biogeosci.nz

A recent letter-to-the-editor raises a familiar question: is there a singular 'Science' to defend?  There have always been schisms in science. Their visibility comes and goes. Perhaps the entry of mātauranga into consideration in Aotearoa resembles the emergence of global change issues (during 1990-2005), most notably climate change, that defied the scale and pace of 'normal' scientific activity. Here, normal was generally defined by Kuhn. It seems to me that one of our most prominent scientists has carefully warned us about these debates. I was perhaps lucky to be educated as an earth and environmental scientist comfortable with multiple epistemologies. Yet, this luck allows me to see a painful history. There has been long-standing schism between the often dominant experimental sciences, which follow a linear or iterative method of hypothesis testing well known as 'the scientific method' versus the historical sciences, which have so artfully unwoven the histor