when discussing mātauranga Māori and science
Responding to the recent controversy over mātauranga Māori and the letter he co-authored titled "In defence of science", Emeritus Professor Michael Corballis said: "We don't know any Māori who knows what mātauranga is".
This immediately made us wonder: What would happen if we asked a group of scientists what science is?
Common responses to the question "what is science?" focus on causal explanations, controlled experiments, hypothesis testing or falsification (those are popular options, not an exhaustive list).
All point to important aspects of science, and all have been proposed as ways of defining it. But there is no single answer to the question "what is science?".
This doesn't mean people can characterise science however they want. Far from it. Our point, instead, is that questions like "what is science?" or "is mātauranga science?" could be asking about any number of different ideas.
Link to article: Let’s choose our words more carefully when discussing mātauranga Māori and science | RNZ News
