Folk knowledge

PINOY KASI

Folk knowledge
By Michael Tan

Inquirer
Last updated 02:57am (Mla time) 07/27/2007

MANILA, Philippines -- Is there any scientific basis for the belief that mushrooms emerge after thunderstorms? What about the belief that planting fruit crops at early dawn increases the chances for larger fruits?

A book published back in 1998 by the University of the Philippines (UP) Institute for Science and Mathematics Development (now Nismed, the “N” for “National”) reviews the empirical basis for such beliefs and practices from agriculture, fishing, food and nutrition and medicine. I’ll get back to the mushrooms and planting in a while, but let me first talk about the book’s focus, captured in its title: “Philippine Folk Science: A Sourcebook for Teachers.”

I bought the book many years back and remembered it recently while preparing a paper for a conference organized by the International Organization for Science and Technology Education (IOSTE). Appropriately, UP Nismed hosted the conference, which had sustainable development as its theme. I was requested to deliver a paper on the relationship of culture to science education and sustainable development.

Culture and knowledge

As a medical anthropologist, I’ve been training medical students and physicians to become culturally sensitive in their clinical practice. The IOSTE request was somewhat more challenging, but the links were still fairly easy to make. Sustainable development means development in a way that does not jeopardize future generations. That does become a challenge especially because our development models have always emphasized massive consumption of resources. It was presumed that the more you consume, the more rapid the development.

When sustainable development came around, science educators found out that they had to rethink their curriculum. Can you do “modern” science using smaller-scale technologies? Maybe even more radically (and this was where my presentation came in), can we return to local beliefs and practices -- the ones so often labeled as “backward” and “primitive” -- to advance science?

For several decades now, even before sustainable development came into vogue, anthropologists have been exploring “indigenous knowledge” (yes, with its own abbreviation, IK), arguing that such knowledge has much to offer. Some of the earliest work around IK was conducted in the Philippines by anthropologists. In 1957, for example, the Food and Agriculture Organization published a book, “Hanunoo Agriculture,” by Harold Conklin, describing the agricultural practices of the Hanunoo, an ethnic group living in Mindoro. Conklin documented the Hanunoo’s vast knowledge of their natural environment, which they applied to shifting agriculture, or "kaingin."

I’m sure some readers reacted to that word, thinking immediately about soil erosion and destructive floods. But kaingin need not be destructive. When populations were smaller and people had access to large tracts of land, they knew how to move from one part of their land to another, planting in some plots and allowing others to rest. It was a system that worked, with its own IK.

This is a good time to return to the examples I gave at the beginning of this column. Why the field of mushrooms after thunderstorms? Because the sudden downpour causes dormant mushroom spores, already in the soil, to germinate. The lightning fixes atmospheric nitrogen, which, when it reaches the earth, is used as a nutrient by the growing mushrooms.

And planting at dawn? The authors of “Philippine Folk Science” say it makes sense because that’s when soil is moist and solar radiation is low.

Folk science

“Philippine Folk Science” was compiled by a team of Filipino scientists that included Dr. Vivien Talisayon, dean of the UP College of Education and one of the conveners of the IOSTE conference. She told me that some Western scientists dislike terms like “folk science,” pointing out that “science is science.”

They do have a point. You have science when people formulate a hypothesis (in Tagalog, "kutob") that is tested by observation and experimentation, and when they’re open enough to revise those hunches based on empirical evidence.

Business corporations have always been quick to recognize the value of folk science and IK, sending expeditions out to remote areas to gather information about medicinal plants, food crops and other natural products that have commercial potential.

In my IOSTE presentation, I reminded the science educators that tapping into IK isn’t a matter of extracting knowledge, it’s also being open to new ways of looking and thinking. Paul Sillitoe, in his book “Local Science vs. Global Science,” points out that Charles Darwin got some of his ideas about evolution from the natives of the Galapagos Islands. The natives could tell which islands tortoises and finches (a type of bird) came from, by looking at parts of their anatomy. Darwin realized, from those observations, that the anatomical differences were actually adaptations to different environments.

In recent years, there has been an explosion of interest in traditional “wellness” practices. The example I gave at the IOSTE meeting was Buddhist meditation. Formerly scoffed at as a faddish practice that worked only on the gullible, meditation is now the subject of research by neurologists and psychologists. Monks are wired up with electrodes so researchers can figure out what goes on in their brains and their bodies as they meditate. The studies show there are very real physiological changes during meditation, with many favorable effects. The most startling are findings that meditation (and, we know now, mental exercises) allows the central and autonomic nervous systems to “regenerate” or compensate for damaged parts. Medical scientists now talk about “neuroplasticity,” or how the nervous system can be trained and exercised to prevent or slow down dementia and senility.

I don’t want to romanticize all that indigenous knowledge; certainly, there are many irrational beliefs that persist, but you find them as well among “modern” scientists, even with doctorate degrees, who stubbornly cling on to outdated theories.

Science -- “indigenous” or “modern” -- thrives best in an environment where there is dialogue and peer review. At the UP College of Medicine, I’ve convinced professors not to use terms like “primitive” and “superstitious” to refer to folk practices. We’re making some progress there, a recent example being a group of medical students looking into “pasma,” a folk illness. I’m going to describe their fascinating findings next month.

Yes, “Philippine Folk Science” is still available at UP, but I hope we’ll see more publications of that type. IK and folk science consist of accumulated experiences through several generations that need to be validated, but the first step is to rediscover them, together with our young so they take pride as well in things local. Unless we do that, we’ll lose all that knowledge, together with all their potential contributions to sustainable development.