The science is not a thing only of Europeans

One of a lot of ironies of our technological and scientific civilization is that we, his members, neither apply so even nor know the way in which science is done. Said otherwise, with the appearance of the wage-earning science, somewhere near the epoch of the French Revolution, we have stopped wondering how the world works and we have forgotten to observe and extract conclusions of the observed. This is a mission of the scientists, that for that we pay to them. But the worst thing of everything is that we believe that the science is a western product, which was born in Greece and was perfected some centuries later with Galilean and the hypothetical - deductive famous method. Nothing is more mistaken. We neither are only we nor have been the first ones either.

For example, in Japan a traditional method exists to catch fish ayu (Plecoglossus altivelis) that extracts party of the study of his behavior. During the epoch of the reproduction the males defend territories in the riverbed, as many other fish the length and breadth of this world. When an intruder penetrates in the territory of the male, this one nothing to his meeting: if she is a female, it courts it, but if he is another male, he gives him a strong blow in the side part. Well, all right. The Japanese have made use of this behavior to develop a skill called tomozuri, which literally means “to go fishing with decoy”.

First it is necessary to do with a small fish using the traditional methods. Later this fish sticks to a fishhook with form of U so that the later part is secret for the fish - bait body. Subject to a cane, it is necessary to do that it moves in the water imitating the movement of these fish. Then the male comes and on having given him the blow, it is he who sticks itself in the fishhook. One more thing: this skill only is used for this type of fish. The rest is caught by fishing lines or networks. The Japanese that designed this method had that it realizes a real ethological investigation.

Something similar they do the jeans fulani, in the High place Níger. They do not take horses as the cowboys, for what the use of the force does not serve to guide the herds. For it what they do it is to adopt the behavior and the privileges of the domineering animal of the herd: it is inserted in the social hierarchy of the herd attacking the strongest without provocation coming up and treating with caress and care to the rest. This way they turn into the leaders of the herd and can govern it easily.

And we, the brilliant Europeans, believe that we invent the science of the animal behavior, the ethology. Perhaps we should have gone to ask to Africa …