In Defence of Other Ways of Knowing

An introduction to the series

In his book The War on the West, the erudite Douglas Murray mocks the claim that ‘Other Ways of Knowing’ (or indigenous knowledge) should be taught in schools. Murray flippantly dismisses this by saying that we don’t ask the Inuit to create a vaccine. Implicit here is the idea that the rational or scientific way of looking at the world is the only one of value, but pre-enlightenment knowledge is not made meaningless because we can now look at the world through a microscope or telescope. If it did, people in the West wouldn’t be so enamored with these ‘Other Ways of Knowing’ of the indigenous peoples of the lands they now inhabit. What is tragic is that the West too has “Other Ways of Knowing” but they have been systematically denigrated by both arms of the “pro-western” side of the culture war. 

The Western Tradition is often said to consist of two branches, Athens and Jerusalem. Athens being the Greek tradition that gave us logic and eventually the Scientific Method. Jerusalem is where the spiritual (biblical) tradition of the West was born. Today, both branches are at pains to distance themselves from the indigenous knowledge and traditions of Europe and the British Isles. The rationalist side calls it ‘superstition’ whereas many mainstream Christian traditions call the knowledge, myth and traditions that preceded it ‘pagan’. But this is to cut both of those branches from their roots, which without the tree would have withered. If the West reclaimed its pre-Christian and Pre-Enlightenment knowledge, myth and traditions, those that currently flock to find indigenous knowledge could become an ally in preserving the Western Tradition in its totality. 

This year I have taken up practising some of these forgotten ‘Other Ways of Knowing’ that came from European countries and have found that it has enriched my life. One of the most beneficial has been to watch the skies with the symbolic understandings that these celestial bodies once had. 

In the next few weeks I will explore:

• Living by the light of the moon

• Intuition and its aids

• Culture as a store of wisdom