ZORAN RAKOVIC: Why Mātauranga Māori is Not Science, And Why That’s Perfectly Okay

Risking to repeat previous debates on this topic, I still offer a spirited defence of both science and indigenous knowledge, without muddling the two.

In the 17th century, a group of rebellious natural philosophers (Boyle, Newton, Hooke) started poking reality in the ribs with instruments, asking nature to speak for itself instead of parroting Aristotle. It was the birth of modern science: a method for universal inquiry, for exposing our ideas to the chopping block of reality. Ever since, science has evolved as an open arena, accessible to anyone, from any background, provided they abide by its ground rule: no sacred cows.

This was not just a stylistic choice, but a foundational shift. “Science must begin with myths,” Karl Popper wrote, “and with the criticism of myths.” The operative word is criticism. Science doesn’t function on reverence; it thrives on tension, on the perpetual risk of being wrong. That’s what makes it public. I don’t need a PhD to challenge a scientific claim; I need only logic, evidence, and courage. In the words of Richard Feynman, “Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.” A rather deliciously impolite notion in a world obsessed with credentialism.

This norm, that anyone may challenge anything, is not an optional feature; it is the beating heart of science. Robert Merton called it universalism: claims must be evaluated independently of the claimant. You don’t get special exemption because you’re Indigenous, French, Catholic, or a Nobel laureate. As C.S. Peirce saw it, scientific truth is not revealed to a priestly caste: it is what “the community of inquirers” would eventually converge on if they kept arguing long enough.

Even the Royal Society of London, that dusty establishment of wigs and brass telescopes, etched this into its very motto: Nullius in verba: “take no one’s word for it.”

It’s an epistemic rebellion: trust no one, test everything.

So, when we turn to the current debate in New Zealand over whether Mātauranga Māori is science, we must begin by asking: what rules are we playing by?

Mātauranga Māori is, quite rightly, described by Māori scholars as a taonga, a treasured body of knowledge. Sir Mason Durie frames it as a Māori way of knowing: formed through whakapapa, whenua, observation, and deeply embedded values. Te Ahukaramū Charles Royal sees it as a rich, evolving knowledge tradition, not static but anchored in Māori cosmology. Leonie Pihama, Linda Tuhiwai Smith, and Margaret Mutu have all powerfully defended its sovereignty. And they are absolutely right to do so.

But here’s the twist: it is precisely because mātauranga is treasured that it cannot be science. A body of knowledge that is sacred, protected, or governed by identity-based restrictions, that cannot be openly challenged by outsiders, cannot be modified without permission, cannot be replicated or reinterpreted without cultural clearance, is not operating under the rules of science.

And that is not a critique. It is a category distinction.

Science demands universality. Mātauranga demands kaitiakitanga. Science is desacralised; mātauranga is often deeply spiritual. Science invites critique from the stranger; mātauranga reserves knowledge rights to tangata whenua. These are different systems. They are both legitimate. But they are not interchangeable.

To call mātauranga “science” is not to elevate it: it is to misunderstand both traditions.

It’s like declaring a haka to be a form of quantum mechanics because it requires timing and energy. Beautiful? Yes. Scientific? No.

One could even argue that to categorise mātauranga as science is to colonise it again, this time epistemologically. The very act of insisting “this too is science!” risks flattening its uniqueness. As Aroha Mead and others have pointed out, mātauranga is not merely data collection: it is bound up in whakapapa, atua, ethics, ceremony.

Science, by contrast, seeks to strip knowledge of its ancestry and test it in the naked light of reproducibility.

Consider this: in mātauranga, certain knowledge is tapu, revealed only to those with lineage or initiation. In science, there is no tapu knowledge. If I discover the structure of DNA, I must publish it. If someone wants to replicate my experiment, I must tell them how. If a teenager in Bolivia disproves my theory with a potato battery and a blog post, I must yield.

As Helen Longino shows, objectivity in science doesn’t come from the mind of the scientist: it comes from community critique. From being exposed to the hostile, democratic, unrelenting gaze of others. You can’t opt out. You can’t say, “You may not question this because it’s sacred to me.” That may be valid in religion, in culture, even in ethics. But not in science.

So, when defenders of mātauranga insist that its use and interpretation must be governed by iwi, hapū, and tikanga: that’s reasonable, even vital. Knowledge systems deserve protection. Intellectual property has boundaries. But once you set those boundaries, you’re stepping out of science and into the domain of treasured cultural knowledge, which is another thing entirely.

Let me be clear: this is not a denigration of mātauranga Māori. Quite the opposite. It is a plea to let it breathe in its own category, rather than forcing it to sit awkwardly at the science table where it must endure questions it may not wish to answer. Not every form of knowledge benefits from being run through the algorithms of peer review and Popperian falsifiability.

We do mātauranga no favours by forcing it into a lab coat.

The attempt to conflate mātauranga Māori with science often comes from good intentions, usually liberal ones: the desire to honour Indigenous knowledge, to decolonise academia, to broaden epistemic horizons. These goals are noble. But misclassifying things is not a path to justice; it is a path to confusion.

Take Michael Polanyi’s “Republic of Science”: a decentralised, self-correcting system where scientists are guided by no central authority but the pursuit of truth. In this republic, there are no mana whenua. No one owns a theory. The periodic table belongs to everyone or no one. Once your idea enters the scientific domain, it is up for grabs. If mātauranga Māori is not to be up for grabs, if it is to remain under Māori custodianship, then it does not live in Polanyi’s Republic.

And that’s okay.

In fact, one might say that cherishing mātauranga as mātauranga, not as science, is an act of integrity. Let it remain plural. Let it remain richly different. Just as the Bible is not biology, the karakia is not chemistry, and quantum field theory is not whakapapa. That doesn’t make any of them inferior; it makes them honest.

To insist they are the same is to collapse meaning in the name of equality.

Even Paul Feyerabend, the anarchist of epistemology, argued that we must be open to many ways of knowing. But he didn’t say they’re all science. He said they challenge science - from the outside. That’s the key: if mātauranga is to remain a coherent challenge, or complement, to science, it must not be reduced to science. To “include” it as science is to neuter its difference.

It is possible, of course, for mātauranga and science to collaborate. In ecology, for example, Indigenous tracking skills may outperform digital instruments. In astronomy, oral traditions might encode eclipse cycles. But collaboration is not synonymy. When science incorporates knowledge from mātauranga, it must do so by testing it, not by baptising it. And mātauranga may choose to share - or not. That’s the beauty of two systems in respectful relation.

Ultimately, the question is not, “Is mātauranga science?” but, “What do we lose by pretending it is?”

We lose clarity. We lose rigour. And we lose the deep cultural richness that comes from recognising different ways of being in the world.

So let us treasure mātauranga Māori for what it is: a profound, ancestral, identity-rooted system of knowledge that belongs, rightfully, to Māori. And let us defend science for what it is: a radically public, perpetually corrigible, method for discovering truths about the physical universe, owned by no one, and accountable to all.

Confusing one for the other is not progress. It’s just a category mistake wearing progressive clothing.

As Slavoj Žižek might say: the true act of decolonisation is not to assimilate Indigenous knowledge into scientific modernity, but to let it scandalously stand outside it, stubborn and irreducible.

And to that, both Popper and the tohunga might raise an eyebrow - and agree.

Zoran Rakovic is a structural engineer with nearly 30 years of experience, who has helped design and strengthen buildings across New Zealand. His substack is HERE