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My point is simple: knowledge is knowledge. Where it comes from doesn’t matter to its epistemic status. What matters is whether it deserves to be believed. The scientific revolution has provided a general approach – systematic inquiry into the independent evidential basis of claims (e.g. Strevens 2020) – together with specialist methodologies appropriate to different domains (such as mathematical modeling, taxonomy, statistical analysis, and experimental manipulation and measurement). It is irrelevant that this approach first appeared in North-Western Europe and that many of the domain specific techniques were first developed and refined by white men from the ‘west’. What is relevant is that modern science allows a degree of confidence in factual and theoretical claims about how the world works that has never been warranted before. And it has made this capability equally available to everyone around the world as the new standard for objective knowledge, i.e. knowledge that is reliably true no matter from what perspective you look at it.
If indigenous peoples have observational data and successful technologies to contribute to this kind of systematic inquiry into what makes an ecosystem resilient, or what plants might contain molecules with pain-relieving properties, or the history of climactic events, then that should be welcomed. But the test of whether these are an actual contribution must come from whether they survive scientific scrutiny, not the authenticity of their indigenous origins. Since it is thus science that has the final word about what counts as objective knowledge, it is clear that indigenous knowledge is epistemically inferior.
I. The Epistemic Inferiority of Indigenous Ways of Knowing
There are various ways of defining indigenous knowledge. I adopt the definition of indigenous knowledge provided by UNESCO:
Local and indigenous knowledge refers to the understandings, skills and philosophies developed by societies with long histories of interaction with their natural surroundings. (UNESCO 2017, 8)
My concern is with what is meant by the “understandings” part of indigenous knowledge – the beliefs such societies may produce about how and why the physical world works. For example, about how certain plants can be used to treat an illness and about why that would work.
It is easy to see that multi-generational experience of trial and error with local flora would make it quite likely that indigenous knowledge claims about the medicinal uses of plants could be very valuable and worth following up with the analytical tools and theoretical concepts of molecular biochemistry. However, note the priority of scientific methods. Even when we suppose that indigenous knowledge claims might well be worth believing, we first subject them to systematic scrutiny – i.e. science – to evaluate their epistemic status. If they pass the test then they will be refined into a form that could be incorporated within the body of scientific knowledge, to become available to anyone who might find it interesting or useful.
We do this for two reasons. First, practical experience is an important but limited method of generating reliable knowledge. A herb can appear to be beneficial while actually being poisonous (at least in some doses and for some people). Bad effects can be subtle, entangled with other factors, and only apparent over the longer term – and so not immediately obvious to 1st personal (I or we) experience at the scale of smallish groups. Consider how easily 1st personal experience can fail us. People enjoyed smoking tobacco for some time before it was recognised that it was massively harmful. They couldn’t tell from their I/we experience that it was causing cancer and heart disease. This is why scientific techniques such as epidemiological studies and randomised controlled trials were invented. They are better.
It is worth emphasising here a fact that many champions of indigenous knowledge (including the authors of the UNESCO report I already referred to) find hard to accept: it is not just science by another name.
We should not mistake the existence of elements of what can be combined into the scientific method, such as observing the outcomes of trial and error, for the existence of that method. Science is a particular arrangement of institutions and norms that had to be invented. It does not come naturally to humans, who generally rely on (and can get by on) much more limited ways of knowing like anecdata, metaphorical reasoning, and narrative based information storage and transmission systems. That is good enough for humans to survive as a species, and to cooperate to destroy our competitors (including other tribes of humans). But it is far inferior to the reliability and sophistication of the structures of knowledge that the frankly mind-numbingly tedious and repetitive methods of science make possible. There should be no embarrassment, nor fear of implicit racism, in admitting that there is no such thing as ‘indigenous science’, just as there was no such thing as ‘European science’ until the mid 17th century or so.
The second reason that particular indigenous knowledge claims about herbs and so on need to be processed by modern science to be of real epistemic value is that they come embedded in a larger knowledge system – an entire worldview – within which they function and make sense. This is the ‘holistic’ combination of spirituality and metaphorical reasoning within which practical experience is integrated and understood, and which is supposed to explain why some plant is supposed to have special healing properties. Many proponents consider this holism an especially distinctive and attractive feature of indigenous (see, among many others, Charles and Cajete 2020). Unfortunately, however fascinating these knowledge systems might be as cultural artefacts, and however successful at maintaining their internal coherence over time, they are dismal failures at understanding the material world, of no value or interest to modern natural science.
Again, the comparison to a European case may be helpful here, both to illustrate the point with a more familiar example and to defuse the inevitable charges of euro-centrism or worse that any criticism of indigenous knowledge inevitably attracts. To be clear: the point I am trying to make in this essay is not actually specific to indigenous knowledge, which is after all just the default knowledge system for all humans until quite recently. I am only picking on indigenous knowledge because it seems a particular redoubt for anti-scientific fantasising and cultural relativism. For the record, alternative medicine is also rubbish, as is the ‘traditional’ medicine being promoted by the governments of India and China in their attempt to ethnisise their nations and nationalise the standards by which their legitimacy should be judged.
So, Europeans used to have such ‘holistic’ knowledge systems too, which explained every particular thing from rainfall to marriage rules in terms of a mutually reinforcing triangle of society-nature-god. It sort of ‘worked’ – in the sense of holding together against competing cultural challenges – but that doesn’t mean it deserved belief. It was a cognitive trap that NW Europe was lucky enough to be the first to escape from, and that luck should be shared with the rest of the world. Nowadays it remains of interest only to cultural historians, and those who miss the displacement of the human-centred ‘enchanted world’ full of magic, demons, and meaning by the cold pointless universe of dead matter that a scientific understanding of reality grants us.
II. Why Is The Idea of Indigenous Knowledge So Alluring?
There are various explanations for the strange allure that the Idea of indigenous knowledge seems to exert, including over many who have successfully passed through the most extensive and sophisticated education that rich countries have to offer. But two seem especially prominent, and they both involve fundamental ethical mistakes.
First, there is the motivation of moral guilt. Many of the people who argue that indigenous knowledge is as good as – if not better than – ‘western’ scientific knowledge are motivated by empathy to the rather dismal plight of many indigenous peoples and guilt about colonial history. They are also sensitive to the status injury that asserting the epistemic superiority of science may imply, even when it is offered freely as a gift (Williams 2025), and especially in light of the colonial history. Empathy and guilt are important moral sentiments, and appropriate to the aftermath of colonial empires (at least in moderation). Yet they are irrelevant to the epistemological question of what deserves to be believed. That requires an epistemological justification, which I have just argued indigenous knowledge lacks.
Yet I would go further. To assert that traditional indigenous beliefs are as good as the ones the rest of the modern world is working with is itself unethical. It is patronising (resembling the way one might treat a child who believes in Santa Claus) and hence demeaning to people whose equal dignity deserves to be recognised – and which has not always been so recognised. It is also dangerous, insofar as indigenous knowledge about things like medicine is systematically flawed and liable to kill people who are led to believe they can rely on it.
Lest we forget, the ‘west’ once had indigenous knowledge too, such as the Hippocratic medical theory of the 4 humours that dominated Europe for 2000 years. The great civilisational contribution of science was in helping to overcome the deadweight of self-reinforcing tradition and replacing it with medical knowledge which 1) we are more justified to believe in; 2) manifestly works better than European indigenous medicine (leaches, bleeding, etc); and 3) has a built in process for checking and improvement. It seems strange – even ‘neo-colonialist’ – to say that there is one kind of knowledge for Westerners (the kind that actually works) and another kind for indigenous peoples (the kind that kills).
The second psychological explanation is driven by the enduring attraction of the myth of ‘the ecologically noble savage’ (first noted in an often reprinted 1990 essay by Kent Redford (Redford 2010); Tristan Søbye Rapp (Rapp 2024) provides an eloquent but accessible account of the history of the myth, and also goes deeper into the arguments I only outline here).
The claim is that indigenous peoples (this is supposedly a unifying feature of all of them everywhere) are defined by their particularly harmonious relationship with nature, due to their ‘holistic’ worldview and resulting commitment to environmental sustainability.
Factually this is untrue. For the reasons analysed already, indigenous knowledge systems do not have any special insight into ecological sustainability as a systemic concept, lacking as they do the necessary conceptual apparatus (stories and metaphors are distinctly limited). Many indigenous peoples also seem to lack the relevant motivation, at least historically. The migrating groups that became ‘indigenous peoples’ are known to have massively changed the ecosystems they entered and wiped out many species, especially mega-fauna but also flightless birds and other easy prey. Humans are humans everywhere, it turns out. We are good at turning the rest of the world to our purposes, but rarely wise enough to use that power in even our own long term interests, let alone the interests of non-human nature.
But beyond the factual mistake, the myth of the ecologically noble savage is also morally odious. It posits one kind of human as essentially part of nature, an unhistorical non-agent. And it contrasts this with another kind of ‘western’ human that is some kind of corrupt, Fallen out of Eden creature. What seems like a compliment – putting the indigenous on a pedestal – is also a kind of prison, governing how they are supposed to think, feel, and live and keeping them separated from modernity whether they like it or not. Properly respecting indigenous people requires respecting them as humans like the rest of us: equally special and equally flawed.
References
Charles, Cheryl, and Gregory A. Cajete. 2020. ‘Wisdom Traditions, Science and Care for the Earth: Pathways to Responsible Action’. Ecopsychology 12 (2): 65–70. https://doi.org/10.1089/eco.2020.0020.
Rapp, Tristan Søbye. 2024. ‘The Myth Of The Noble Savage’, July. https://www.noemamag.com/paradise-lost.
Redford, Kent H. 2010. ‘The Ecologically Noble Savage’. Cultural Survival, 3 March 2010. https://www.culturalsurvival.org/publications/cultural-survival-quarterly/ecologically-noble-savage.
Strevens, Michael. 2020. The Knowledge Machine: How an Unreasonable Idea Created Modern Science. London: Allen Lane.
UNESCO. 2017. ‘Local Knowledge, Global Goals’. UNESCO. https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000259599/PDF/259599eng.pdf.multi.
Williams, Dan. 2025. ‘Status, Class, and the Crisis of Expertise’. Conspicuous Cognition (blog). 31 May 2025. https://www.conspicuouscognition.com/p/status-class-and-the-crisis-of-expertise.
Note: This essay is lightly adapted from an opinion piece published in the online magazine, 3 Quarks Daily.
