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I think that most people that are "scientific" are unable (because of our education) to _try_ to think about the validity of this way of _understanding_. I like to think that societies in Latin America (and, importantly, all around the world) survived thousands of years not because of luck, but because the cultures (language, traditions) they developed had ingrained the "scientific knowledge" necessary to survive in the conditions that lived in. An important part of it was that they did not see only as rulers and owners of the world, but only as one part of it. That is one of the basis of what people call magical thinking, but it is sound once you stop disqualifying it just because the word "magical" is in it. And, I mean, literally, only those who could adapt and understand their world to survive, survived. The knowledge maybe was not as fast evolving as the scientific methods allows to be, but it is, ultimately, the same method. Try, fail, and repeat. Those who were successful survived. The knowledge ingrained in the culture, traditions and understanding accompanying it was, and _is_, a fundamental part of the solutions that allowed them not to only survive, but to thrive in their environments. The first comment in this post says that you do not need the culture to carry out the solutions. That may be true, but it does miss that our culture is the strongest (after "basic necessities") incentives we have to choose some things over others. Or understanding of the world is our culture, and our understanding of the world is what makes us take some actions instead of others. You might be able to mimic technical solutions, but to fully understand them, you need the culture that developed them, as it is _literally_ the understanding of the world that allowed the solutions to exist. |