly subjective, politically influenced worldview. One manifestation of this is the decision by the American Anthropological Association to remove the word "science" from its mission statement.[1-2]
It's the influence of post-modern thought; the idea that rationality and the scientific method are fundamentally sculpted by a patriarchal and chauvinistic white male worldview or 'gaze'. From this, post-modernism asserts that no way of knowing can be any better than any other, and that oral tradition and mysticism are equally if not more valid.
I leave it to the readers of HN to judge the validity of this philosophical stance; but one thing that cannot be disputed is that this school of thought is increasingly influencing our culture and politics. It's this epistemological stance that underlaid the much derided NMAAHC poster that attributed 'Emphasis on the Scientific Method' to Whiteness [1]. Indeed if you read modern Critical Race Theory texts there is a great deal of emphasis on oral histories of oppressed peoples, and they are considered more accurate than 'scientific' data, for those data were surely collected by the oppressors. It's also part of the reason why paganism, witchcraft, and the occult are fashionable among many leftists today; they view these ideas as standing in opposition to enlightenment rationality, which they dislike for its perceived privileged underpinnings.
It's pre-modern thought, not "post-modern" really. It's not even anti-West or anything, just anti-modernity and against progress. After all, "the West" used to be just as free of rationality and scientific ways of knowing as any other ("indigenous" or otherwise) culture. Paganism, witchcraft and witch-hunts, "the occult" and the like are in fact part of this pre-modern legacy.
It's post-modern in the sense of being chronologically after (and a reaction to) the philosophical school of modernism. That's not to imply some great cosmic arc (in fact, post-modernism explicitly refutes such grand narratives - specifically those of Marx that turned out to be dismally incorrect when the subjugated working classes turned to fascism not communism in the 1930s).
You really shouldn't equate technology with "progress". How many people are going to die today? How many are going to die tomorrow? What are our health outcomes? Is anyone hungry? I think such metrics indicate progress much more clearly than "How many patents have been filed today?"
I mean, I see a ton of articles of "newly discovered species" that the locals knew about ages ago. As well as "newly discovered pharmaceuticals" or any of that other stuff. I never attributed this to some kind of patriarchy or male worldview. I think it's totally rational to argue that sometimes the scientific method, which was developed in a european country, takes time to catch up to local knowledge in non-european countries.
I don't really see any scientific study or evidence to prove that science is somehow being overtaken by some narrative force. A random's tweet doesn't prove much to me. Of course, if science does prove your claim, the paradox is that science is again catching up to the observations of the locals (of the internet).
But you are claiming that what "doing science" is has been changing without evidence of such. You are giving to me an oral history of a phenomenon without scientific evidence, about how oral histories are being held as equally valid to scientific evidence.
I'm talking about the meta-level above what science is. There is no dispute that science is the scientific method, the rationalist process of inferring knowledge from formalised analysis of empirical evidence. I'm talking about the faith that society vests in science to explain things - to obtain knowledge - when weighed against other ways in which knowledge and an understanding of the world may be obtained.
Although he is far more sympathetic to the anti-rationalist case than I am, this [1] video by Philosophy Tube touches on some of these ideas (and he is much better read on this stuff than I am). Although he makes a quip against post-modernism about 6 minutes in, it is my understanding that in broad strokes, the analysis he presents is in the post-modern tradition.
It's very hard to prove with evidence the perversion of an ideology. I can only cite disparate evidence. I think once you become aware of these ideas you start seeing their influence though.
Ideology is a lens: every one we try renders a different image, but without one, we are blind. The gravitational pull of one is always seen through the perspective of another.
You have been adroitly played by TeaDrunk using your own logic against you. To use words of your own choosing: are you starting to see the influence of your own perverted ideology?
I think it could be demonstrated empirically that certain anti-rationalist attitudes have increased in recent years, especially on the left. Since we're not doing science here I don't see why I need to provide ultra-rigorous evidence. Is that itself anti-rationalist? I don't think so - I'm not trying to influence government policy or get a PhD - some discussion contexts call for a larger burden of evidence than others.
I never got the emphasis on "native culture knew it existed first". Discovery by definition is an "adding to network" relative function based upon who is viewed as "initating it" and recorded accordingly. If a hunter A of culture B meets prospecting C of culture D then culture B records "A discovered D while hunting" and culture D records "C discovered culture B while prospecting for natural resources".
A lot of important things follow from "discovery", like IP rights. Is it acceptable for ethnopharmacology companies to get most/all of the money benefits from selling indigenous medical knowledge to others? Can those companies patent a plant, or chemical derived from one and prohibit the indigenous people from using it thereafter?
Probably from the fact that they happened. Here are some examples.
[1] Enola bean, long produced in Mexico and exported to the US, was patented here on the basis of the inventor having been the first person to grow it in the US: https://patents.google.com/patent/US5894079A
[3] To break from specifically plant patents, here's a different case of patenting the drug produced from a plant. The antimalarial Simalikalactone E was isolated and patented from Quassia amara after the plant was identified by Guianans. Here's an article on the controversy: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/02/french-institute-agr...
The Enola patent was filed under pretext of it being a new organism produced by selective breeding. The pretext seems to have turned out to be false and the patent was invalidated.
The fact it took so long is an atrocity but my point stand - patents for existing plants are not valid.
Thanks, I wasn't aware of that. I think the larger point that "discovery" can have implications for legal rights still stands, but I'll add an edit about the incorrect example.
It's important to point such things out, because one of the primary justifications for the destruction of indigenous cultures is the erroneous belief that nothing of value to our modern society will be lost by doing so.
> I mean, I see a ton of articles of "newly discovered species" that the locals knew about ages ago. As well as "newly discovered pharmaceuticals" or any of that other stuff. I never attributed this to some kind of patriarchy or male worldview. I think it's totally rational to argue that sometimes the scientific method, which was developed in a european country, takes time to catch up to local knowledge in non-european countries.
Knowledge is more than beliefs that happen to be true. I don't think you can necessarily say that the locals "knew" about a particular species when they didn't have a functional definition of speciation, or "knew" about pharmaceutical properties of certain flora and fauna when they also "knew" about other pharmaceutical properties that were actually not the case.
> It's the influence of post-modern thought; the idea that rationality and the scientific method are fundamentally sculpted by a patriarchal and chauvinistic white male worldview or 'gaze'. From this, post-modernism asserts that no way of knowing can be any better than any other, and that oral tradition and mysticism are equally if not more valid.
This is the best short-hand I've read yet for what's going on under the covers in a lot of those conversations. Thanks for sharing!
Please take it with a pinch of salt. Like nearly everyone else here I'm a CS student first and an appreciator of the humanities second. While I try to approach and learn about this stuff with an open mind my visceral reaction to anyone who criticises rationality and the scientific method is not a sympathetic one. It's probably better to read actual philosophers than someone who just likes to read wiki pages while their code compiles :-)
Failing to make the distinction among a general audience always implies that all that exists is a choice: to be or not to be postmodern. It implies that the individual's own subjectivity is replaceable as a meta function of their same subjectivity.
For someone who is "into the humanities" you ignore the fact that the Frankfurt school were some of the first who were actively rejecting this posturing towards reason. The "Dialectic of Enlightenment" is a treatise on the problems of rationality. It was written pre-WW2, as Hitler came to power. And it was quite correct in that this obsession with brunt progress was a fire that caused the Third Reich to rise up. It's very similar to what's happening right now, so please don't muddy up this discussion by saying that it's all witchcraft because it makes you sound like you are just spewing Ben Shapiro.
I didn't say I'm "into the humanities" and it was only meant to be a brief summary. I don't really see how any of this refutes what I said. I've never watched a Ben Shapiro video in my life.
The Nazis came from the anti-Enlightenment tradition. The Völkische movement was not rationalist - it was a mystical movement, which you can see in its obsession with ancient German paganism.
Not this reductionist view of the display poster at the National Museum of African American History and Culture, yet again. "Champions" of "science" love to flash this every time they feel threatened by someone who thinks differently.
Science is fine, science is strong, science is right, science will survive. And, also, at the same time, other people are allowed to have other world-views, and still benefit from science. They are interpreting the world in their own way, and that's OK. They are not threatening you or science, and that doesn't mean they reject science in the scientific realm either. Nor is anyone forcing you to acknowledge they are right in your world-view, but you do have to recognize you don't get to tell them what theirs should be. Western culture is just now discovering that it doesn't need to subjugate and extinguish those other views.
Also, what a twisted way to introduce partisan politics into a discussion and denigrate the other side by associating them with all the anti-science you can name. Personally, I will put more credence in an ancient world-view such as an Australian Aborigine as opposed to a new age pagan, but more power to them to refine their approach to the world.
Well, I'm happy to criticize the right for associating with anti-science too. I'm not trying to denigrate anyone per se, just give my own explanation of the trends and forces in our societal attitudes.
Maybe I shouldn't have used the poster as an example, it is a bit too deeply mired in the 'culture war', but I wanted to choose a relevant example that I imagine most readers here would have encountered.
Except you criticized the left with "paganism, witchcraft, and the occult" that are totally fringe groups, and totally ignored right-wing anti-science creationists that are polling around 40% in the US.
It certainly sounds like you were trying to stir up some "culture war" here with your biased and un-critical parroting of alt-right talking points.
> Except you criticized the left with "paganism, witchcraft, and the occult" that are totally fringe groups
Well the hard-left is itself a fringe group, and fringe groups have overlap. Certainly mainstream leftists don't tend to be into this stuff but I never said I was talking about mainstream leftists.
> and totally ignored right-wing anti-science creationists that are polling around 40% in the US.
Because that wasn't the topic of discussion. Criticizing one thing doesn't imply a tacit agreement with literally everything that isn't that thing.
I don't like this attitude that everything that the alt-right talks about is immediately tainted. Stopped clocks are right twice a day, and all that.
I find it fascinating that the white people in united states find that poster insulting. It does not say bad things overall and actually these are the values that particular groups considers important.
I, with some education, consider the associating an individual's ethnicity to a culture one of the main precursors to humankind's absolute worst atrocities.
Not atrocities perpetrated some rich guy back when criticising the King could get you hanged. Atrocities perpetrated by mild-mannered, intelligent - and yes, white - people who understood the trendy psych theories of the day, at least as well as they could be. People like us designed machines, computers, chemicals and networks to do some of the most evil things ever done.
The attitudes that precursor that should attract your attention.
I'm guessing it's the same reason that https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTU2He2BIc0 wasn't aired outside New England. The same description can be perceived differently depending upon whether it's intragroup or intergroup.
Our business is too big to fail.
They are on welfare.
Our kids' names are unique.
Their kids' names will be red flags on a CV.
We find it hard to get good help nowadays.
They must be too lazy to clean.
etc.
The Loved One is a short story which starts with the brit ex-pats in their bungalows, listening to the natives in the evening. Only gradually does Waugh reveal that the setting is that heart of darkness itself, El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles.
I don't see the problem. The questions anthropology seeks to answer are heavily influenced by politics and subjectivity; attempting to erase the imprecision with which humanity engages with reality paints an imprecise picture of humanity itself. As scientific inquiry is limited by the range of conceivable hypotheses (where that range is limited by experience, dogma, even bias) and available methods of observation, it seems imprudent to proclaim a "scientific worldview" (which is used inappropriately here, though not always elsewhere, as a synonym for "reason") as the be-all-end-all of interest. Especially in a society that has seen no small amount of reckless regard towards physical evidence of indigenous history. I see no reason to begrudge people the right to fill the vacuum left with whatever they like as long as it doesn't contradict physical evidence; they weren't the ones asking for developers to pave over grave sites. It's a bit of a, "lying in the bed you made," situation.
I think you are addressing something that also immensely bothers me because not only is our "science" in the west often not scientific process at all, but that the "science" of documenting and researching culture and traditions is not considered "science" by many.
It is related to my vehement repulsion to "globalism" and "immigration" too that is probably the single most destructive force in human history that has ever happened as it is erasing actual cultural diversity and uniqueness at a mind boggling rate that makes the mass extinction events others are concerned about all but look trivial. All over the world, from India, to Thailand, to Belize, to France, to Germany, to Italy to Poland… local traditions and cultures are being snuffed out as the globalist corporate monster of world domination turns everyone into monoculture consumers of the same corporate drivel. It's sad, really, I encourage everyone to learn as much as you can from your elders and link into your particular cultures, because the very deranged people leading our world dominating corporations want to erase all of that and make us all consume the monoculture they will serve you up … from India, to Thailand, to Belize, to France, to Germany …
It's really rather sad. Do yourself a favor and try to preserve what will never be recoverable again if it is not captured and archived, and dies with the past generations instead.
Although archaeology is certainly informed by scientific theory and uses the work of scientific fields like geology, it’s not truly a science. Crucially, archaeological excavations are not reproducible, and archaeological theories are not experimentally falsifiable. The same is true of cultural anthropology.
Many sciences are not reproducible, in that they don't have reproducible experiments. The key is the integrity of the data and clear explanation of the analysis methods.
But archaeology most definitely does have experimentally falsifiable theories, and it is undoubtedly a science.
What's a scientific field with non-reproducible experiments? I'm hard-pressed to think of any field with the kind of no-do-overs issues that archaeological excavations have.
Much of astronomy and astrophysics, for one, doesn’t even have the concept of experiments. They observe past behavior and predict future behavior, but they can’t do anything like the causal trials that define other sciences. Same with geology, the study of weather (sorry I’m blanking on the term), and some fields of biology. Anything that it is impossible to causally affect in a lab.
You can't dig up the same fossil twice. But you're not going to claim that the study of ancient species using the fossil record is unscientific, I hope.
Paleontology is very similar to archaeology, but because humans aren't the object of study, it's less affected by politics, and I haven't heard of any fights within paleontology over whether to call the field a "science."
I don't think the term "science" has ever had a single unified definition. When people say "Physics is a science" and "Archaeology is a science", I'm not convinced those two sentences are using the word "science" in exactly the same sense (although of course they are using it in somewhat related senses).
Wittgenstein famously argued that there is nothing that all "games" have in common – there is no single common element to board games, card games, ball games – there is a "family resemblance" (Familienähnlichkeit) in which every "game" has some things in common with other "games", but there is no one thing that all games have in common.
Maybe something similar is true for sciences as well.
Archeology is what's called a historical science. One of the features of that designation is exactly the lack of general reproducibility you've identified. Geology (specifically subfields like geomorphology) has many of the same issues even though you've identified it as a scientific field.
That said, as someone who's been a practicing archaeologist, I would agree that it's not entirely scientific, but only because the interesting questions in it often aren't answerable in a scientific framework.
"The Association is dedicated to advancing human understanding and applying this understanding to the world’s most pressing problems. While 75 percent of our members are employed in higher education or are students of anthropology, about 25 percent of our members work in the public, private, and non-governmental sectors, beyond the academy."
- to advance anthropology as the science that studies humankind in all its aspects, through archeological, biological, ethnological, and linguistic research;
- and to further the professional interests of American anthropologists, including the dissemination of anthropological knowledge and its use to solve human problems."
The very fact that they fought over whether or not to call their discipline a "science" shows that there's a rift in the field. I know this same issue has led to the breakup of some anthropology departments, including at Stanford (forced to merge again later), Duke and Harvard.
I don't understand why people find it necessary to use such manipulative titles. Not only is the term indigenous inherently deceptive and manipulative in it's erroneous use, since, e.g., all the People of India, China, French, German, Dutch, Italian etc. people of Europe are also indigenous cultures; but no one denies that other people do not "have archaeology". Who thinks "indigenous" people do not have archaeology? It seems like such a person would be quite uninformed to say such a thing.
The challenge with a lot of archaeology of "indigenous" people (using the manipulative vernacular) though is that not all cultures and societies advanced enough to produce significant amounts of discoverable artifacts. Fact is simply that you are not going to find, e.g., a lot of Aboriginal artifacts, like you are in Greece, Italy, Egypt, etc. Or, as was the case all throughout the Americas, the hispanics had essentially already eradicated hundreds, if not thousands of years of culture and artifacts as they plundered their way across the continent; which has left very little of what must have been mind boggling and dazzlingly stunning amounts of gold artifacts.
I encourage everyone to read, "The Memoirs of the Conquistador Bernal Diaz del Castillo Written by Himself", for an amazing accounting of what that era of hispanic plundering of the Americas was like. It will likely surprise you in many different ways.
It comes down to the fact that in spite of what "scientists" may want you to believe, neither can they know things that are negative, nor can one find things that do not or never existed. On a side note, I am very interested in the rather recent significant satellite surveys of the Central American forests that has shown far more extensive man made works than we had known before.
As strange as this may seem, it may even be that the viruses that the hispanics carried to the Americas that eradicated huge numbers of the population, may have also caused whole towns/cities to become suddenly deserted and overgrown, leaving behind covered up time capsules going back 500+ years.
The sad little title really doesn't do this justice. This is a piece (primarily) about Papua New Guinea. In the west, we tend to hear bad things about the place, like about high rates of poverty and violence.
But:
Papua New Guinea is one of the most culturally diverse countries in the world. As of 2019, it is also the most rural, as only 13.25% of its people live in urban centres. There are 851 known languages in the country... Most of the population of more than 8,000,000 people lives in customary communities, which are as diverse as the languages. The country is one of the world's least explored, culturally and geographically. It is known to have numerous groups of uncontacted peoples, and researchers believe there are many undiscovered species of plants and animals in the interior.
It is also a place where 97 percent of the land is held in traditional tribal or communal commons arrangements. This creates challenges for modernizing and developing because you can't sell the land, which means you can't mortgage it.
I'm not done reading the piece under discussion here, but it's a really fascinating piece. Please don't be put off by the lame and vague title. They are probably trying to be respectful. My general understanding is that "Indigenous" is a preferred term, but it's really vague and doesn't seem to mean much to most Westerners (which is another problematic term, but I don't know a better one and I think most people will know what I am trying to say, never mind the inaccuracies).
PNG is just really fascinating stuff and I would love to see more pieces like this one exploring this interesting place and the peoples who live there, their culture and history and so forth. I think we have just so much to learn and haven't yet scratched the surface.
Edit: The latter part of the article also talks about other places. This is not "just" about PNG, but a part of it is about PNG and it's really interesting.
I think the title might be inspired by the recent discussions about ethnomathematics. The idea is that indigenous cultures don't just have their own art and (vernacular) architecture, but also their own valid analogues of science, history, philosophy etc. however basic these activities might seem to western eyes.
Indigenous is sort of like European or African or Asian. Stories about Asian Peoples aren't that interesting. If you want to hook someone, put China or Japan or Korea in the title.
It's extremely broad and covers a great many peoples and tells you next to nothing about who you are talking about. So, yeah, I think it is pretty vague, personally.
PNG is one of those places I'd love to go but I'm afraid that my white skin would just put a target on my back. Port Morseby is literally a 3 hour flight from where I live(brisbane) but it seems more than a world away.
> It is also a place where 97 percent of the land is held in traditional tribal or communal commons arrangements. This creates challenges for modernizing and developing because you can't sell the land, which means you can't mortgage it.
Why is this a challenge if it is the constitutional choice of a sovereign nation. My impression is that this arrangement is knowingly and purposefully meant to avoid Western modernization and development, in order to perpetually safeguard the traditional way of life. Western property regime equals appropriation, displacement, and dislocation, then the concentration of wealth in owners. Mortgaging your land also has a negative connotation, especially when the lien-holder has unbalanced power to cause default and then take the land. Seems like PNG was trying to avoid this and keep traditional life alive in a natural state, not modernize and develop. There are plenty of places where Western ways have encroached and irreversibly changed indigenous outcomes. Let them have this one place where they have a chance to live their way.
Not really "indigenous" but one of my favorite stories of history within history is the unearthing of the classical Greek/Roman statue of Laocön in Rome in 1506. It was witnessed by Michelangelo and immediately recognized as a lost masterpiece from Latin texts that were known and still studied. So in a sense, the scholars at the time (can't really call them scientists, but essentially the experts of the time) knew they were looking at a significant masterpiece that they knew of only through the historical record.
61 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 108 ms ] threadReading this article (and looking at some of the other articles on the site) reminds me of what I've heard elsewhere about the deep rift in anthropology between the physical and the cultural anthropologists. It appears to me to be a conflict between a scientific worldview and an increasingly subjective, politically influenced worldview. One manifestation of this is the decision by the American Anthropological Association to remove the word "science" from its mission statement.[1-2]
1. http://blogs.nature.com/news/2010/11/hold_the_science_says_a...
2. https://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/10/science/10anthropology.ht...
I leave it to the readers of HN to judge the validity of this philosophical stance; but one thing that cannot be disputed is that this school of thought is increasingly influencing our culture and politics. It's this epistemological stance that underlaid the much derided NMAAHC poster that attributed 'Emphasis on the Scientific Method' to Whiteness [1]. Indeed if you read modern Critical Race Theory texts there is a great deal of emphasis on oral histories of oppressed peoples, and they are considered more accurate than 'scientific' data, for those data were surely collected by the oppressors. It's also part of the reason why paganism, witchcraft, and the occult are fashionable among many leftists today; they view these ideas as standing in opposition to enlightenment rationality, which they dislike for its perceived privileged underpinnings.
[1]https://twitter.com/ByronYork/status/1283372233730203651
E: I accidentally a word
I don't really see any scientific study or evidence to prove that science is somehow being overtaken by some narrative force. A random's tweet doesn't prove much to me. Of course, if science does prove your claim, the paradox is that science is again catching up to the observations of the locals (of the internet).
Although he is far more sympathetic to the anti-rationalist case than I am, this [1] video by Philosophy Tube touches on some of these ideas (and he is much better read on this stuff than I am). Although he makes a quip against post-modernism about 6 minutes in, it is my understanding that in broad strokes, the analysis he presents is in the post-modern tradition.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmk47kh7fiE
I think it could be demonstrated empirically that certain anti-rationalist attitudes have increased in recent years, especially on the left. Since we're not doing science here I don't see why I need to provide ultra-rigorous evidence. Is that itself anti-rationalist? I don't think so - I'm not trying to influence government policy or get a PhD - some discussion contexts call for a larger burden of evidence than others.
[1] Enola bean, long produced in Mexico and exported to the US, was patented here on the basis of the inventor having been the first person to grow it in the US: https://patents.google.com/patent/US5894079A
[2] Buzy Lizzie, a hybrid vining ornamental was patented in the UK based on knowledge of wild African hybrids: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/sep/22/outlook.develo...
[3] To break from specifically plant patents, here's a different case of patenting the drug produced from a plant. The antimalarial Simalikalactone E was isolated and patented from Quassia amara after the plant was identified by Guianans. Here's an article on the controversy: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/02/french-institute-agr...
Here's the patent: https://patents.google.com/patent/EP2443126B1
The fact it took so long is an atrocity but my point stand - patents for existing plants are not valid.
https://patentlyo.com/patent/2009/07/mexican-yellow-bean-pat...
Knowledge is more than beliefs that happen to be true. I don't think you can necessarily say that the locals "knew" about a particular species when they didn't have a functional definition of speciation, or "knew" about pharmaceutical properties of certain flora and fauna when they also "knew" about other pharmaceutical properties that were actually not the case.
I’m okay if people want to take a leap of faith, but don’t conflate that with science.
This is the best short-hand I've read yet for what's going on under the covers in a lot of those conversations. Thanks for sharing!
Science is fine, science is strong, science is right, science will survive. And, also, at the same time, other people are allowed to have other world-views, and still benefit from science. They are interpreting the world in their own way, and that's OK. They are not threatening you or science, and that doesn't mean they reject science in the scientific realm either. Nor is anyone forcing you to acknowledge they are right in your world-view, but you do have to recognize you don't get to tell them what theirs should be. Western culture is just now discovering that it doesn't need to subjugate and extinguish those other views.
Also, what a twisted way to introduce partisan politics into a discussion and denigrate the other side by associating them with all the anti-science you can name. Personally, I will put more credence in an ancient world-view such as an Australian Aborigine as opposed to a new age pagan, but more power to them to refine their approach to the world.
Maybe I shouldn't have used the poster as an example, it is a bit too deeply mired in the 'culture war', but I wanted to choose a relevant example that I imagine most readers here would have encountered.
Except you criticized the left with "paganism, witchcraft, and the occult" that are totally fringe groups, and totally ignored right-wing anti-science creationists that are polling around 40% in the US.
It certainly sounds like you were trying to stir up some "culture war" here with your biased and un-critical parroting of alt-right talking points.
Well the hard-left is itself a fringe group, and fringe groups have overlap. Certainly mainstream leftists don't tend to be into this stuff but I never said I was talking about mainstream leftists.
> and totally ignored right-wing anti-science creationists that are polling around 40% in the US.
Because that wasn't the topic of discussion. Criticizing one thing doesn't imply a tacit agreement with literally everything that isn't that thing.
I don't like this attitude that everything that the alt-right talks about is immediately tainted. Stopped clocks are right twice a day, and all that.
Not atrocities perpetrated some rich guy back when criticising the King could get you hanged. Atrocities perpetrated by mild-mannered, intelligent - and yes, white - people who understood the trendy psych theories of the day, at least as well as they could be. People like us designed machines, computers, chemicals and networks to do some of the most evil things ever done.
The attitudes that precursor that should attract your attention.
The Loved One is a short story which starts with the brit ex-pats in their bungalows, listening to the natives in the evening. Only gradually does Waugh reveal that the setting is that heart of darkness itself, El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles.
It is related to my vehement repulsion to "globalism" and "immigration" too that is probably the single most destructive force in human history that has ever happened as it is erasing actual cultural diversity and uniqueness at a mind boggling rate that makes the mass extinction events others are concerned about all but look trivial. All over the world, from India, to Thailand, to Belize, to France, to Germany, to Italy to Poland… local traditions and cultures are being snuffed out as the globalist corporate monster of world domination turns everyone into monoculture consumers of the same corporate drivel. It's sad, really, I encourage everyone to learn as much as you can from your elders and link into your particular cultures, because the very deranged people leading our world dominating corporations want to erase all of that and make us all consume the monoculture they will serve you up … from India, to Thailand, to Belize, to France, to Germany …
It's really rather sad. Do yourself a favor and try to preserve what will never be recoverable again if it is not captured and archived, and dies with the past generations instead.
But archaeology most definitely does have experimentally falsifiable theories, and it is undoubtedly a science.
You can't dig up the same fossil twice. But you're not going to claim that the study of ancient species using the fossil record is unscientific, I hope.
Paleontology is very similar to archaeology, but because humans aren't the object of study, it's less affected by politics, and I haven't heard of any fights within paleontology over whether to call the field a "science."
Wittgenstein famously argued that there is nothing that all "games" have in common – there is no single common element to board games, card games, ball games – there is a "family resemblance" (Familienähnlichkeit) in which every "game" has some things in common with other "games", but there is no one thing that all games have in common.
Maybe something similar is true for sciences as well.
That said, as someone who's been a practicing archaeologist, I would agree that it's not entirely scientific, but only because the interesting questions in it often aren't answerable in a scientific framework.
https://www.americananthro.org/
Their subtitle is "Advancing Knowledge, Solving Human Problems"
Their About page (https://www.americananthro.org/ConnectWithAAA/Content.aspx?I...) says:
"The Association is dedicated to advancing human understanding and applying this understanding to the world’s most pressing problems. While 75 percent of our members are employed in higher education or are students of anthropology, about 25 percent of our members work in the public, private, and non-governmental sectors, beyond the academy."
The Statement of Purpose page (https://www.americananthro.org/ConnectWithAAA/Content.aspx?I...) says:
"The purposes of the Association shall be
- to advance anthropology as the science that studies humankind in all its aspects, through archeological, biological, ethnological, and linguistic research;
- and to further the professional interests of American anthropologists, including the dissemination of anthropological knowledge and its use to solve human problems."
The challenge with a lot of archaeology of "indigenous" people (using the manipulative vernacular) though is that not all cultures and societies advanced enough to produce significant amounts of discoverable artifacts. Fact is simply that you are not going to find, e.g., a lot of Aboriginal artifacts, like you are in Greece, Italy, Egypt, etc. Or, as was the case all throughout the Americas, the hispanics had essentially already eradicated hundreds, if not thousands of years of culture and artifacts as they plundered their way across the continent; which has left very little of what must have been mind boggling and dazzlingly stunning amounts of gold artifacts.
I encourage everyone to read, "The Memoirs of the Conquistador Bernal Diaz del Castillo Written by Himself", for an amazing accounting of what that era of hispanic plundering of the Americas was like. It will likely surprise you in many different ways.
It comes down to the fact that in spite of what "scientists" may want you to believe, neither can they know things that are negative, nor can one find things that do not or never existed. On a side note, I am very interested in the rather recent significant satellite surveys of the Central American forests that has shown far more extensive man made works than we had known before.
As strange as this may seem, it may even be that the viruses that the hispanics carried to the Americas that eradicated huge numbers of the population, may have also caused whole towns/cities to become suddenly deserted and overgrown, leaving behind covered up time capsules going back 500+ years.
But:
Papua New Guinea is one of the most culturally diverse countries in the world. As of 2019, it is also the most rural, as only 13.25% of its people live in urban centres. There are 851 known languages in the country... Most of the population of more than 8,000,000 people lives in customary communities, which are as diverse as the languages. The country is one of the world's least explored, culturally and geographically. It is known to have numerous groups of uncontacted peoples, and researchers believe there are many undiscovered species of plants and animals in the interior.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papua_New_Guinea
It is also a place where 97 percent of the land is held in traditional tribal or communal commons arrangements. This creates challenges for modernizing and developing because you can't sell the land, which means you can't mortgage it.
https://thediplomat.com/2016/03/papua-new-guinea-where-prope...
I'm not done reading the piece under discussion here, but it's a really fascinating piece. Please don't be put off by the lame and vague title. They are probably trying to be respectful. My general understanding is that "Indigenous" is a preferred term, but it's really vague and doesn't seem to mean much to most Westerners (which is another problematic term, but I don't know a better one and I think most people will know what I am trying to say, never mind the inaccuracies).
PNG is just really fascinating stuff and I would love to see more pieces like this one exploring this interesting place and the peoples who live there, their culture and history and so forth. I think we have just so much to learn and haven't yet scratched the surface.
Edit: The latter part of the article also talks about other places. This is not "just" about PNG, but a part of it is about PNG and it's really interesting.
Is 'indigenous' really a vague and obscure term?
It's extremely broad and covers a great many peoples and tells you next to nothing about who you are talking about. So, yeah, I think it is pretty vague, personally.
/2 cents
It's specific in its vagueness. It's not meant to describe a specific culture or population, but a class.
I also write for pay and titles are hard and words like that don't tend to do well in titles.
Why is this a challenge if it is the constitutional choice of a sovereign nation. My impression is that this arrangement is knowingly and purposefully meant to avoid Western modernization and development, in order to perpetually safeguard the traditional way of life. Western property regime equals appropriation, displacement, and dislocation, then the concentration of wealth in owners. Mortgaging your land also has a negative connotation, especially when the lien-holder has unbalanced power to cause default and then take the land. Seems like PNG was trying to avoid this and keep traditional life alive in a natural state, not modernize and develop. There are plenty of places where Western ways have encroached and irreversibly changed indigenous outcomes. Let them have this one place where they have a chance to live their way.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laoco%C3%B6n_and_His_Sons