Richard Treadgold
climateconversation.org.nz
Richard has studied climate change for over 17 years and
operated the Climate Conversation Group* since 2004.
He remains what he calls ‘a staunch climate amateur’ with much
to learn. This article makes a rare foray away from climate change
due to important local moves away from democratic government.
On contemplating the Royal Society newsletter no. 1137, that says, inter alia:
Maori have always been scientists and have always observed, tested, applied, experimented and created with every element in their world. They asked questions and searched for answers. This is science, this is Maori.
It’s an odd science that shares no bond of brotherhood with its neighbours but remains in a perpetual state of war, enslaving the losers after victory in battle or killing and eating them. We ought not to be surprised that Maoris had no name for the nation, for they lacked even the concept of nationhood, their various tribes constantly at odds with or fearful of one or more of the other tribes. The very word they took as their name was no name at all, for it meant only “ordinary”. We should also remember that the word now widely accepted for the country, Aotearoa, (“the land of the long white cloud”) was coined to describe only the North Island.
Maori science was destitute of precision tools, as they lacked all metals, had not even a primitive knowledge of the wheel and, without writing, constrained to verbal reiterations of truth. This meant that the new knowledge of each generation inevitably degraded as memories misconstrued, unintentionally altered and finally simply forgot what had been learned. All they knew, thought and hoped is lost.
With no body of writing, scientific study of Maori history and language is impossible. We are left with no insight into the long development of their knowledge, thinking, hopes and deeds as the only window on their past is the famously faulty, dream-riddled memory of the living; ever at risk of omitting unsavoury aspects of their history according to the vagaries of shifting social convention.
Our long and honourable English culture lent its name to the mightiest and most widespread of man’s languages. English developed on the shoulders of the giants of science, literature, engineering, education and governance. They invented university. Learning English repays us with access to some of the most ancient, illuminating, revered and useful texts in the world. There is nothing English cannot express and it’s capable of the most precise expressions of reality (which is the core of everything we talk about).
Though I study it constantly, it would require much more than one lifetime to master. It is beautiful, its rules of grammar mirror the laws of reality, making it universally popular, and, used well, it is, as well, lovely to hear.
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