IN this episode we shall continue our efforts to demystify science.
We have argued before that science has been deliberately presented as a mysterious subject and this is wrong.
We also acknowledged that in the minds of many ordinary Zimbabweans, science is viewed as a difficult subject for students, especially girls.
Science has suffered as a result of this deliberate stereotyping.
Because we identify science as a key ingredient in building our economy, it is important that we demystify it and show that it is everybody’s cup of tea.
Those who see science as a special school or college subject and who view it as being outside the realm of ordinary life are guilty of perpetuating the stereotype of a difficult or even mysterious non-African subject.
Let me share with readers recent experiences with university students studying science.
The classes I will refer to are undertaking scientific research projects where they are required to use scientific methods.
In my introductory lecture I decided to engage the students to interrogate the question of ‘what is science’?
My first question to the students was to find out what they understand by the term ‘science’?
I got several responses most of them stating that ‘science is the study of nature’ or living things’.
Others said science is a subject you study at school; yet others said it is something you study in a laboratory.
So at this point science was clearly a school subject.
Can we study science outside a school or laboratory?
Most students felt that was not quite possible.
After much debate one student then said ‘science is a body of knowledge’.
So eventually the class agreed that science is ‘knowledge’ about our surroundings.
So we came to agree that science is the knowledge we need to be able to live and carry out various economic activities.
But there was still the issue that it is learnt at school/college in a special room called a laboratory.
Can people with no access to schools/colleges also learn ’science’?
I then asked the students what was unique about the body of knowledge called ‘science’.
The fact that it requires special tools to learn it was brought up.
Can we learn science outside the laboratory, outside the school setting?
The students answered ‘yes’ and ‘no’.
I then referred the students to the tweet by the Minister of Higher and Tertiary Education , Science and Technology in which he said science and mathematics are key to building the economy.
The question was which economy?
The students said science was required for the formal industrial economy.
What of people in the non-formal economy?
At home in rural areas?
Was science also for them?
Then the question came up: ‘Do Africans have any science?’
Some felt that African knowledge was not scientific.
I then sought to understand from the students what is called scientific knowledge.
After some discussion the class agreed that there is a ‘scientific method’ followed to gather ‘scientific knowledge’.
Most students felt the Africans obtain their knowledge in a non-scientific way.
That opened another dimension in the discussion.
So we decided to interrogate how Africans conduct their investigations to establish the truth.
Are African information gathering techniques scientific?
The example of how Africans investigate the cause of death of an individual ‘kurova gata’ was chosen.
Only one or two out of over 40 students had any idea how Africans investigate to establish cause of death.
It was established that the relatives visit a n’anga (diviner) far away from the village where the deceased resided so that the diviner has no prior knowledge of the dead person or their family circumstances.
After being told the supposed cause of death, the relatives visit at least two other diviners to give a minimum of three.
If all point to the same cause, the relatives accept the verdict and report to the relatives.
This approach is essentially the same as so –called scientific investigations.
First in order to draw a graph mathematicians/scientists require at least three points so they can see the trend.
In practice, the three points are obtained by repeating the experiment under the same conditions.
So clearly the African approach of consulting at least three independent diviners is identical to that of Western scientists who repeat an experiment at least three times to see if the same results are obtained before reaching a conclusion.
We established in the discussion that just like Western scientists, Africans do not accept as truth any information that is volunteered by an individual.
Only when the same action gives consistently the same results do Africans accept that as authentic knowledge.
So essentially ‘science’ is not the preserve of Westerners, in our case the Europeans.
Africans possess bodies of knowledge that meet the same criteria as Western science in that they represent unbiased information.
Rumours and guesswork are common even among Western societies, but the ‘scientific’ truth is still recognised and accepted.
In short, science represents bodies of knowledge that have been authenticated by various means including the test of time.
The Shona expression ‘Rine manyanga hariputirwe’ attests to the fact that the truth cannot remain hidden indefinitely.
The sum total of these arguments is that African knowledge is indeed African science in the same sense of Western science.
So African indigenous knowledge is in fact scientific.
The methods used by Africans to authenticate information may differ in some ways from those used by Western scientists.
The end result though, is the same: a body of authentic knowledge now called ‘indigenous knowledge’ has accumulated in the experience of Africans.
The fact that storage and retrieval methods differ from those used by Western science does not reduce the validity and authenticity of the African knowledge or science.
In the next episode we shall show that consistent with the principle that ‘Necessity is the mother of invention’, African scientists have made numerous discoveries and sophisticated inventions.
So have Europeans, Chinese and Indians.
But when Westerners have come across these highly sophisticated African technologies developed to cope with life if Africa, they have dismissed them as ‘magic’.
Is it magic or science?
That is the question we shall discuss next week as we try to demystify science to establish its place in building our economy.