David Peat

Pausing the Cosmos 209questions. They may have been more concerned with relationship,wholeness, the position of the human observer, and the role of consciousnessin the world. They may have abstracted quantities or qualitiesdifferent from those of, say, mass and velocity. This is not to saythat a science created by Native Americans or Africans would in someway contradict or deny Western science. Rather it would provide a differentframework for knowing the world. It would ask different questionsand seek other sorts of answers. In this way alternative theoriesand types of explanations would be offered. In Blackfoot Physics 6 I attemptedto portray such an alternative worldview and show that, whileit is entirely consistent, it offers a different relationship to reality thanthat of Western science.This is not to say, as some have erroneously argued, that one canchoose to create any reality one wishes. Or that reality is no more thanthe expression of a particular belief system. Certainly objective aspectsto the world clearly do exist, although different cultures may see thesein different ways. No matter what you wish to believe you will still stubyour toe if you kick a rock. No amount of cultural relativism will makea rock vanish or prevent a ripe apple from falling to the ground. On theother hand, the falling apple and the nature of the rock could playquite different roles in sciences of other cultural contexts.Provided that such alternative approaches engage in disciplinedargument and deduction, and that there is an element of careful attentionto an observation, then the knowledge systems of other cultureshave the right to stand as scientific viewpoints. It may be possible thatother societies view the natural world through the prism of cooperationand symbiosis rather than environmental competition. Laws ofnature may be seen as more organic than mechanical. Alternative sciencesmay be less concerned with prediction and control than withempathy and understanding.Conceiving the possibility that alternative sciences could exist allowsus to look back at Western science and ask how much of it isinevitable and objective, and how much is culturally conditioned anddetermined. To take one example, the desire for an ultimate level to6Grand Rapids, Mich.: Phanes Press, 2002.