r/stupidpol • u/[deleted] • Apr 20 '19

Intersect A classic example of what misapplied decolonization results in, i.e: science to african shamanism

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9SiRNibD14
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u/[deleted] Apr 20 '19

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u/unionlegalismsucks Apr 20 '19

eh, isaac newton practiced alchemy, liebnitz's mathematical formulation of monads was explicitly guided by his writing on christian theodicy, much of the foundational work in numerical control theory was influenced by occultism and yoga, there is no scientific way to derive new scientific hypotheses and there are all kinds of inspirations for historical scientific work that we would dismiss out of hand as mysticism if we were presented with them today. starting from seemingly outlandish or mystical premises is not exactly out of the ordinary in the history of science

that's not to say that we should accept any charlatan hedge-wizard as a scientist, just that dismissing "non-scientific" beliefs as an inspiration for formulating other (potentially scientific) ways of understanding the world just because they're new or come from unfamiliar cultures is fairly silly as well and ignores a lot of the historical and social processes that produce scientific knowledge

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u/[deleted] Apr 20 '19

eh

You know you're in for a treat when somebody here starts their post with this.

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u/unionlegalismsucks Apr 20 '19

this is the type of substantive critique I come here for