‘Spirit’ present in Indigenous science
Physics supports this way of thinking, even if physicists often don’t
At the first scientific conference I attended featuring Indigenous knowledge, the differences struck me from the start.
The Colorado conference on Planning for Seven Generations: Indigenous and Scientific Approaches to Climate Change back in 2008 launched with a ceremonial flag-carrying entry by Anishinaabe Objiwan Martin Reinhardt, accompanied by a drummer who sang in their tongue. Reinhardt, who retired last year from his position as professor of Native American Studies at Northern Michigan University, said the Ojibwe word for “education” translates as “the Earth will show us the way.”
Internally, I marveled over the inclusion of spiritual ceremony and topics in a scientific forum, among people who sought knowledge directly from the Earth. As I would learn that week and over the years, Indigenous peoples tend to see the world differently than those following what they might call the western worldview.
Leroy Little Bear, a member of the Blackfoot Nation and former director of Harvard’s American Indian Program, outlined aspects of what he called “the Native American paradigm.” One of them, and my focus today, involves seeing everything in the universe as waves of energy.
Physicists have shown matter exists as both waves and particles, he reminded. Western science emphasizes particles and mass, seeing a mechanical universe of solid objects. Indigenous peoples, in contrast, are inclined to perceive waves.
“In fact, those waves are seen as spirit,” Little Bear said. “Hence the association with spirituality.”
Although it has been years since I practiced the Catholicism of my early years, I’ve always been an informally spiritual person. But this conference, co-organized by Daniel Wildcat of Haskell Indian Nations University (who was featured in last Friday’s post), was the first time I recall experiencing spirit incorporated into scientific proceedings.
It opened my heart—and made me wish I’d heard this sooner. My sense that science was a cold and calculating field led me to postpone taking even the science general education requirements until my senior year of college, where I was studying journalism and French. When those courses revealed I actually loved science, partly for its connection to nature, I decided about five years after finishing my bachelor’s degree to pursue a master’s degree in forestry.
This meant I had to take a series of courses in biology, physics, chemistry and math that my bachelor of arts degree had bypassed. As I took these undergraduate courses at my local community college in the late 1980s, I needed supplementary material to sludge through the dry material of physics and chemistry.
I read Fritjov Capra’s The Tao of Physics to add a layer of metaphysics to the challenging yet boring equations involving motion and force. Getting Capra’s spiritual interpretation of quantum physics also helped me absorb the concepts of electron orbits in chemistry, as did Isaac Asimov’s The World of Carbon.
Little Bear referred to a book similar to Capra’s, The Dancing Wu Li Masters by Gary Zukav, to note he agreed with its premise. That is, western science practitioners might assume that the scientific approach is “objective,” but it actually adheres to a specific worldview. He said the Indigenous worldview would be closer to the interpretations of eastern mysticism highlighted in the book.
Lloyd Pinkham, a member of the Yakama Nation in the Pacific Northwest, similarly alluded to physicists’ understanding that all matter is also energy and waves during a 2006 talk I attended.
“E equals m c-squared,” Pinkham said, referring to physicist Albert Einstein’s famous equation that energy equals mass times the speed of light, squared. “Scientists cannot call it spirit. That’s what we call it.”
As a little aside for math geeks, I sometimes like to manipulate that equation, as you’re allowed to do following math rules, to convert it to: mass equals energy divided by the speed of light. Roughly, this translates to mass is energy standing still. However you slice or dice it, the well-respected equation implies that, at some level, all matter is composed of energy and waves.
Yet over the years, I’ve noticed that many public figures who serve as standard bearers for science reject considering spirituality in the equation—even physicists.
The late Stephen Hawking, a theoretical physicist, revealed himself as an atheist. Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins is a devout atheist—perhaps no surprise, as he’s the author of the influential book The Selfish Gene. Neil deGrasse Tyson, an astrophysicist who revamped the Cosmos series originally launched by Carl Sagan and has a similarly visible public presence, calls himself an agnostic rather than an atheist. But, as he did in a 2015 panel discussion on Comedy Central’s Nightly Show and other interviews, he is quick to ridicule the concept that a benevolent power could be at work in our universe.
Listen, I absolutely believe in freedom of religion, and certainly freedom of thought. But I do find it problematic when high-profile scientists imply that atheism is a requirement for being a true scientist, as some of these men seem to suggest and sometimes say outright.
As I would assure my students at Tohono O’odham Community College, spirituality is actually outside of the realm of western science. The latter focuses only on the physical universe of matter, and should have nothing to say about realms beyond observations and experiments. So anybody claiming that real scientists must be atheists are overstepping the boundaries of the field.
Indigenous scholars and Einstein both agree: There’s more to matter than meets the eye. Oh wait, the eye already perceives the world in waves—light waves.
So Indigenous scholars, Einstein and our eyeballs all agree: Even if it looks like it’s standing still, the world around us exists as energy and waves. Some might even call it spirit.
Notes and Resources
Avoiding despair: Indigenous scholar (Daniel Wildcat) shares ways to rise above gloom and doom
Naturalizing Indigenous Knowledge: A synthesis, by Leroy Little Bear
The Tao of Physics: An Exploration of the Parallels between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism, by Fritjov Capra
The World of Carbon, by Isaac Asimov.
The Dancing Wu Li Masters: An Overview of the New Physics, by Gary Zukav
Stephen Hawking Says 'There Is No God,' Confirms He's An Atheist.
In retrospect: The selfish gene.
Atheists Deserve a Better Spokesman than Neil deGrasse Tyson.