[Lightspeed]

An understanding of knowledge is there is knowledge that exists independent of time, place, person. Then there is knowledge that exists for a single moment, in a single place. And then there's all that's in between.

There's an argument that science strays beyond that hard edge of what transcends time and space, but let's put that aside. We'll accept that scientific knowledge exclusively exists in this transcendent position.

Looking at the development of scientific knowledge we can see it sometimes, usually, takes a very long time to determine if some knowledge we've developed is truly deserving the hallowed title scientific, that we're often working with knowledge as if it is. We could try be tricky, couch our language saying the knowledge at hand was developed using scientific principles, even if not truly science itself. But by our definition we would have to admit the knowledge was not science.

So in any given moment we're working with a volume of not-science swirling around the tiny volume of actual science we've accumulated. That not-science being knowledge more closely aligned with the here and now, it being used in how we make our decisions, which must occur science or not.

Putting this in context of Maori science, of course science has nothing to do with Maori, as Maori exist in time and space. But we're talking about the implied wider bodies of knowledge, specifically the knowledge of the Maori world coming into contact with the knowledge of the colonised world. By saying Maori science we're saying science exists in the Maori world too. We know it must as the demands of the world are too great for any community, any culture to survive without operating on the basis of that which is true anywhere, all the time.

In the context of colonisation, in the effort to mitigate some of the known impacts, we're considering the implied science of Maori knowledge and we're making a way for that science to have its place in the world.

At least, that's what it looks like to me.