Garth Cooper, a professor at University of Auckland signed a letter criticising a government working group s plans to give the same weight to Maori mythology as they do to science in the classroom.
OPINION: The Royal Society is investigating the academics who said matauranga Māori wasn't science. But that goes against its objective as written in law.
Dan Hikuroa .
Responding to the recent controversy over mātauranga Māori and the letter he co-authored titled In defence of science , Emeritus Professor Michael Corballis said: We don t know any Māori who knows what mātauranga is .
Mātauranga spans Māori knowledge, culture, values and worldview. When someone asks, is mātauranga science? , there are a range of things they could really be asking about, Emily Parke and Dan Hikuroa write.
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This immediately made us wonder: What would happen if we asked a group of scientists what science is?
Common responses to the question what is science? focus on causal explanations, controlled experiments, hypothesis testing or falsification (those are popular options, not an exhaustive list).