Scientific writing’s fixed format sits uneasily over a gift relationship with a plant.

Evidence

Sweetgrass is not an experimental unit for me; it’s a gift. There is a barrier of language and meaning between science and traditional knowledge, different ways of knowing, different ways of communicating. I’m not sure I want to force the teachings of grass into the tight uniform of scientific thinking and technical writing that is required of the academy: Introduction, Literature Review, Hypothesis, Methods, Results, Discussion, Conclusions, Acknowledgments, References Cited. But I’ve been asked on behalf of sweetgrass, and I know my responsibility. — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, 549

Categorization

• XREF: Directly serves the craft/method thread: braiding two ways of knowing requires acknowledging the violence of forcing one into the other’s form.