Western science vocabulary defines the boundaries of what it can know

Evidence

My first taste of the missing language was the word Puhpowee on my tongue. I stumbled upon it in a book by the Anishinaabe ethnobotanist Keewaydinoquay, in a treatise on the traditional uses of fungi by our people. Puhpowee, she explained, translates as “the force which causes mushrooms to push up from the earth overnight.” As a biologist, I was stunned that such a word existed. In all its technical vocabulary, Western science has no such term, no words to hold this mystery. You’d think that biologists, of all people, would have words for life. But in scientific language our terminology is used to define the boundaries of our knowing. What lies beyond our grasp remains unnamed. — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, 176

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the concept of Puhpowee and the epistemologically important claim that naming boundaries constrain scientific knowing.
• XREF: Connects to the colonial-language-loss thread in ch8 (ceremonial language severed) — an Indigenous word encodes a whole theory where English stays silent. — connects to: Indigenous and Western knowledge converge but must be translated into mechanistic language — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom,…, 580; Indigenous knowledge and Western science can coexist as complementary polycultures — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom,…, 487; Full understanding requires both scientific and indigenous ways of knowing — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural…, 37 (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Indigenous and Western knowledge converge but must be translated into mechanistic language #qualifies (0.85) — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, 580
• Western lexicography assumes words are naturally clear and univocal #expands (0.85) — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 436
• Science can penetrate everything but what it penetrates is not being #corroborates (0.85)
• New phenomena require new vocabulary, but familiar terms get repurposed #expands (0.80) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 203
• Concepts formed without social context restrict and confine knowledge #corroborates (0.80) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 738
• Full understanding requires both scientific and indigenous ways of knowing #corroborates (0.75) — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Gathering Moss, 37
• Indigenous knowledge and Western science can coexist as complementary polycultures #corroborates (0.72) — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, 487
• Knowledge created from a position of strength produces the object it claims to describe #corroborates (0.70)
• Western epistemology’s root metaphors sexualize and dominate the known #corroborates (0.70) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1352