.....European navigators didn’t fear sailing too close to the Earth’s edge
Dave Armstrong, a columnist for state-subsidised Stuff, went out to bat for mātauranga Māori this week and to remonstrate with Richard Dawkins, the renowned British biologist, science communicator and atheist.
During his recent New Zealand tour, Dawkins had written an article for The Spectator about our government’s decision for Māori “Ways of Knowing” (mātauranga Māori) to have equal standing with “western’ science” in our education curriculum.
Armstrong challenged the renowned scientist’s critique:
Dawkins calls this “ludicrous policy… adolescent virtue-signalling”. Is this a reasonable point or a God-like delusion from an arrogant overseas scientist with little local knowledge?
The columnist’s riposte has not been informed by the concerns of New Zealand scientists and academics about the place of mātauranga Māori in the science classroom, some of them cogently contained in a recent open letter to Prime Minister Chris Hipkins.
Mind you, Armstrong may well be unaware of the thrust of that letter. Stuff – and other mainstream media – have made no mention of it, perhaps because they needed the space to bring us news about Meghan and Harry.
Armstrong goes on to note:
New Zealand is apparently Dawkins’ favourite country because Ernest Rutherford was born here. Interestingly, Lord Rutherford died in Cambridge, England, of a treatable hernia, but according to mātauranga Pommy, a lord could not be treated by a local doctor, a Harley Street specialist arrived too late, and the Winchester bells tolled.
Whatever curious customs (or tikanga) determined who could treat whom in Cambridge at that time, they had nothing to do with science and there is nothing in Armstrong’s article to suggest Rutherford would have survived had he been subject to Māori customary practices.
To the contrary, Armstrong has made the case for subordinating customary practices to good science.
He proceeds to argue there should be more Māori content across the whole curriculum.
Many Māori students feel that the curriculum is not “for them” and teachers are encouraged “to have Māori-centred contexts for exemplars and assessment resources”. Fair enough.
The champions of science would not disagree. Their concern is not with the teaching of mātauranga Māori but with the notion that traditional knowledge and modern science should be regarded as equivalent in the Kiwi school curriculum.
Armstrong wants to reassure us their concerns are groundless:
Equal status for mātauranga Māori does not mean every science class will start with a Christian karakia and that students will be told that the Big Bang Theory is wrong and that the world started when Ranginui and Papatūānuku separated.
What might happen is that when teaching plate tectonics, for example, an informed teacher could tell the story of Ngātoroirangi, who called his sisters in Hawaiki to turn themselves into fire and travel underground to Aotearoa and subsequently appear at various volcanic hotspots. The story shows that after much observation, Māori probably understood the relationships of the volcanoes in the Pacific “ring of fire”, something confirmed with the scientific discovery of plate tectonics in the 1960s.
Fair to say, Armstrong acknowledges:
It’s true that parts of mātauranga Māori are not scientific…
Nevertheless, he insists:
…but is it a competition where one side must display cultural superiority? We’re meant to be a bi-cultural country for goodness’ sake.
Thus he rejects the strong evidence that suggests we have become a multicultural country.
Armstrong contends:
What Dawkins may not know is that while there are some excellent Māori scientists, there should be many more.
But science is (or should be) culturally neutral. Yes, we need more scientists. Their ethnicity should be irrelevant.
As to the curriculum:
If bright Māori students are being turned off the subject because it doesn’t immediately speak to them then is it ‘ludicrous’ that the government is trying to make the curriculum culturally relevant?
But there is no similar push to make the curriculum culturally relevant – say – to Asian students and to tailor teaching to enable them to earn better marks.
To reinforce the case for regarding mātauranga Māori as equal to science for the purposes of Kiwi educationalists, Armstrong has seized on something Dawkins wrote about Maori navigators.
Dawkins concedes ocean navigation is something Māori were pretty good at, but that matāuranga Māori is not science. Really? Pacific navigation is one of the wonders of the seafaring and astronomy worlds. While European navigators were worried about falling off the edge of the Earth, Pacific navigators were commuting over vast distances.
Armstrong is described as a satirist and perhaps the bit about sailing off the edge of the Earth was not intended to be taken seriously. But if he does believe that European navigators feared they would fall off the edge of the Earth, how does he explain Columbus’ belief he could reach China by sailing towards (and accidentally arriving at) the Americas ?
An article in Physics World (one of many that Armstrong might usefully consult) reminds us:
The idea that the Earth is a sphere was all but settled by ancient Greek philosophers such as Aristotle (384–322 BC), who obtained empirical evidence after travelling to Egypt and seeing new constellations of stars. Eratosthenes, in the third century BC, became the first person to calculate the circumference of the Earth. Islamic scholars made further advanced measurements from about the 9th century AD onwards, while European navigators circled the Earth in the 16th century. Images from space were final proof, if any were needed.
This article says the notion of a flat Earth initially resurfaced in the 1800s
… as a backlash to scientific progress, especially among those who wished to return to biblical literalism.
An article in Advancing Physics says
By around 500 B.C., most ancient Greeks believed that Earth was round, not flat. But they had no idea how big the planet is until about 240 B.C., when Eratosthenes devised a clever method of estimating its circumference.
It was around 500 B.C. that Pythagoras first proposed a spherical Earth, mainly on aesthetic grounds rather than on any physical evidence. Like many Greeks, he believed the sphere was the most perfect shape.
Possibly the first to propose a spherical Earth based on actual physical evidence was Aristotle (384-322 B.C.), who listed several arguments for a spherical Earth: ships disappear hull first when they sail over the horizon, Earth casts a round shadow on the moon during a lunar eclipse, and different constellations are visible at different latitudes.
Around this time Greek philosophers had begun to believe the world could be explained by natural processes rather than invoking the gods, and early astronomers began making physical measurements, in part to better predict the seasons.
Eratosthenes of Cyrene, one of the foremost scholars of the time, produced impressive works in astronomy, mathematics, geography, philosophy, and poetry.
His calculated circumference of the Earth was between about 24,000 miles and about 29,000 miles. The Earth is now known to measure about 24,900 miles around the equator, slightly less around the poles.
Writing for Medievalists.net, Danièle Cybulskie looks into the myth of a flat earth.
It seems there’s one fact about the Middle Ages that always seems to astound people: medieval people did not actually think the world was flat. I remember being startled myself when this bombshell was dropped on me. If they didn’t think it was flat, what did they think? And why are we all convinced otherwise?
She delves into how the myth has been fostered before acquainting her readers with the work of an Arabic astronomer from the ninth century, Ahmad al-Farghani, who described the Earth as a sphere, as did the Venerable Bede (seventh century), Roger Bacon (thirteenth century), and Thomas Aquinas (also thirteenth century), among others. Roger Bacon even guessed that the movement of heavenly bodies influenced physics on Earth.
It wasn’t only big thinkers that thought this way, either. The fact that the Earth’s spherical shape was widely accepted is shown by the use of orbs as a symbolic part of royal regalia, and in pictures of Jesus, “The Saviour of the World” (Salvator Mundi).
An image of a round Earth can be found, too, in the works of Hildegard von Bingen, around the twelfth century.
Cybulskie concludes her article with some useful advice:
The columnist’s riposte has not been informed by the concerns of New Zealand scientists and academics about the place of mātauranga Māori in the science classroom, some of them cogently contained in a recent open letter to Prime Minister Chris Hipkins.
Mind you, Armstrong may well be unaware of the thrust of that letter. Stuff – and other mainstream media – have made no mention of it, perhaps because they needed the space to bring us news about Meghan and Harry.
Armstrong goes on to note:
New Zealand is apparently Dawkins’ favourite country because Ernest Rutherford was born here. Interestingly, Lord Rutherford died in Cambridge, England, of a treatable hernia, but according to mātauranga Pommy, a lord could not be treated by a local doctor, a Harley Street specialist arrived too late, and the Winchester bells tolled.
Whatever curious customs (or tikanga) determined who could treat whom in Cambridge at that time, they had nothing to do with science and there is nothing in Armstrong’s article to suggest Rutherford would have survived had he been subject to Māori customary practices.
To the contrary, Armstrong has made the case for subordinating customary practices to good science.
He proceeds to argue there should be more Māori content across the whole curriculum.
Many Māori students feel that the curriculum is not “for them” and teachers are encouraged “to have Māori-centred contexts for exemplars and assessment resources”. Fair enough.
The champions of science would not disagree. Their concern is not with the teaching of mātauranga Māori but with the notion that traditional knowledge and modern science should be regarded as equivalent in the Kiwi school curriculum.
Armstrong wants to reassure us their concerns are groundless:
Equal status for mātauranga Māori does not mean every science class will start with a Christian karakia and that students will be told that the Big Bang Theory is wrong and that the world started when Ranginui and Papatūānuku separated.
What might happen is that when teaching plate tectonics, for example, an informed teacher could tell the story of Ngātoroirangi, who called his sisters in Hawaiki to turn themselves into fire and travel underground to Aotearoa and subsequently appear at various volcanic hotspots. The story shows that after much observation, Māori probably understood the relationships of the volcanoes in the Pacific “ring of fire”, something confirmed with the scientific discovery of plate tectonics in the 1960s.
Fair to say, Armstrong acknowledges:
It’s true that parts of mātauranga Māori are not scientific…
Nevertheless, he insists:
…but is it a competition where one side must display cultural superiority? We’re meant to be a bi-cultural country for goodness’ sake.
Thus he rejects the strong evidence that suggests we have become a multicultural country.
Armstrong contends:
What Dawkins may not know is that while there are some excellent Māori scientists, there should be many more.
But science is (or should be) culturally neutral. Yes, we need more scientists. Their ethnicity should be irrelevant.
As to the curriculum:
If bright Māori students are being turned off the subject because it doesn’t immediately speak to them then is it ‘ludicrous’ that the government is trying to make the curriculum culturally relevant?
But there is no similar push to make the curriculum culturally relevant – say – to Asian students and to tailor teaching to enable them to earn better marks.
To reinforce the case for regarding mātauranga Māori as equal to science for the purposes of Kiwi educationalists, Armstrong has seized on something Dawkins wrote about Maori navigators.
Dawkins concedes ocean navigation is something Māori were pretty good at, but that matāuranga Māori is not science. Really? Pacific navigation is one of the wonders of the seafaring and astronomy worlds. While European navigators were worried about falling off the edge of the Earth, Pacific navigators were commuting over vast distances.
Armstrong is described as a satirist and perhaps the bit about sailing off the edge of the Earth was not intended to be taken seriously. But if he does believe that European navigators feared they would fall off the edge of the Earth, how does he explain Columbus’ belief he could reach China by sailing towards (and accidentally arriving at) the Americas ?
An article in Physics World (one of many that Armstrong might usefully consult) reminds us:
The idea that the Earth is a sphere was all but settled by ancient Greek philosophers such as Aristotle (384–322 BC), who obtained empirical evidence after travelling to Egypt and seeing new constellations of stars. Eratosthenes, in the third century BC, became the first person to calculate the circumference of the Earth. Islamic scholars made further advanced measurements from about the 9th century AD onwards, while European navigators circled the Earth in the 16th century. Images from space were final proof, if any were needed.
This article says the notion of a flat Earth initially resurfaced in the 1800s
… as a backlash to scientific progress, especially among those who wished to return to biblical literalism.
An article in Advancing Physics says
By around 500 B.C., most ancient Greeks believed that Earth was round, not flat. But they had no idea how big the planet is until about 240 B.C., when Eratosthenes devised a clever method of estimating its circumference.
It was around 500 B.C. that Pythagoras first proposed a spherical Earth, mainly on aesthetic grounds rather than on any physical evidence. Like many Greeks, he believed the sphere was the most perfect shape.
Possibly the first to propose a spherical Earth based on actual physical evidence was Aristotle (384-322 B.C.), who listed several arguments for a spherical Earth: ships disappear hull first when they sail over the horizon, Earth casts a round shadow on the moon during a lunar eclipse, and different constellations are visible at different latitudes.
Around this time Greek philosophers had begun to believe the world could be explained by natural processes rather than invoking the gods, and early astronomers began making physical measurements, in part to better predict the seasons.
Eratosthenes of Cyrene, one of the foremost scholars of the time, produced impressive works in astronomy, mathematics, geography, philosophy, and poetry.
His calculated circumference of the Earth was between about 24,000 miles and about 29,000 miles. The Earth is now known to measure about 24,900 miles around the equator, slightly less around the poles.
Writing for Medievalists.net, Danièle Cybulskie looks into the myth of a flat earth.
It seems there’s one fact about the Middle Ages that always seems to astound people: medieval people did not actually think the world was flat. I remember being startled myself when this bombshell was dropped on me. If they didn’t think it was flat, what did they think? And why are we all convinced otherwise?
She delves into how the myth has been fostered before acquainting her readers with the work of an Arabic astronomer from the ninth century, Ahmad al-Farghani, who described the Earth as a sphere, as did the Venerable Bede (seventh century), Roger Bacon (thirteenth century), and Thomas Aquinas (also thirteenth century), among others. Roger Bacon even guessed that the movement of heavenly bodies influenced physics on Earth.
It wasn’t only big thinkers that thought this way, either. The fact that the Earth’s spherical shape was widely accepted is shown by the use of orbs as a symbolic part of royal regalia, and in pictures of Jesus, “The Saviour of the World” (Salvator Mundi).
An image of a round Earth can be found, too, in the works of Hildegard von Bingen, around the twelfth century.
Cybulskie concludes her article with some useful advice:
If you want to be a ten-minute medievalist, browse the web to see how big this myth is, and how flimsy the evidence. Just be careful not to fall off the edge of the Earth in your travels.
Point of Order is a blog focused on politics and the economy run by veteran newspaper reporters Bob Edlin and Ian Templeton
5 comments:
Armstrong should keep to being an satirist for he is was way out of his depth here and he's lost me and others I know from bothering with his column in future. Yes. there are flat earthists, but most when they looked to the heavens saw orbs, why would they think earth was any different when they couldn't see beyond the immediate horizon, but could see the sun and the moon etc. and land forms disappearing when on the beach or out at sea?
But really, all his about navigation. If Maori did truly have those skills, they certainly lost them over the centuries of being land-lubbers. That aside, it still isn't science and conflating the two is a nonsense. As too is the rubbish about bright Maori students. Bright kids can understand the concepts and are not dissuaded from learning by a lack of hocus pocus and spiritual belief, and all kids these days (in NZ) understand English - albeit that's on an ever declining scale.
In sum, Armstrong should keep to the satire and leave the real world stuff to grown-ups that know better and don't suffer from wokeism, for he clearly doesn't understand nor does he appreciate the extent of damage this will inevitably cause.
Armstrong's response reminds of the keyboard warriors who feign a farcical viewpoint to gat a rise.
The problem is, bit by bit the Armstrong nonsense is being normalised in NZ. Say it often enough and people believe it. Especially when a kiwi is challenging a foreigner. David and Goliath.
How far away were Maori from recording in written form their claimed scientific achievements? Or being able to produce a written language. Or in codifying and proving their science, mathematically or otherwise. Question: for Maori to prove a maritime point when was the last time a primitive type of craft sailed to New Zealand from the mid-Pacific, or from further afield - or from New Zealand to Pacific destinations, without any modern navigation aids? Armstrong maintained Maori were commuting. Does he claim long distance return journeys were a matter of course.
To me it is hugely doubtful whether Maori of some hundreds of years ago could have duplicated the feats of say a Columbus, a Magellan, a Marco Polo, a Tasman, a Cook or countless others. All of whom had the benefit of mathematics and written languages.
These types of arguments have been put to Maori many times, not only in respect of navigation matters, and there has been no sensible or coherent response from Maori - except to say that any questioning of Maori culture is racist.
Hi Eamon
I gather there is some UN edict which states that indigenous peoples have the right to keep their knowledge confidential. Maori certainly exploit this so usually there is no concrete written reference to challenge. Tradition is whatever may be recently "remembered" assisted by mutual encouragemnt on the marae. The only relable basis is as recorded by early Europeans. Where these observations are not convenient, now it is common for maori to even question the verbal accounts from elders diligently recorded by Best and others 100 and more years ago.
The notion seems to be that by contriving a noble past, maori youth will gain confidence and succeed in the modern world. Many have far too much already, leading to ram raids and a generally contemptuous attitude toward conventional civilised behaviour.
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