African science vs Western science ... which? Western science has serious limitations because of its empirical approach, while African science with its spiritual-empirical approach is superior to Western science in that respect. True or false? Yirenkyi Lamptey provides some interesting answers here.

Fifty-six years ago, James D. Watson and Francis H. C. Crick (of Britain) discovered the double helix model of the structure of DNA (Deoxyribonucleic Acid), a breakthrough that opened up our understanding of molecular biology and genetics. In layman's language, they were able to figure out the spatial structure of the basic substance responsible for reproduction and heredity. Before then, scientists knew that the chromosomes in the nucleus of the cells of living things were responsible for reproduction and heredity, but Watson and Crick unveiled the substance making up even the chromosomes. A quote from the original report of 56 years ago shows the two scientists were very much aware of the significance of what they had discovered. They wrote: "It has not escaped our notice that the specific pairing we have postulated immediately suggests a possible copying mechanism for the genetic material."

That original report appeared in the science magazine, Nature, on 25 April 1953. Fifty years later, in April 2003, another science magazine, Scientific America, did a special feature to commemorate Watson and Crick's discovery entitled "Celebrating the Genetic Jubilee: A Conversation with James D. Watson".

In that interview, Watson made certain remarks which are very pertinent to the topic under discussion here--"the spiritual" (the base of African science) vs Western science.

He said: "I was born curious. I would rather read economic history than history, for example, because I like explanations. And so if you wanted an explanation for life, it had to be about the molecular basis for life. I never thought there was a spiritual basis for life; I was lucky to be brought up by a father who had no religious beliefs. I didn't have that hang-up. My mother was nominally a Catholic, but that was as far as it went."

Those are interesting remarks, but under the telescope of analysis they portray Watson's ignorance about the full essence of life, and that ignorance is an affliction he shares with his background, the empiricist West.

It is necessary to state right here that, I am aware this article raises the issue of the (Karl Popper) principle of demarcation criteria--which are defined, in basic terms, as any set of principles for deciding whether any particular field or body of knowledge is a science. Yet that is just the issue: Western science has its own demarcation criteria, which do not qualify in fully defining science as it has been practised in authentic African tradition.

This article is therefore basically about that difference. We will begin by establishing that contrary to what the West generally insists on, life has both spiritual and physical (empirical) aspects, as we know them in Africa. We will also establish that authentic African tradition, which is based on our acceptance of the fundamental duality of life, and its application in our day-to-day lives, confers on us a deeper understanding and awareness of life than empiricism gives the West.

From that we will also show that this fundamental African tradition's approach to life is the source of African science, yes African science, and that it makes our science better than Western science in very important respects.

First, "the spiritual" is not the same as religion, though most people use the two words synonymously, and I sense it is the same for Watson in the above quotation. The spiritual defines the essence of life and of all things, our essence as humans and our relationship with God, yes God.

Religion, on the other hand, is the institutionalised worship of God and gods. Actually, the goal of religion is to teach ourselves about the spiritual, but the outcomes have largely tended to deface the spiritual. Hence most people tend to judge even the spiritual by the uncomplimentary outcomes of religion.

Second, curiosity is not diametrically opposed to belief in anything spiritual or even God. Curiosity is the first step for progress along any path, spiritual or material/empirical or a combination of both. Then it is possible to be simultaneously a spiritual person and a realist about earthly (material) things.

Life has both spiritual (abstract) and material (physical) aspects. The physical world is what we can perceive by our senses, say, what we see with our eyes and with either a microscope or telescope; the two instruments merely expand the spectrum of our sight.

Then there is a transition stage, an ultra-physical world (aspect), which is the electromagnetic realm where the spiritual and material overlap. In spiritual science, the ultra-physical is the soul or aura of humans or of things and it incorporates the various levels of mind and emotions; the brain is physical, the mind and emotions are ultra-physical.

Then at the core of all that is a purity, the spiritual, a commonality we share with all entities in the universe. That spirituality is best unveiled and understood by an inward trip, which has many levels. That trip when perfected at different levels enables the persistent curious seeker to also make great discoveries and inventions whose eminence accords with a particular level on the spiritual ladder.

In traditional Africa, in the Orient and Middle East, and even in the Catholic convents/monasteries and in the early Protestant systems of Europe, some men were--or are--able to consciously go on this inner trip to touch the purity at certain levels, and so were able to make remarkable discoveries or inventions.

The Dogons of Mali

It is the same contact with aspects of the spiritual that made it possible for the Dogons of Mali to make their startling discovery about the twin stars, Sirius A and Sirius B, centuries ago without the aid of telescopes. According to the US space agency NASA, Sirius A and B are 8.6 light-years away from the Earth.

The Dogons are black Africans who live in the desert hills near Timbuktu, Mali. A high degree of contact with their spirituality gave them the ability to sit in the hills of Mali at night and have a chordless spiritual conversation with Sirius A and Sirius B and learn of their distant secrets. By this process, the Dogons were able to make the remarkable discovery of predicting the joint trajectories of Sirius A and B for hundreds of years before Western science stumbled on the twin stars in the middle of the 20th century.

In an article in New African (April 2008), Paliani Gomani Chinguwo testified that "the Dogon go even further in their observations about Sirius B, far beyond what modern astronomers know. For instance, they hold that Sirius B has an orbit of one year around its own axis. They were so certain of this that they held a special celebration called 'bado' to honour that orbit".

Chinguwo went on: "Modern science has not been able to confirm or deny this Dogon observation. But being 100,000 times less bright than its companion, Sirius B was unknown to the Western world until 1862 when Alvin Clark, an American, spotted it through the largest telescope of the time. But Sirius B would not be photographed until 1970. Yet, without telescopes or any other technical equipment, the Dogon had known about the existence of Sirius B and its features for aeons."

Interestingly, when Western astronomers, working in the 20th century with telescopes, drew the joint trajectories of Sirius A and B, their diagram was a mere photocopy of portions of the Dogon diagram. With the high level of being in touch with spirituality, the Dogons did not need the aid of sophisticated telescopes and remote-controlled spacecrafts sent out there to learn about the universal deep around us. And it is essential to note that in authentic African tradition/culture, there is nothing fabulous or outlandish or superstitious about the way the Dogons made that discovery. In fact, such modus operandi has been one of the means by which traditional Africa practises science, even today. Interestingly, Watson and Crick had contact with their own spirituality at certain levels to be able to make that remarkable discovery, but Watson comes along and discards the spiritual as a tardy concept. Understandably* however, Watson is a product of a Western empiricist superstructure that, historically, lost confidence in religion--and unfortunately the spiritual too--and threw both away as useless. However, the study of all cultures across the globe reveals that, in principle, the misuse and misdoings of religion are what divert man's attention from the spiritual onto what are obviously the uncomplimentary outcomes of religion.

In Europe, that situation eventually got so hopeless that religion--the institutionalised worship of God--was seen as milking an already oppressed people without providing them with answers to their day-to-day woes or any realistic hope for the future. The situation got worse when Western science (in its budding stages) overthrew bogus religious explanations of natural phenomenon. Thus the Protestant movement began in Europe, which alas also led the West to discard the spiritual.

The thrust of my argument is this: The dismissal of the belief in the spiritual is a basic flaw in Western culture, for that denies them en masse a body of knowledge that could help them pursue and attain a fuller comprehension of ourselves as humans and of the life we are, and the life we live in.

The spiritual is the essence of life and is the core objective of religion, and it offers us, humans, authentic knowledge rather than superstition and religious hocus-pocus. The good thing about life is that even when your curiosity sends you after the understanding of things external to you, that search, nevertheless, does have a complimentary effect within yourself-an unconscious inward trip that results in a limited sharpening of your ability to touch your spirituality.

To make it simpler for an empiricist to understand, it is akin to a child in kindergarten who learns the alphabets unaware of the ultimate aim for such study, the cultivation within himself or herself of the ability to string words into sentences and sentences into prose.

That limited ability to touch the essence of one's being is always a supplementary merit of empirical science. To pass supplementary merit and go the full length of the inner trip takes a conscious search for a full understanding of one's own nature, the nature of humans and of God. I must, however, point out that it is supplementary merit that equipped Watson and Crick to eventually make the discovery they made. And what Watson terms "the molecular basis for life," which for him provides "an explanation for life," is only an ultra-physical molecular concept that explains the basis of the physical aspect of life.

The basis of all life is the spiritual, which, incidentally, lies in another sphere, which Watson's upbringing and education have not equipped him to understand, let alone talk competently about. Knowledge about the spiritual, which Watson dismisses as "that hang-up", the absence of which he applauds about his upbringing, is actually the drawback in it. And so, though an eminent molecular biologist, James D. Watson is not qualified to comment on the spiritual, which is as real to those who really know it as chromosomes and DNA are real to him. Come to think of it, has Watson ever seen a carbon or hydrogen atom, water molecule or chromosome or gene? And yet he has enough faith in their existence to build an entire lifetime's work on that existence.

African science

So, is science as practised in Africa for aeons superior to Western science? In Africa we know and accept that God, omniscience, is the source of all knowledge, and so since the subject of the existence of God is always inherent in any discussion of the spiritual, let us start from there. We humans create and try to perfect what we create, and always there is one who leads production or the creativity of products or services. Spiritual science teaches us that "as above, so below". So, is it not only logical that certain forces led by a Supreme Force created this vastness of a fascination we have named the universe? I can imagine a group of ants having a conversation in one of the compartments of the latest BMW saloon cars. One of the ants is spiritually developed and tells his/her colleagues that the vehicle in which they are, was manufactured by a very intelligent being, one much more intelligent than they, the ants.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Then another ant, a secularist/empiricist, rebuffs that statement and says the car came into existence by itself, and then goes on to propound all kinds of (empiricist) hypotheses to prove his or her point of view. If we, humans, could be privy to such a conversation by ants, what would we do? Wouldn't we laugh at the ignorance of the secularist/empiricist ant? And wouldn't we applaud the spiritualist ant for what it has learnt through the conscious exercise of its curiosity and search plus its faith in what it cannot "see," but has nevertheless experienced and can bear testimony to?

In fact, there are so many pre-eminent Western philosophers, scientists, etc, who have not shied away from pointing out the inefficiencies of the Western empiricist system. In their book, Pebbles to Computers, Hans Bloom, Stafford Beer and David Suzuki write that: What the West has been able to achieve so far is a mere "mastery over nature" and that cannot put in their grasp the full essence of life!

Moving on, Prof. Helen Lauer of the Philosophy Department, University of Ghana, Legon, quotes a chemist, Dr. Ivan Addae-Mensah, on patent controversy over a compound, Michelamine, an extract from Anastrocladus corupensis, a plant found only in Cameroon. That compound has been described as "the best discovery so far in finding a cure for Aids", but the WTO is set to give the patent on it to a Western multinational company rather than the African herbalist or medicine man who actually discovered it.

The relevant point therein is that the African medicine man who discovered Anastrocladus corupensis and what it could do did not do it in a laboratory.

Genuine African medicine men are always in the spirit, and so while contemplating a problem they are trying to solve, they may walk into the forest and the right plant actually "glows" and calls to them. That is not superstition! All they need to do then is to take the plant and prove its efficacy in the real world by using it to cure the sickness in question.

In that case, using the herb is not an experiment to find out if it can do anything, but its application in the real world, and the medicine man applies it knowing by faith that it is the right one.

That is how discovery and invention largely come to the African, by an intuition sharpened by experience into an advanced type of intuition that makes discovery and recognition of the truth spontaneous.

Western science

On the other hand, a Western scientist pursuing certain hypotheses by empirical search, toils and suffers for years before he could attain a certain level on the spiritual ladder, so to speak, then he gets an answer. A good example is how Friedrich August Kekule' von Stradonitz, the famous German organic chemist, discovered his original model of the chemical compound, bezene. After years of search, he one day falls asleep, then sees in his dream six mice come up and arrange themselves in characteristic fashion. Kekule wakes up and draws it! He has the structure.

Discoveries and inventions are considered blessed revolutions in the West, and infrequent as these are in that society they have made Western science great. In Africa, discoveries and inventions are pervasive, in fact, rampant, precisely because of the essentially expressive spiritual nature of the African. And as I stated for the Dogon discovery of Sirius A and B, Africans make the discoveries only for Western empiricism to come along and confirm them. When I was a boy in the 1970s, my mother had a potent mixture for curing diarrhoea. She would put a little sugar and salt in water and offer it to the sick person to drink, and the diarrhoea was gone in about 30 minutes.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Chemistry explains that the active component in that anti-diarrhoea mixture is the sodium ions from the salt. The physiological explanation is this; There are in the walls of the small intestines sodium ions, which absorb the water in anything we ingest, thus preventing diarrhoea. It is when the level of sodium ions in the small intestines drops below the optimum that, we suffer diarrhoea. Thus taking the anti-diarrhoea mixture simply restores the level of sodium ions in the intestinal walls; the sugar simply makes easy the drinking of the mixture. That mixture is actually the mother of the now common anti-diarrhoeal Oral Rehydration Salt (ORS); same ingredients. A WHO researcher came to Ghana to study the disease kwashiorkor, whose fatal aspect is chronic diarrhoea. Upon enquiring from traditional Ghanaians, the researcher was told about the African anti-diarrhoea mixture. That is what has been repackaged and returned to us as ORS.

Of course, a good question at this stage is: Why are we not able to use all these remarkable discoveries to transform our lives? A very relevant question, and while a full discussion falls without the scope of this article, we will have a glimpse into it soon. Still it does not diminish at least two basic truths about discoveries and inventions: One, Western science has serious limitations because of its empirical approach; and two, African science with its spiritual-empirical approach is superior to Western science in that respect.

New African has published countless articles on the fact that it is black Africans, Kmt or Ancient Egyptians, who created all the disciplines of study we pursue today, and that they were the teachers of the Greeks who are the originators of European (Western) civilisation. Today, we know that most of the great discoveries and inventions that have made the West what it is today were made by blacks--the fridge; the lift; the refrigerated truck; the traffic light; the ship rudder; Caesarian Section; and immunisation as preventive medicine.

Conclusion

I must admit that transforming discoveries and inventions into technology for day-today use is where empiricism becomes most useful. The validity of that point lies in the fact that Europeans by themselves have made fewer of the great inventions and discoveries that they have used to make technologies. For example. Ancient Egyptians. Islamic and Indian mathematicians/ physicists were the originators of Newton's laws of mechanics. Immunisation was invented by Africans; paper, printing and gunpowder were invented by China; and Japan invented fuel efficiency. Of course, the West invented the car and the modern airplane, but there is evidence that Ancient Egyptians, watching birds, made models of airplanes. The relevance of the last few paragraphs is that the empirical enterprise of transforming discoveries and inventions into technology for everyday use is an area contemporary black or African science must move forth to master and conquer if we are to develop.

At this stage, the best suggestion would be a call for global partnership where all the peoples of the world bring to the table their best advantage(s). But such an expectation, in the reality of history and contemporary global political-economics, would be Utopian.

RELATED ARTICLE: Cote d'lvoire: Elections in November

Cote d'lvoire will hold a long-delayed presidential election on 29 November 2009, Prime Minister Guillaume Soro announced in mid-May, adding that the date was "realistic" after several previous deadlines have slipped.

The election, according to a report by Reuters, is meant to reunite the country after a brief war in 2002-3 left the north of the country in the hands of rebels. Previous election deadlines could not be met during a tortuous UN-backed peace process.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Six million Ivorians have now been registered to vote but the register needs to be verified and the thorny question of whether the northern rebels will disarm ahead of the polls must still be addressed.

Said Prime Minister Soro: "29 November is a realistic date. We think we have more clarity and visibility [regarding] the electoral process." Questions over nationality and who is eligible to vote have been at the heart of the Ivorian crisis, but analysts say the electoral process has also been complicated and dragged out as a result of all sides profiting from the uncertainty. A UN panel of experts warned last month that former fighters were re-arming and there was a high risk of violence, especially in the north.

RELATED ARTICLE: Zimbabwe

The world Bank has agreed to give Zimbabwe $22m ([pounds sterling]14.4m), its first assistance to the country since 2000, when the US and other Western countries imposed economic sanctions on the Southern African country.

Zimbabwe has been appealing for $8.5bn to rebuild its economy after forming a unity government in February. The World Bank said the relatively small amount of money was "a first step". The money will be available in the next few weeks. More could be forthcoming when Zimbabwe begins to clear its arrears. It owes the Bank and the African Development Bank more than $1bn.

"The first task is to see how Zimbabwe can get on with debt reduction," said the World Bank's Toga Gayewea Mcintosh. Zimbabwe's finance minister, Tendai Biti, said the government would work with the World Bank on a debt reduction plan.

"Dismissal of the spiritual is a flaw in Western culture, for it denies what could help people attain a fuller comprehension of themselves as humans."