Example: the utter foolishness of reductionism (Introduction)

by Balance_Maintained , U.S.A., Friday, October 17, 2014, 03:39 (3473 days ago) @ David Turell

It is interesting that you brought this up. I am doing a research paper on the cultural and technological divides in aboriginal cultures, and I stumbled across this today. -http://www.ccl-cca.ca/pdfs/LessonsInLearning/Feb-01-07-The-cultural-divide-in-science.pdf-“The First Nations people view themselves not as custodians, 
stewards or having dominion over the Earth, but as an integrated 
part in the family of the Earth. The Earth is my mother and the 
animals, plants and minerals are my brothers and sisters.”
 —F. Henry Lickers
 Biologist, member of the Turtle Clan of the Seneca Nation-A cultural mismatch, between the values and philosophy of Western science 
(particularly as these are typically exemplified in the classroom) and the values 
and philosophy held by many Aboriginal people and communities, makes 
the issue of increasing Aboriginal participation in science and technology 
a particularly thorny one. These cultural differences are nicely illustrated by 
the quotes given at the beginning of this artilce. The Aboriginal world view 
(captured by the Lickers quote) sees people, landscape and living resources 
as a spiritual whole. In contrast, the Western science approach seeks greater 
understanding through breaking apart the whole and analyzing it into its 
smallest parts.6- For example, these world view differences were explored among Kickapoo Indian children studying 
in off-reserve schools.9 The work revealed a number of ways in which Kickapoo and Western world views conflict, interfering with Kickapoo children's ability and motivation to learn in Western science classrooms. Kickapoo students prefer cooperative learning rather than the competitive learning environment fostered in Western classrooms. They tend to think holistically about the natural world, whereas the Western science approach is reductionist in that it tends to explain things by reducing complex systems down to the simpler parts. Kickapoo students view time and space as cyclical in nature while these concepts are treated more linearly in Western science. Kinship, harmony, cooperation and spiritualism with respect to the natural world are highly valued by Kickapoo students, while the corresponding Western values are more exploitative, competitive, decontextualized, rational and materialistic. The researchers also found that, in Western science classrooms, Kickapoo students were unengaged and showed little evidence of learning; however, the very same students faced with the very same lessons in a different context (i.e., in their own village) were active, engaged and showed evidence of learning by enthusiastically answering questions.

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What is the purpose of living? How about, 'to reduce needless suffering. It seems to me to be a worthy purpose.