According to Ed Husic, the Minister for Science, Indigenous Australians were “the
nation’s first scientists”, whose insights, obtained “through observation,
experimentation and analysis”, rested upon “the bedrock of the scientific method”.
Nor is Husic alone in making those claims. Thanks to generous taxpayer funding, a
burgeoning industry promotes “Indigenous science” in venues ranging from schools
to universities.
But to call Indigenous knowledge “science” grossly misrepresents the nature of the
scientific enterprise that emerged from the intellectual revolution of the 17th century.
The error is neither innocent nor harmless: it both devalues that revolution’s
achievements, which made Western science into an engine room of human progress,
and projects a romantic, yet fundamentally condescending, vision of Indigenous
culture.
To refer to the changes that occurred in the 17th century as a revolution is not to
ignore the solid foundations on which they built. The notion of science as an activity
that, in the words of Diogenes Laertius (180AD-240AD), seeks to “understand things
as they are” through the “rational explanation of phenomena”, was well known in
classical antiquity and persisted into the Middle Ages.
However, the great thinkers of the 17th century radically transformed what Kant later
referred to as science’s “regulative principles”: that is, the rules that distinguished
science, as an activity and as a body of knowledge, from mere knowhow.
At a fundamental level, the transformation involved a dramatic change in the
conception of the cosmos.
In effect, the 17th century upended the Aristotelian view of nature, which claimed
that the basic properties of matter differed in the various parts of the universe.
Nature, the proponents of the new science argued, was homogenous, uniform and
symmetrical: matter was the same throughout the universe, governed by the same
causes or forces. Moreover, those forces were mechanical: the very essence of science
lay in uncovering their laws of motion.
In turn, those presuppositions of regularity and homogeneity underpinned a change
that proved momentous: the rejection of Aristotle’s prohibition on metabasis, that is,
on the transposition of methods from one discipline to another.
The sciences, said Rene Descartes in 1637, could not progress “in isolation from each
other”; they all had to advance, and could only advance, by adopting common
methods, centred on developing mathematical representations of the phenomena
they were seeking to explain.
And the test of those representations had to be both analytical and empirical:
analytical in terms of mathematical correctness; empirical, in that it had to be shown
that the representation could be used to recreate the phenomenon.
Truth, in other words, was “fact” in the Latin sense of the word: that which can be
done or made. As Giambattista Vico summarised the new thinking in 1710, “verum et
factum convertuntur” – the true is that which can be converted into fact, ie, can be
done in practice.
That is why Newton, to prove the existence of a centre of gravity, devised the famous
experiment of the rotating bucket filled with water. It is also why Francis Bacon
resuscitated the Greek term “praxis” – the unity of theory and practice – in the
Novum Organum (1620) to describe the “scientia activa” of experimentation, which,
far from diverting study from its object, was the sole means of “augmenting” it.
Those contentions, and particularly the emphasis on factual replicability, provoked
vociferous objections from the so-called Occasionalists, who feared the implication
that we can master the making of the universe in the same way as does the creator.
However, the pioneers of the new science were cautious in their claims. Yes,
mathematical techniques could accurately model limiting cases, such as motion in a
vacuum; but they only approximated actual outcomes. And it was improper to
speculate about the underlying causes of phenomena beyond what could be directly
observed and experimentally verified.
Hence Newton’s great outcry, “hypotheses non fingo”, “I feign no hypotheses”,
regardless of how much superficial completeness adding unproven hypotheses might
give his system.
That intellectual modesty opened the road to a recognition of the uncertainties
inherent both in the actual operation of the laws of motion and in their testing. In
what ranks among humanity’s great breakthroughs, Blaise Pascal’s work on
probability theory, and Thomas Bayes’ formalisation of inductive inference, set the
basis for the systematic hypothesis testing that allowed Western science to progress at
an unprecedented rate.
But that rate of progress also reflected another crucial feature of the intellectual
revolution: its openness. Traditionally, true knowledge had been seen as esoteric,
handed down, within closed circles, from one generation to the other and validated
by the weight of inherited authority. By the end of the 17th century, that notion had
been utterly discredited.
Instead, theories, models and experimental results were widely published, discussed and contested, vastly accelerating their development.
In short, what defined Western science and made it absolutely unique – and uniquely
powerful – was the tight integration of formal methods, rigorous verification and
public replicability. Additionally and crucially, it was self-aware, devoting ongoing
attention to the regulative principles with which scientific practice had to comply.
The contrast even to China could not have been starker, helping to explain why
China’s initial advantage in virtually every area of technology stalled and then
collapsed. As for the chasm separating science from Indigenous knowhow, with its
secrecy, its anthropomorphic explanations and its reliance on the authority of elders,
it can only be measured in light years.
However, Husic’s claim is not just absurd. It is, like Bruce Pascoe’s fantasies about
settled agriculture, deeply patronising. Husic plainly does not grasp the complex of
ideas that comprise the scientific method. But he clearly believes that Indigenous
culture, if it is to be respected, must be cast as an anticipation, if not a mirror, of
Western culture. If we had science, whatever that may be, they must have had it too –
and many centuries before us.
One might have hoped that the decisive refutation of Pascoe’s contentions by Keryn
Walshe and Peter Sutton would have laid those views, and the broader attitudes they
embody, to rest.
Yet they live on, thanks, in part, to sheer ignorance. Also at work is the conviction
that historical accuracy and intellectual honesty matter less than “celebrating”
Indigenous culture – a conviction that, far from promoting science, offends the
unbending commitment to the truth that is science’s very essence. Significant too is
the now ingrained hostility to the Western achievement, and to the scientific spirit,
which is among its glittering jewels, with it.
However, spinning fairytales is no way of convincing the community, and young
people in particular, of science’s vast potential. Nor will it do anything to reverse the
continuing fall in the number of high school students taking core science subjects.
Having a minister for science who knows what the term means will certainly not
solve those problems. But it would be a sensible place to start.
Henry Ergas AO is an economist who spent many years at the OECD in Paris before returning to Australia. He has taught at a number of universities, including Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, the University of Auckland and the École Nationale de la Statistique et de l'Administration Économique in Paris, served as Inaugural Professor of Infrastructure Economics at the University of Wollongong and worked as an adviser to companies and governments.
The west gave weapons to kurds and then left then to die like cowards.
If you cannot argue accurately please don't bother arguing at all.
The bulk of CJTF-OIR's combat operations have consisted of airstrikes against Islamic State; various ground forces have been deployed including special forces, artillery, training, and military advisors. The United States accounts for the vast majority of airstrikes (75–80%), with the remainder conducted by Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, Jordan, Belgium, the Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, and the United Kingdom.[22] Although the task force is not under NATO, all 32 members of the military alliance are contributing to CJTF-OIR.[23]
By the end of 2017, CJTF-OIR stated that its airstrikes had killed over 80,000 ISIL fighters.[24] The coalition also provided $3.5 billion in military equipment to the Iraqi Armed Forces,[25] billions more to the Peshmerga, and trained 189,000 Iraqi soldiers and police.[26] It has also provided significant support to the Syrian Democratic Forces, with which it coordinates various operations.[27]
Small difference, ISIS are the most disgusting animals/people on the planet, the most extreme militant muslims in a world full of extremist muslims.
The muslims who left Australia to go join ISIS were looking forward to gang raping children, beheading anyone who doesn't join islam and committing an actual genocide:
Over a period of three years, Islamic State militants trafficked thousands of Yazidi women and girls and killed thousands of Yazidi men;[14] the United Nations reported that the Islamic State killed about 5,000 Yazidis[5] and trafficked about 10,800 Yazidi women and girls in a "forced conversion campaign"[15][16] throughout Iraq. By 2015, upwards of 71% of the global Yazidi population was displaced by the genocide, with most Yazidi refugees having fled to Iraq's Kurdistan Region and Syria's Rojava
The IDF are our allies and are fighting the people like this
likewise, since you’re so certain it’s penny pinching feel free to post your numbers
i support all attempts to reduce the cost of this massively overbloated free money train
to quote the greens
Senator Jordon Steele-John, the Australian Greens spokesperson for Disability Rights and Services, has claimed that the reforms will result in the removal of crucial disability services, stating that ‘the Labor government is choosing to remove $14.4 billion in funding from the NDIS that will lead to disabled people not getting the support they need when they need it’.
Im not sure how $14.4 billion of tax payer money is penny pinching
At an annual running cost of $35.8 billion in 2022-23, the federal government will spend more on the NDIS this financial year than Medicare ($30.8 billion), aged care ($27.7 billion), and support for state government hospitals ($27.3 billion).
Penny pinching on one of the least productive, most expensive government expenses! Crazy! I have no idea why they are so focused on it.
where exactly did the rba get it wrong? spending is repressed because of the rba as he points out, but is he saying inflation isn’t a problem? that we are not spending too much even though inflation is up and the rba has indicators to suggest it’s us spending on services (remember the haircuts comment?) the article feels half finished to me
No /s, it is, no one says Gen Zed, or Jay Zed, XY Zee is just next in line, it's all Zee's and it makes sense why
At this point nobody is learning 'English', people are learning American because they watch American Movies, TV Shows, listen to American Music, eat American Food, play American Video Games, we watch literally millions of American Youtube and Tiktok Videos every day, we're following American Influencers and Celebrities, with American Social Media Australians are following American Politics more closely than Australian Politics and frequently confusing the two, in addition we're all addicted to the American Apps installed on American Operating Systems (all of them, Windows and MacOS and Android and IOS) on the American Smart Phones/Laptops/Desktops
nah i’m trying to read less about america and i found if i block all the china/russia/palestinian left wing progressives/hacks/activists the fediverse becomes quite a nice place
byd seal looks amazing, the only thing I'm not sure on is the infotainment system, but I'm hoping by 2030 when I get my next EV the tech will have come along quite nicely
ikt @ Eyekaytee @aussie.zone Posts 51Comments 453Joined 2 yr. ago
According to Ed Husic, the Minister for Science, Indigenous Australians were “the nation’s first scientists”, whose insights, obtained “through observation, experimentation and analysis”, rested upon “the bedrock of the scientific method”. Nor is Husic alone in making those claims. Thanks to generous taxpayer funding, a burgeoning industry promotes “Indigenous science” in venues ranging from schools to universities.
But to call Indigenous knowledge “science” grossly misrepresents the nature of the scientific enterprise that emerged from the intellectual revolution of the 17th century. The error is neither innocent nor harmless: it both devalues that revolution’s achievements, which made Western science into an engine room of human progress, and projects a romantic, yet fundamentally condescending, vision of Indigenous culture.
To refer to the changes that occurred in the 17th century as a revolution is not to ignore the solid foundations on which they built. The notion of science as an activity that, in the words of Diogenes Laertius (180AD-240AD), seeks to “understand things as they are” through the “rational explanation of phenomena”, was well known in classical antiquity and persisted into the Middle Ages.
However, the great thinkers of the 17th century radically transformed what Kant later referred to as science’s “regulative principles”: that is, the rules that distinguished science, as an activity and as a body of knowledge, from mere knowhow. At a fundamental level, the transformation involved a dramatic change in the conception of the cosmos.
In effect, the 17th century upended the Aristotelian view of nature, which claimed that the basic properties of matter differed in the various parts of the universe. Nature, the proponents of the new science argued, was homogenous, uniform and symmetrical: matter was the same throughout the universe, governed by the same causes or forces. Moreover, those forces were mechanical: the very essence of science lay in uncovering their laws of motion.
In turn, those presuppositions of regularity and homogeneity underpinned a change that proved momentous: the rejection of Aristotle’s prohibition on metabasis, that is, on the transposition of methods from one discipline to another.
The sciences, said Rene Descartes in 1637, could not progress “in isolation from each other”; they all had to advance, and could only advance, by adopting common methods, centred on developing mathematical representations of the phenomena they were seeking to explain.
And the test of those representations had to be both analytical and empirical: analytical in terms of mathematical correctness; empirical, in that it had to be shown that the representation could be used to recreate the phenomenon.
Truth, in other words, was “fact” in the Latin sense of the word: that which can be done or made. As Giambattista Vico summarised the new thinking in 1710, “verum et factum convertuntur” – the true is that which can be converted into fact, ie, can be done in practice.
That is why Newton, to prove the existence of a centre of gravity, devised the famous experiment of the rotating bucket filled with water. It is also why Francis Bacon resuscitated the Greek term “praxis” – the unity of theory and practice – in the Novum Organum (1620) to describe the “scientia activa” of experimentation, which, far from diverting study from its object, was the sole means of “augmenting” it.
Those contentions, and particularly the emphasis on factual replicability, provoked vociferous objections from the so-called Occasionalists, who feared the implication that we can master the making of the universe in the same way as does the creator. However, the pioneers of the new science were cautious in their claims. Yes, mathematical techniques could accurately model limiting cases, such as motion in a vacuum; but they only approximated actual outcomes. And it was improper to speculate about the underlying causes of phenomena beyond what could be directly observed and experimentally verified.
Hence Newton’s great outcry, “hypotheses non fingo”, “I feign no hypotheses”, regardless of how much superficial completeness adding unproven hypotheses might give his system.
That intellectual modesty opened the road to a recognition of the uncertainties inherent both in the actual operation of the laws of motion and in their testing. In what ranks among humanity’s great breakthroughs, Blaise Pascal’s work on probability theory, and Thomas Bayes’ formalisation of inductive inference, set the basis for the systematic hypothesis testing that allowed Western science to progress at an unprecedented rate.
But that rate of progress also reflected another crucial feature of the intellectual revolution: its openness. Traditionally, true knowledge had been seen as esoteric, handed down, within closed circles, from one generation to the other and validated by the weight of inherited authority. By the end of the 17th century, that notion had been utterly discredited.
Instead, theories, models and experimental results were widely published, discussed and contested, vastly accelerating their development.
In short, what defined Western science and made it absolutely unique – and uniquely powerful – was the tight integration of formal methods, rigorous verification and public replicability. Additionally and crucially, it was self-aware, devoting ongoing attention to the regulative principles with which scientific practice had to comply.
The contrast even to China could not have been starker, helping to explain why China’s initial advantage in virtually every area of technology stalled and then collapsed. As for the chasm separating science from Indigenous knowhow, with its secrecy, its anthropomorphic explanations and its reliance on the authority of elders, it can only be measured in light years.
However, Husic’s claim is not just absurd. It is, like Bruce Pascoe’s fantasies about settled agriculture, deeply patronising. Husic plainly does not grasp the complex of ideas that comprise the scientific method. But he clearly believes that Indigenous culture, if it is to be respected, must be cast as an anticipation, if not a mirror, of Western culture. If we had science, whatever that may be, they must have had it too – and many centuries before us.
One might have hoped that the decisive refutation of Pascoe’s contentions by Keryn Walshe and Peter Sutton would have laid those views, and the broader attitudes they embody, to rest.
Yet they live on, thanks, in part, to sheer ignorance. Also at work is the conviction that historical accuracy and intellectual honesty matter less than “celebrating” Indigenous culture – a conviction that, far from promoting science, offends the unbending commitment to the truth that is science’s very essence. Significant too is the now ingrained hostility to the Western achievement, and to the scientific spirit, which is among its glittering jewels, with it.
However, spinning fairytales is no way of convincing the community, and young people in particular, of science’s vast potential. Nor will it do anything to reverse the continuing fall in the number of high school students taking core science subjects. Having a minister for science who knows what the term means will certainly not solve those problems. But it would be a sensible place to start.
Henry Ergas AO is an economist who spent many years at the OECD in Paris before returning to Australia. He has taught at a number of universities, including Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, the University of Auckland and the École Nationale de la Statistique et de l'Administration Économique in Paris, served as Inaugural Professor of Infrastructure Economics at the University of Wollongong and worked as an adviser to companies and governments.