Tag Archives: will

Indigenous Science

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Native American Science, I hope, stands on “Will To Love/Grace”.

Actually, Science has all three phases of “Will” (Hope, Aspiration, Desire, Value, Ideal, Idea, Purpose, Theory, Achievement, etc.), “Becoming” (Process, Means, Technology, Know-How, Manipulation, Practice, etc.), and “Being” (Fact, What is, What is given, Existence, Condition, Environment, etc.) But in the Western sense, the “Will” part in Science has been hidden or even denied in the name of “Value Neutrality”, or “Objectivity”. Only guys like Husserl, Heidegger (Phenomenologists) took issue with this aspect of Science.

To be sure, if you equate “Reason”, “Rationality”, “Intelligence” with “Science”, then the story is different in contexts like “Reason and History”, “Theory and Practice” etc. there have been many arguments. But, Philosophers in English speaking countries used not to understand them to have anything to do with “Science”. When one is to talk about “Will” in relation to “Science”, one has to take “Science” in wider sense. If one does, then Hegel, Nietzsche, et al. were, in fact, talking about “Philosophy of Science”. (A. Whitehead is an exception).

Now it appears that things are changing. Gradually, Nietzsche, Hegel, Marx, Husserl, Heidegger, et al — the whole German Philosophy of Science — are revived even in American Academia. In terms of “Sociology of Science”, the influence of Frankfurt school on “Science” is coming into the U.S. (Habermas, Ricoeur, et al.) Canada is lagging behind. They dare not say anything until some big names at Oxford or Cambridge start saying things. That is from the “Colonial Mentality” of Canadian Academics. They wait for big Bandwagons to come and offer a ride.

You might try Name Dropping. It is not effective to try justifying and defending Native Science. Instead, you might have to argue that if White Culture refuses to learn Native Science, the world will be destroyed. Just as the missionaries did to natives up to this time, you tell them you want to save their souls, and see how they react.

Whatever anyone says, Love and Care of Gaia/Tree is a Science. [At least it is no less a Science than the Thirst for Power and Greed for Material Possession are Science.] This alternative science may not be suitable for organizing industries and exploiting nature and people. It may not help the present system of Political Economy and its Ideology. But it is necessary wisdom for survival at least, if it fails to reach “Grace”. In a sense, it is more complex and difficult, because this science does not ignore the “Will” part. It does ask what it means to “know”. That, however, makes it more interesting. At any rate, there are reasons for me to write like mad. I may be a compulsive writer, but I cannot write fast enough for the needs.

[I wanted to write to you about an article; “Alternative To Western Psychotherapy: The Modern-Day Medicine Man” by William K. Powers (from Beyond Vision U. of Oklahoma Press 1987.) and a book I mentioned to you before The Psychoanalytic Movement by Ernest Gellner (Paladin 1985.)

I think there are parallels among connections of “Psychoanalysis-Therapy”, “Social Theory/Ideology-Social Policy/Welfare”, “Science-Production”, “Education-Culture”, and “Native Medicine-Community”. Patterns and problems in them may be comparatively identified. But, I could not even start on it as yet.]

Now you know why I am happy to help you. Whether you need or not, I will pursue alternative science in one way or another. You owe me nothing. Rather, I am thankful that you give me the opportunity and motive. I have “means” to complete the “perfect crime”. That is beautiful, if not “graceful”.

I know you have to do things within a frame related to Native Welfare. The second gateway is Native Education which Leroy probably does. I do Peace Science. The fourth one is Feminist Science, for which I will find someone, somewhere.

Things already start happening. Don’t be too defensive. The World is waiting for you. All you have to do is to tell what you are dreaming about or suggest the direction of the Spirit. Once you do that, you will be surprised to find many helpers. Close your eyes and jump off the bridge! At least you get to somewhere.

Yours

Sam K.

Indigenous Science

8 August 1988 Personal Correspondence on Grace, Will, and Power

Aug. 8, ’88.

Dear Pam

The enclosed is the 4th draft of “Tree and Wind”. I have made a major shift in the theme from Love-Making to “Grace”. I wonder what native word(s) for “Grace” is. Ex-minister friend of mine thinks that Grace is a Buddhist concept, rather than Christian. Grace in Christianity appeared in the context of Marian worship (a Feminist Movement in ancient times). That was not a part of the official dogma that St. Paul et al preached, though they could claim that Grace is implicit in their construction.

A small note. According to the Zodiac, You are Air-Wind and an Intellectual. I am an Earth element, which is about right in that I am a peasant/artisan. However, just to show you the prestige of Earth Power, I enclosed a newspaper article by Gwynne Dyer (Leth. Herald Aug 5.) Dyer is talking of “Gaia” — which actually includes Air, Water, Trees — Dyer asks a rhetorical question if care and concern for Gaia is a Pseudo-Religion. But he does not question whether or not the prevalent worship of the power of science-technology is more of Pseudo-Religion than the reverence for Gaia is. I guess Dyer knows, but he must have thought that the time to ask the second question has not come yet. It is safe to pretend that Science-Technology is rational and there is no problem with it. You might try criticizing Dyer for not knowing Native Science.

In a philosophy journal from Japan, this month, there is an article on Heidegger by a German Philosopher, Klaus Held. It is not directly on science, but on the problems of “Being” and “Will To Know” – Held is rather conservative and falls back on the old Cartesian/Kant assumption of “I think, therefore I know”. Heidegger was not satisfied with such an “easy answer” Husserl who is cited in the article, started with Kantian Axiom of “Cartesian Science can know everything and anything”, but he could not find ground for the position. That was Husserl’s “Krisis der Europaischen Wissenschaften” (1-936). Held appears to have made a retrogression to the 19th century. Somehow the worship of European science (Intellectuality) goes on, despite all proofs to the contrary. Dyer and Held are not alone.

But, interestingly, the discussion went onto the question of “Will To know”. Air-Wind is “Will — in the sense of “Will to Power” which Nietzsche et al talked about. In contrast, Earth is “Being”. Between “Will” and “Being”, there comes “Becoming”. Heidegger knew that much.

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“Sociology” in North American texts does not like to talk about this. What has happened is that the “discourse” of north American academics has come to avoid the question of “Power” in general and “Power of Knowledge” in particular. It is characteristic of the modern Social Science in North America to deny “Power” as if it is a “ghost” in some superstition.

“Science” is said to be “Value Neutral”. And if so, it would be awkward for Social Science to comment on power.

[Wright Mills’ work on “Power Elite” (1959) was “disproved”, according to my Sociologist friends. They told me of their “feeling of relief” by it, for they did not like too much of “Radical Politics” in academic discourse.]

Besides, in the “Free World” that North Americans were proud of, there ought not to be “Power” which might be controlling the proud “Free Individualists”, except perhaps the Almighty Power of the God that they believe and presumably obey.

It might also be that the memory of Hitler who played with phrases like “Will To Power” was not forgotten. It was bad enough for any north American to be called “Pinko”, let alone being associated with Nazism. This, however, does not mean that Americans disliked “Power”. On the contrary, Americans then were almost intoxicated by their perception of themselves as the “World Power”.

[There was a sense of the U.S.A. as the heir of the defunct British Empire. Documents such as National Security Council-68 drafted in 1950 clearly spelled out the notion of the USA as the New Empire. See, M. Kaku and D. Axelrod To Win A Nuclear War. Black Rose Books 1987.

Kissinger was a “Power Ideologist” and wrote in Foreign Affairs 1958-59, “America needed to construct its World View in terms of Power and Will” and “Statesmen must act as if their intuition were already experience, as if their aspiration were Truth”. Eisenhower apparently failed to understand the “Power Philosophy”, but Kennedy came to make a

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