May 12, 2016
Matauranga merges with science in new course
A new course at Auckland University aims to show students how ancestral ways or matauranga Maori can be integrated into modern practice.
It's led by Dan Hikuroa, whose training as a geologist led him to adopt a wider earth systems approach which encompasses a range of inter-connected disciplines.
He says the way early Polynesians and Maori developed their matauranga or knowledge was consistent with the scientific method.
"If science is all about a method for generating knowledge and all the knowledge generated by that knowledge, we've actually got a wonderful similarity there. The critical difference is that for matauranga Maori we include our values, we include our aspirations, we include our ways of doing, we include our kaitiakitanga, our principles, and that's the strength of matuaranga Maori whereas in the scientific world they say they have an objective approach and they remove value and things like truth from that," Dr Hikuroa says.
He says concepts like mauri or life force may seem incompatible with science, but in fact people can grasp them intuitively and then try to incorporate them in the way they work,
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