Several well-intentioned efforts are being made to involve Matauranga Maori (Maori knowledge) in science in New Zealand. This includes a pilot program of the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) in biology and chemistry that puts the concepts of Matauranga Maori on an equal footing with science. Other proposals aim to do the same for university science curricula and science policy.
For some, these efforts are a welcome move, while others see them as a cause for concern. I would like to contribute to the Asian scientific perspective on this discussion.
Why is the Asian perspective relevant? First, Asians make up about 15% of Aotearo’s population. It is important to remember that talking about science and our national education program is relevant to all of us.
Second, Asia is emerging as a global scientific leader. Asian universities are now among the top 25 in engineering, biology, physics and astronomy and chemistry. Although ranking can be debated, no Australian or New Zealand university ranks this well.
Japan - where one side of my heritage comes from - is part of this trend, despite being perhaps the most remote country in the last 500 years. In recent years, Japanese scientists have won the Nobel Prize for inventing blue light emitting diodes (used in phone screens) and lithium-ion batteries (used in electric cars).
Read more: Let’s choose our words more carefully when talking about Matauranga Maori and science
Japan is a scientific powerhouse and Japanese culture also has concepts similar to those considered for the NCEA science curriculum: whakapapa, mauri and kaitiakitanga are familiar to us. Shinto, the indigenous religion of Japan, is polytheistic and animistic, and, like Maori culture, ours has also found global strength (we mean judo, manga, haiku).
Importantly for New Zealand’s national conversation, in planning a journey as an emerging scientific leader, Japan and other Asian countries have grappled with the way modern science and traditional knowledge systems interact. As such, I believe that Asians can offer a useful perspective, and I offer mine in good faith.
Japan and ‘Western’ science
Let’s look at the origins of modern science in Japan, which was not so much Western as Dutch.
Our story begins in 1771 in Kotsugahara (Plain of Bones). Doctors attended the execution of the killer to watch the executioner cut his body, as was the custom in those days. Their interest in such a gruesome event? Let’s compare the Japanese medical text with the Dutch one, Ontleedkundige Tafelen (Anatomical Tables).
During the execution, Dr. Sugita Genpaku and his colleagues realized the superiority of the Dutch text and decided to translate it immediately. The resulting book, Kaitai Shinsho (New Book of Anatomy), became the standard Japanese text on anatomy.
National Medical Library
This nullified the orthodoxy of that time, where doctors kept their knowledge secret, teaching it only to their students. This episode is remembered at the Tokyo Memorial:
Rangaku (Dutch studies) originated from here and served to revitalize the progress of modern Japanese science.
This episode reveals some things about science: science needs to be shared for the betterment of humanity, and every concept can be translated into any language. This is not trivial. Sugita documented this challenge in Rangaku Koto Hajime (Beginning to Learn Dutch).
Sugita recounts how he and his colleagues had to understand Dutch words without Japanese equivalents and create those equivalents.
Read more: Eat your heart, scientists: the evidence is balancing
Sugita is known for another episode that shows how science works: the doctor Kagawa Gen’etsu claimed in his book Sanron (1765) that a developing fetus is placed upside down in the uterus. Sugita expressed skepticism, because it is not documented in Dutch or traditional texts.
When he later discovered that Kagawa’s observations were correct, he openly admitted his mistake. Not all scientists are as honorable as Sugita, but over time, the scientific process tends to correct mistakes and direct zero to the truth.
These early steps illustrate the scientific way of thinking when confronted with new knowledge. Sugita writes:
We were ashamed to live […] in […] complete ignorance […] without the slightest idea of the right configuration of the body, […] this was to be considered the basis of our art.
A different way of finding out?
So how did Japan reconcile traditional and modern knowledge? Has it developed a different “way of knowing”, a new form of science?
The novelist Tanizaki Junichiro reflected on this in In’ei Raisan (In Praise of the Shadows, 1933), in which he criticizes modernity and praises Japanese aesthetics, which favors shadows and imagination:
Suppose […] we have developed our own physics and chemistry: wouldn’t techniques and industries based on them take a different form, wouldn’t our countless things for everyday use, our medicines, our industrial art products - wouldn’t they suit our national pace better than them? In fact, our conception of physics itself, and […] chemistry, would probably differ from that of Westerners; and the facts which now teach us concerning the nature and function of light, electricity, and atoms could have been presented in a different form.
Read more: How Indigenous knowledge advances modern science and technology
The answer to every case of science adoption across Asia is a resounding no. Physics and chemistry are not cultural or aesthetic constructs; they deal with phenomena that exist even if our species does not exist.
Tanizaki, who had a tendency towards irony, continues to say: “Of course, I only engage in empty speculations; I don’t know anything about scientific things. “
Tradition and science intertwined
Our next stop is the Manshu-in temple in Kyoto and the “embankment of microbes”, kinzuka. It bears the inscription of microbiologist Sakaguchi Kinichiro:
Countless microbial souls
Who dedicated and sacrificed
For the existence of people,
We pay our deepest respects.
We hold a memorial service here
For the peace of their souls and compassion,
Building a bunch of microbes.
Kinzuka is not scientific, but it offers scientists an opportunity to think. It is something completely unique for Japan. In contrast, by stepping into Japanese laboratories, a person could be anywhere in the world. Methods are standard, equipment recognizable. And when we replace the protocols, they can be easily applied in any laboratory, although with little translation.
Details on how to grow microbes or how to extract DNA from them are separate from Japanese culture - or any culture.
However, some Japanese research is based on culture and art. One example is Aizome (indigo dyeing), which involves the extraction of dye by fermenting indigo leaves. The traditional process is fascinating and no craftsman needs the insight of a scientist to improve his craft.
The scientific part is understanding exactly how fermentation extracts color; no craftsman knows that. After discovering how the microbial fermentation process works, my colleagues did something quite amazing - they used this knowledge to develop a fuel cell. In this case, tradition inspired a new science.
Cultural treasure and science
I have touched on religion, but I want to end by immersing myself in depth: science inevitably comes into conflict with some forms of knowledge. Our oldest text, Kojiki (Record of Ancient Things, 711. NO), recounts oral traditions, myths and kami (gods). It states that the emperor’s genealogy leads to Amaterasu, the goddess of the sun.
As a scientist, I understand that these stories, if taken literally, are complete nonsense, if they stick to the light of modern genetics, linguistics or geology. But that does not diminish the centrality of these myths in Japanese culture. They are a treasure that does not mix with science.
Read more: Let’s choose our words more carefully when talking about Matauranga Maori and science
I can’t think of a better embodiment of our national religion, Shintoism, besides science, from the former Emperor Akihito. It is remarkable to learn that he is a passionate ichthyologist (fish biologist). Writing in the journal Science, he states:
Since science is searching for the truth, and scientific methodology is using the truth for humanity, it is desirable that such research be conducted through cooperation that transcends national and other borders.
But how can he accept science and be an akitsumikami - “god in manifestation”?
Japanese, Maori and Western thinkers have solved this paradox by acknowledging that religion and science do not overlap. One deals with facts and theories, the other with moral meaning and value, and as evolutionary biologist Stephen J. Gould observed:
[T]hey, they run into each other, digitizing with each other in incredibly complex ways along their common border.
This is worth considering in Aotearo’s national debates about which parts of Matauranga Maori belong to science and which to other subjects. For example, the claim that the Mauri is an identifiable life force is problematic for science because such a force does not exist, but we can understand the cultural values inherent in that term.
The Japanese equivalent, ki, runs through everyday language. For example, when we say ki about tsukete (beware), the literal translation would be “include your mauri”.
That the Japanese royal family descended from kamia, and maori whakapapa to atua, are also ideas that do not belong to science. Japanese aesthetics find beauty in shadows and lurking spirits, but there is also beauty in the lighting that science throws at the world.
This point is well understood by some of the most eminent Maori thinkers, including Maori study professor Mason Duri:
You cannot understand science with the tools of Matauranga Maori, and you cannot understand Matauranga Maori through the tools of science. These are different bodies of knowledge, and if you try to see one through the eyes of another, you mess up.
We need to explore the boundary between Maori matauranga and science. This can bring new knowledge (like the Aizome-fuel cell), but some parts will be treated better as if they do not overlap.
We must also recognize the value of the scientific progress and legacy of Sugita Genpaku, whose embrace of Dutch studies has sealed the fate of much of traditional Japanese medicine - in the service of improving it.