Introduction
To criticize Broomfield’s book, I have chosen science as the main area of my research; the issue is chapter four. The whole book represents the critics of the Western ways of knowing. From the book, it is obvious that the author is a traveler who has seen many places as well as many faces. The book is structured as a long interview or an autobiographical novel; it contains a great number of different names of people who share their own opinions on the world and other issues represented in the book.
The author gives examples of thoughts of some people from other books by different authors. According to the assumptions made by John Broomfield, our “inherited ways” of knowledge in the area of science include the notion of mechanistic nature; all the other assumptions are surrealistic and have no relations with our modern life and society representing it.
I believe that it is not very correct and polite to say that “humans, uniquely possessed of reflective awareness, are superior beings and that mechanistic nature exists for our benefit” (Broomfield 87); because nature, any expression of nature was not created for human beings only, I do not think that the mechanistic (related to the mechanism, the principle according to which the development of nature and society is described by the laws of a mechanical method of movement of substance) nature is the sphere of the human beings only.
Science in the book by John Broomfield
The author tells the readers about science, to be more precise I shall say that the author explains the “inherited ways” of thinking by the western culture representatives. Thus he claims that “science cannot give all the answers” (Broomfield 90); that the scientific explanations and achievements are contradictory. Science is doomed to mistake in half of the cases according to the author of this book, but to my mind science is more accurate and significant than history, arts or religion, because it gives explanations to all issues and is not likely to stop on the results achieved. The main spheres where the author tries to involve the issue of science and our “inherited ways” of knowledge in the area of science are archeology, history, and music (if defined as the result of the physical perception of sounds).
John Broomfield suggests the nature and perception and understanding of nature as alternatives to the issue of science. Thus the main reason is not the way we think about science, because it is impossible to think about the issue without having even the smallest idea of the issue, but the way our mode of thinking is represented by the author. He believes that the most significant role in the entire world is possessed by nature and natural phenomena.
I agree with the ideas of John Broomfield when he tells about the necessity of protection of nature and the global natural crisis, but I do not think it necessary to involve different shamans and other people of doubtful scientific knowledge and experience in the discussion involving the issue of architecture, history and other scientific notions.
Conclusion
My personal view of religion was not affected by the ideas represented by John Broomfield, because the idea of respect for nature is not of religious matter; it belongs to the moral ideas of every person. The worship of people to the natural phenomena is the subject of paganism; whereas the religion I belong to does not represent nature as a living being capable of communication. The nature study does not have to concern the religious aspects.
Works Cited
Broomfield, John. Other Ways of Knowing: Recharting Our Future with Ageless Wisdom. Vermont: Inner Traditions / Bear & Company, 1997.