Crest of the Ojibwa people
|Regions with significant populations|
|United States, Canada|
|Catholicism, Methodism, Midewiwin|
|Related ethnic groups|
|Ottawa, Potawatomi and other Algonquian peoples|
The Ojibwa or Chippewa (also Ojibwe, Ojibway, Chippeway) is one of the largest groups of Native Americans-First Nations in North America. They are divided between the United States and Canada. Because they were formerly located mainly around Sault Ste. Marie, at the outlet of Lake Superior, the French referred to them as Saulteurs. Ojibwa who subsequently moved to the prairie provinces of Canada have retained the name Saulteaux. Ojibwa who were originally located about the Mississagi River and made their way to southern Ontario are known as the Mississaugas.
They were fearless warriors and, with the use of gun technology from the British, they were able to defeat and push back the Sioux and Fox tribes to become the unchallenged inhabitants of vast areas of the northern plains around the Great Lakes.
They are known for their birch bark canoes, sacred birch bark scrolls, the use of cowrie shells, wild rice, copper points. Their Midewiwin Society is well respected as the keeper of detailed and complex scrolls of events, history, songs, maps, memories, stories, geometry, and mathematics. The Ojibwa Nation was the first to set the agenda for signing more detailed treaties with Canada's leaders before many settlers were allowed too far west. They also signed numerous treaties with the United States, seeking to keep at least portions of their ancestral lands to be designated as their reservations and avoiding the tragic relocations of many other tribes.
Today, as a major component group of the Anishinaabe peoples—which includes the Algonquin, Nipissing, Oji-Cree, Odawa and the Potawatomi—the Ojibwa peoples number over 100,000 in the U.S., living in an area stretching across the north from Michigan to Montana. Another 76,000, in 125 bands, live in Canada, stretching from western Québec to eastern British Columbia. Despite facing poverty and high levels of unemployment, many contemporary Ojibwa continue to follow traditional ways, both practical and spiritual. They are active in resource management, seeking ways to live in harmony with their environment.
The name Ojibwe (plural: Ojibweg) is commonly anglicized as "Ojibwa." The name "Chippewa" is an anglicized corruption of "Ojibwa." Although many variations exist in literature, "Chippewa" is more common in the United States and "Ojibwa" predominates in Canada, but both terms do exist in both countries. The exact meaning of the name "Ojibwe" is not known; the most common explanations on the name derivations are:
The Saulteaux (also Salteaux pronounced [ˈsoʊtoʊ]) are a First Nation in Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and British Columbia, Canada, and a branch of the Ojibwa. Saulteaux is a French language term meaning "people of the rapids," referring to their former location about Sault Ste. Marie.
The Ojibwa/Chippewa are part of the Anishinaabe peoples, together with the Odawa and Algonkin peoples. Anishnaabeg (plural form) means "First- or Original-Peoples" or it may refer to "the good humans," or good people, that are on the right road/path given to them by the Creator or gitchi-manitou (Anishinaabeg term for God). In many Ojibwa communities throughout Canada and the U. S., the more generalized name Anishinaabe(-g) is becoming more commonly used as a self-description.
The Ojibwe language is known as Anishinaabemowin or Ojibwemowin, and is still widely spoken. It belongs to the Algonquian linguistic group, and is descended from Proto-Algonquian. Its sister languages include Blackfoot, Cheyenne, Cree, Fox, Menominee, Potawatomi, and Shawnee. Anishinaabemowin is frequently referred to as a "Central Algonquian" language; however, Central Algonquian is an areal grouping rather than a genetic one. Ojibwemowin is the fourth most spoken Native language in North America (after Navajo, Cree, and Inuktitut). Many decades of fur trading with the French established the language as one of the key trade languages of the Great Lakes and the northern Great Plains.
The Ojibwa presence was made highly visible among non-Native Americans and around the world by the popularity of the epic poem The Song of Hiawatha, written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in 1855. The epic contains many toponyms that originate from Ojibwa words.
According to the oral history of the Anishinaabeg and from their recordings in birch bark scrolls, the Ojibwa came from the eastern areas of North America, or Turtle Island (the English language translation of many Native American tribes' name for the continent of North America), and from along the east coast. They traded widely across the continent for thousands of years and knew of the canoe routes west and a land route to the West Coast.
When the Anishinaabeg were living on the shores of the "Great Salt Water" (presumably the Atlantic Ocean near the Gulf of St. Lawrence). They were instructed by seven prophets to follow a sacred miigis shell, a whiteshell (cowry) toward the west, until they reached a place where food grew upon the water. They began their migration some time around 950 C.E., stopping at various points along the way, most significantly at Baawitigong, Sault Ste. Marie, where they stayed for a long time, and where two subgroups decided to stay (these became the Potawatomi and Ottawa). Eventually they arrived at the wild rice lands of Minnesota and Wisconsin (wild rice being the food that grew upon the water) and made Mooningwanekaaning minis (Madeline Island: "Island of the yellow-shafted flicker") their new capital. In total, the migration took around five centuries.
Following the migration there was a cultural divergence separating the Potawatomi from the Ojibwa and Ottawa. Particularly, the Potawatomi did not adopt the agricultural innovations discovered or adopted by the Ojibwa, such as the Three Sisters crop complex, copper tools, conjugal collaborative farming, and the use of canoes in rice harvesting (Waldman 2006). Also, the Potawatomi divided labor according to gender, much more than did the Ojibwa and Ottawa.
The first historical mention of the Ojibwa occurs in the Jesuit Relation of 1640 under the name Baouichigouian, known by the French as Sauteurs because of their residence about the Sault de Ste. Marie (Thwaites 1640). In 1642, Raymbaut and Jogues found them at war with a people to their west, probably the Sioux (Hodge 1910).
The Ojibwa were described as "equaling in physical appearance the best formed of the Northwest Indians, with the possible exception of the Foxes" and exhibited great determination and courage in their conflicts with their enemies (Hodge 1910). Yet they were friendly toward the French, and although they encountered missionaries Christianity took little hold, due to the power of their indigenous beliefs and their shamans.
Through their friendship with the French traders, they were able to obtain guns and thus successfully end their wars with the Sioux and Fox on their west and south. The Sioux were driven out from the Upper Mississippi region, and the Fox were forced down from northern Wisconsin and compelled to ally with the Sauk.
By the end of the eighteenth century, the Ojibwa were the nearly unchallenged owners of almost all of present-day Michigan, northern Wisconsin, and Minnesota, including most of the Red River area, together with the entire northern shores of Lakes Huron and Superior on the Canadian side and extending westward to the Turtle Mountains of North Dakota, where they became known as the Plains Ojibwa or Saulteaux.
The Ojibwa together with the Ottawa and Potawatomi peoples formed the Council of Three Fires which fought with the Iroquois Confederacy and the Sioux. The Ojibwa expanded eastward, taking over the lands alongside the eastern shores of Lake Huron and Georgian Bay. The Ojibwa allied with the French in the French and Indian War, and with the British in the War of 1812.
In the U.S., the government attempted to remove all the Ojibwa to Minnesota west of Mississippi River, culminating in the Sandy Lake Tragedy and several hundred deaths. Through the efforts of Chief Buffalo and popular opinion against Ojibwa removal, the bands east of the Mississippi were allowed to return to permanent reservations on ceded territory. A few families were removed to Kansas as part of the Potawatomi removal.
In British North America, the cession of land by treaty or purchase was governed by the Royal Proclamation of 1763, and subsequently most of the land in Upper Canada was ceded to Great Britain. Even with the Jay Treaty signed between the Great Britain and the United States, the newly formed United States did not fully uphold the treaty, causing illegal immigration into Ojibwa and other Native American lands, which culminated in the Northwest Indian War. Subsequently, much of the lands in Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, parts of Illinois and Wisconsin, and northern Minnesota and North Dakota were ceded to the United States. However, provisions were made in many of the land cession treaties to allow for continued hunting, fishing, and gathering of natural resources by the Ojibwa even after the land sales.
The Saulteaux were originally settled around Lake Superior and Lake Winnipeg, principally in the Sault Ste. Marie and northern Michigan areas. White Canadians and Americans gradually pushed the tribe westwards to Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta, with one community in British Columbia. Today most of them live in the Interlake, southern part of Manitoba, and in Saskatchewan; because they lived on land ill-suited for European crops, they were able to keep much of their land.
In northwestern Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta, the Ojibwa signed the numbered treaties in the nineteenth century. British Columbia had no signed treaties until the late twentieth century. These numbered treaties were some of the most detailed treaties signed for their time.
Often, earlier treaties were known as "Peace and Friendship Treaties" to establish community bonds between the Ojibwa and the European settlers. These earlier treaties established the groundwork for cooperative resource sharing between the Ojibwa and the settlers. However, later treaties involving land cessions were seen as territorial advantages for both the United States and Canada, but the land cession terms were often not fully understood by the Ojibwa because of the cultural differences in understanding of the land. For the governments of the US and Canada, land was considered a commodity of value that could be freely bought, owned and sold. For the Ojibwa, land was considered a fully-shared resource, along with air, water and sunlight; the concept of land sales or exclusive ownership of land was foreign to the Ojibwa at the time of the treaty councils. Consequently, legal arguments in treaty-rights and treaty interpretations continue to bring to light the differences in cultural understanding of these treaty terms.
Most Ojibwa were of the Woodlands culture, hunter-gatherers who harvested wild rice and maple sugar. They had no salt and so used maple syrup as a preservative to preserve their food (Sultzman 2000). However, the Ojibwa lived across a wide area and adapted to their local environments.
The eastern Ojibwa lived a sedentary lifestyle, engaging in fishing, hunting, the farming of maize and squash, and the harvesting of Manoomin (wild rice). The Plains Ojibwa farmed little and were mainly hunters and fishers, adopting the culture of the Plains Indians, hunting buffalo. A third group were known as the "Bungee," a transitional culture between the eastern Woodlands and the western Plains culture.
They also developed a form of pictorial writing used in religious rites of the Midewiwin and recorded on birch bark scrolls and sometimes on rock. The many complex pictures on the sacred scrolls communicate historical, geometrical, and mathematical knowledge. Ceremonies also used the miigis shell (cowry shell), which is naturally found in far away coastal areas; this fact suggests that there was a vast trade network across the continent at some time. The use and trade of copper across the continent is also proof of a very large area of trading that took place thousands of years ago, as far back as the Hopewell culture. Certain types of rock used for spear and arrow heads were also traded over large distances. The use of petroforms, petroglyphs, and pictographs was common throughout their traditional territories. Petroforms and medicine wheels were a way to teach the important concepts of four directions, astronomical observations about the seasons, and as a memorizing tool for certain stories and beliefs.
The Ojibwa would bury their dead in a burial mound; many erect a jiibegamig or a "spirit-house" over each mound. Instead of a headstone with the deceased's name inscribed upon it, a traditional burial mound would typically have a wooden marker, inscribed with the deceased's doodem.
The Ojibwa viewed the world in two types: animate and inanimate, rather than male and female genders. As an animate a person could serve the society as a male-role or a female-role. John Tanner, who spent 30 years living as an Ojibwa after having been kidnapped, documented in his Narrative that Ojibwa peoples do not fall into the European ideas of gender and its gender-roles, having people who fulfill mixed gender roles, two-spirits or egwakwe (Anglicised to "agokwa"). A well-known egwakwe warrior and guide in Minnesota history was Ozaawindib. Tanner described Ozaawindib as "This man was one of those who make themselves women, and are called women by the Indians" (Tanner 2007).
The Ojibwa people were divided into a number of odoodeman (clans; singular: odoodem) named primarily for animal totems (doodem). Five original totems were Wawaazisii (Bullhead), Baswenaazhi (Crane), Aan'aawenh (Pintail Duck), Nooke (Bear) and Moozwaanowe ("Little" Moose-tail). The clans had distinct responsibilities that worked together to care for the people, such as chieftainship, a type of police, teachers, spiritual guides, and so forth (Schneider 2003). Traditionally, each band had a self-regulating council consisting of leaders of the communities' clans, with the band often identified by the principle doodem.
Ojibwa understanding of kinship is complex, and includes not only the immediate family but also the extended family. It is considered a modified bifurcate merging kinship system. As with any bifurcate merging kinship system, siblings generally share the same term with parallel-cousins, because they are all part of the same clan. Complexity wanes further from the speaker's immediate generation, but some complexity is retained with female relatives. For example, ninooshenh is "my mother's sister" or "my father's sister-in-law"—my parallel-aunt—and also "my parent's female cross-cousin." Great-grandparents and older generations, as well as great-grandchildren and younger generations are collectively called aanikoobijigan. This system of kinship speaks of the nature of the Anishinaabe's philosophy and lifestyle, that is of interconnectedness and balance between all living generations and all generations of the past and of the future.
Before contact with Europeans, Ojibwa religion had little formal ceremony. They relied on shamans for healing by use of medicinal herbs. Contact with Europeans exposed them not just to a different culture but to new diseases against which they had little or no defense. Efforts to deal with sickness evolved into the complex Midewiwin Grand Medicine Society, a secret society whose qualified members performed elaborate ceremonies (Sultzman 2000).
The Ojibwa have a number of spiritual beliefs passed down by oral tradition under the Midewiwin teachings. These include a creation myth and a recounting of the origins of ceremonies and rituals. Spiritual beliefs and rituals were very important to the Ojibwa because spirits guided them through life. Birch bark scrolls and petroforms were used to pass along knowledge and information, as well as used for ceremonies. Pictographs were also used for ceremonies.
Traditional stories known as the aadizookaanan ("traditional stories," singular aadizookaan) are told by the debaajimojig ("story-tellers," singular debaajimod), only in winter in order to preserve their transformative powers. In the aadizookaan many 'manidoog ("spiritual beings") are encountered. These include, but are not limited to:
Gichi-manidoo (Gitchi Manitou, Gitche Manito) is the "Great Spirit," God, the Creator of all things and the Giver of Life, sometimes translated as the "Great Mystery." Manitou is an Anishinaabe word for spirit, spiritual, mystery, mysterious, or deity. Historically, Anishinaabe people believed in a variety of spirits, whose images were placed near doorways for protection. With the coming of Christian missionaries and their need to translate the idea of monotheism, Gitche Manitou meaning "Great Spirit" was coined. The term Manitou itself refers to the concept of one aspect of the interconnection and balance of nature/life; in simpler terms it can refer to a spirit. This spirit is seen as a (contactable) person as well as a concept. Everything has its own manitou—every plant, every stone and even machines. These Manitous do not exist in a hierarchy like European gods/goddesses, but are more akin to one part of the body interacting with another and the spirit of everything; the collective is named Gitche Manitou.
Nanabozho (also known by a variety of other names and spellings, including Wenabozho, Menabozho, and Nanabush) figures prominently in Anishinaabe storytelling, including the story of the world's creation. Nanabozho is the Ojibwa trickster figure and culture hero (these two archetypes are often combined into a single figure in First Nations mythologies). He was the son of Wiininwaa ("Nourishment"), a human mother, and E-bangishimog ("In the West"), a spirit father. He was sent to Earth in the form of a rabbit by Gitchi Manitou to teach the Ojibwa, and one of his first tasks was to name all the plants and animals.
Nanabozho is considered to be the founder of Midewiwin. He features as the protagonist of a cycle of stories that serve as the Anishinaabe origin myth. The cycle, which varies somewhat from community to community, tells the story of Nanabozho's conception, birth, and his ensuing adventures, which involve interactions with spirit and animal beings, the creation of the Earth, and the establishment of the Midewiwin. The myth cycle explains the origin of several traditions, including mourning customs, beliefs about the afterlife, and the creation of the sacred plant asemaa (tobacco).
Nibiinaabewag/niibinaabekwewag ("Watermen"/"Waterman-women," singular nibiinaabe/nibiinaabekwe) are mermen and mermaids.
Nookomis (the "Grandmother") is the Earth-Mother, the one from whom is derived the Water of Life, who feeds plants, animals, and men. She is also known as Ogashiinan ("Dearest Mother"), Omizakamigokwe ("Throughout the Earth Woman") or Giizhigookwe ("Sky Woman").
Wiindigoog (singular wiindigoo, Anglicized to Wendigo) are giant, powerful, malevolent cannibalistic spirits associated with the Winter and the North. If a human ever resorts to cannibalism to survive, they are said to become possessed by the spirit of a wiindigoo, and develop an overpowering desire for more human flesh.
Wiininwaa ("Nourishment") is a woman who became immortal through manidoowiziwin (the process of taking on qualities of a Manitou). She is the daughter of Nookomis and mother of Nanabozho.
According to the oral history, seven great miigis (radiant/iridescent) beings appeared to the peoples in the Waabanakiing (Land of the Dawn or Eastern Land) to teach the peoples of the mide way of life. However, one of the seven great miigis beings was too spiritually powerful and killed the peoples in the Waabanakiing when the people were in its presence. The six great miigis beings remained to teach while the one returned into the ocean. The six great miigis beings then established doodem (clans) for the peoples in the east. Then these six miigis beings returned into the ocean as well. If the seventh miigis being stayed, it would have established the Thunderbird doodem.
At a later time, one of these miigis beings appeared in a vision to relate a prophecy. The prophecy stated that if more of the Anishinaabeg did not move further west, they would not be able to keep their traditional ways alive because of the many new settlements and European immigrants that would arrive soon in the east. Their migration path would be symbolized by a series of smaller Turtle Islands, which was confirmed with miigis shells (cowry shells). After receiving assurance from the their "Allied Brothers" (Mi'kmaq) and "Father" (Abnaki) of their safety in having many more of the Anishinaabeg move inland, they advanced along the St. Lawrence River to the Ottawa River to Lake Nipissing, and then to the Great Lakes. First of these smaller Turtle Islands was Mooniyaa, which Mooniyaang (Montreal, Quebec) now stands. The "second stopping place" was in the vicinity of the Wayaanag-gakaabikaa (Concave Waterfalls, Niagara Falls). At their "third stopping place" near the present-day city of Detroit, Michigan, the Anishinaabeg divided into six divisions, of which the Ojibwa was one of these six. The first significant new Ojibwa culture-center was their "fourth stopping place" on Manidoo Minising (Manitoulin Island). Their first new political-centre was referred as their "fifth stopping place," in their present country at Baawiting (Sault Ste. Marie).
Continuing their westward expansion, the Ojibwa divided into the "northern branch" following the north shore of Lake Superior, and "southern branch" following the south shore of the same lake. In their expansion westward, the "northern branch" divided into a "westerly group" and a "southerly group." The "southern branch" and the "southerly group" of the "northern branch" came together at their "sixth stopping place" on Spirit Island located in the St. Louis River estuary of Duluth/Superior region where the people were directed by the miigis being in a vision to go to the "place where there is food (wild rice) upon the waters." Their second major settlement, referred as their "seventh stopping place," was at Shaugawaumikong (or Zhaagawaamikong, French, Chequamegon) on the southern shore of Lake Superior, near the present La Pointe near Bayfield, Wisconsin. The "westerly group" of the "northern branch" continued their westward expansion along the Rainy River, Red River of the North, and across the northern Great Plains until reaching the Pacific Northwest. Along their migration to the west they came across many miigis, or cowry shells, as told in the prophecy.
The Ojibwa also have a story of a Great Deluge that has been passed down from generation to generation over the centuries. They tell of a time long ago when the Anishinaabeg began to argue amongst themselves and lost respect for all living creatures. The Creator, Gichi Manidoo, saw this situation and brought a great flood on the earth, killing almost every person and living thing. This punishment is a lesson that has guided Ojibwa lifestyle, teaching them to live in harmony with all creation (Cubie 2007).
Objects like drums, pipes, and tobacco play significant roles in ceremonies. A drum represents the "circle of life" and must undergo a special ceremony before it can be used to heal and unify people (Schneider 2003).
Asemaa (Tobacco) represents east. Though pure tobacco is commonly used today, traditionally "kinnikinnick"—a giniginige ("mixture") of primarily red osier dogwood with bearberry and tobacco, and occasionally with other additional medicinal plants—was used. The tobacco or its mixture is used in the offering of prayer, acting as a medium for communication. It is either offered through the fire so the smoke can lift the prayers to the Gichi-manidoo, or it is set on the ground in a clean place as an offering. This is done on a daily basis as each new day is greeted with prayers of thankfulness. Tobacco is also the customary offering when seeking knowledge or advice from an Elder or when a Pipe is present.
A dreamcatcher (or dream catcher; Ojibwe asabikeshiinh, is a handmade object based on a willow hoop. Traditionally, the Ojibwa construct dreamcatchers by tying sinew strands in a web around a small round or tear-shaped frame (in a way roughly similar to their method for making snowshoe webbing). The dreamcatcher is decorated with personal and sacred items such as feathers and beads.
The resulting "dream-catcher," hung above the bed, is then used to protect sleeping children from nightmares. The Ojibwa believe that a dreamcatcher filters a person's dreams: Only good dreams would be allowed to filter through; bad dreams would stay in the net, disappearing with the light of day (Andrews 1997).
The "jingle dress" is a dance dress worn by women participating in the "Jingle Dress Dance" at a Pow wow. Made of cloth, the dress includes several rows of metal cones, which are sewn across the dress on the skirt (and blouse, in some areas). The metal cones create a jingling sound as the dancer moves. The Jingle Dress Dance is characterized by light footwork danced close to the ground. The dancer dances in a snake-like pattern around the drum; her feet never cross, nor does she dance backward or turn a complete circle.
The jingle dress is considered a healing dress. Its origin is attributed to several Ojibwa communities in which a vivid recurring dream was experienced. The dream came to a Midewinini, a medicine-man or shaman. In the dream there were four women, each wearing a jingle dress and dancing. The dream also gave instructions on how to make the dresses, what types of songs went with them, and how the dance was to be performed. The story continues that the reason for this recurring dream was because the daughter (in some versions the grand-daughter) of the Midewinini was gravely ill. When the dance was performed in the presence of the child, in the way shown in the dream, the child recovered.
This happened around 1900 and spread throughout Ojibwa reservations. In the late 1920s, the jingle dress was given to the Lakota and it spread westward into the Dakotas and Montana.
Every year at the first snow, a traditional Snowshoe dance is performed. This dance celebrates the coming of the snow, an essential part of the cycle of life for which they give thanks, and also reminds them of the necessity for snowshoes to aid them in traveling through snow in order to hunt and they dance in hope of a successful hunt and thus to survive the winter. The snowshoe dance was performed around a tall pole with a pair of snowshoes suspended from the top.
The snow-shoe dance … is exceedingly picturesque, being danced with the snow shoes under the feet, at the falling of the first snow in the beginning of winter, when they sing a song of thanksgiving to the Great Spirit for sending them a return of snow, when they can run on their snow shoes in their valued hunts, and easily take the game for their food (Catlin 1995).
Sweat lodges are very important in Ojibwa spiritual life. A visit to the sweat lodge cleanses both the body and spirit. Supported by fasting and meditation, the sweat lodge is a place to receive guidance on how to live one's life in accord with the spirits (Schneider 2003).
The Sun Dance (known as the Rain Dance among the Saulteaux) is a ceremony practiced by a number of Native Americans, particularly the Plains Indians. There are distinct rituals and methods of performing the dance, but they generally include dancing, singing, praying, drumming, the experience of visions, fasting, and in some cases piercing of the chest or back. Most notable for early Western observers was the piercing many young men endure as part of the ritual. The object of being pierced is to sacrifice one's self to the Great Spirit, and to pray while connected to the Tree of Life, a direct connection to the Great Spirit. Breaking from the piercing is done in one moment, as the man runs backwards from the tree at a time specified by the leader of the dance.
The Government of Canada officially persecuted Sun Dance practitioners and attempted to suppress the Sun Dance on many Canadian plains reserves starting in 1882 until the 1940s. The flesh-sacrifice and gift-giving features were legally outlawed in 1895. Despite the subjugation, Sun Dance practitioners, including Saulteaux, continued to hold Sun Dances throughout the persecution period, minus the prohibited features. At least one Cree or Saulteaux Rain Dance has occurred each year since 1880 somewhere on the Canadian Plains. In 1951 government officials revamped the Indian Act and dropped the legislation that forbade flesh-sacrificing and gift-giving (Pettipas 1994).
Contemporary Ojibwa still use the sweat lodge during important ceremonies and to pass along their oral history. Teaching lodges are common to teach the next generations about the language and ancient ways of the past. Many people still follow the traditional ways of harvesting wild rice, picking berries, hunting, making medicines, and making maple sugar. Many of the Ojibwa take part in sun dance ceremonies across the continent.
Several Ojibwa bands in the United States cooperate in the Great Lakes Indian Fish & Wildlife Commission, which manages their treaty hunting and fishing rights in the Lake Superior-Lake Michigan areas. The commission follows the directives of U.S. agencies to run several wilderness areas. Some Minnesota Ojibwa tribal councils cooperate in the 1854 Treaty Authority, which manages their treaty hunting and fishing rights in the Arrowhead Region. In Michigan, the Chippewa-Ottawa Resource Authority manages the hunting, fishing and gathering rights about Sault Ste. Marie, and the waters of Lake Michigan and Lake Huron. In Canada, the Grand Council of Treaty #3 manages the Treaty 3 hunting and fishing rights around Lake of the Woods.
Members of the Red Lake Band of Ojibwa in northern Minnesota are making efforts to live in harmony with their land, restoring fisheries, and enhancing wetlands and other wildlife habitats. Despite facing poverty and high levels of unemployment on their reservation, tribal members support these conservation efforts. Although their lifestyle has changed significantly, the traditional "ricing" practice is being restored in the belief that it helps both people and wildlife, bringing a greater balance to life. When gathering rice in the traditional way they knock some grains back into the lake to sustain future harvests, as well as leaving others on the plants as food for birds. A commercial wild rice farm now offers income and also the habitat needed for both waterfowl and shorebirds (Cubie 2007).
Ojibwa people have achieved much in many walks of life—from the chiefs of old to more recent artists, scholars, sportsmen, and activists. The following are a few examples.
All links retrieved February 14, 2015.
New World Encyclopedia writers and editors rewrote and completed the Wikipedia article in accordance with New World Encyclopedia standards. This article abides by terms of the Creative Commons CC-by-sa 3.0 License (CC-by-sa), which may be used and disseminated with proper attribution. Credit is due under the terms of this license that can reference both the New World Encyclopedia contributors and the selfless volunteer contributors of the Wikimedia Foundation. To cite this article click here for a list of acceptable citing formats.The history of earlier contributions by wikipedians is accessible to researchers here:
The history of this article since it was imported to New World Encyclopedia:


Alexandre Cabanel (1823-1889), The Expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Paradise, oil on canvas, private collection.
During John Milton’s life, England experienced a great deal of religious turmoil as the Puritan movement sought to reform the Church of England. With this movement, predestination gained recognition with the teachings of John Calvin, whose main doctrinal points were: total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace, and perseverance of the saints (better remembered as TULIP). Opposed to the Calvinistic teachings, Jacobus Arminius, who founded Arminianism, denied the existence of predestination by countering each one of Calvin’s five points and adding three of his own: equal and impartial love, libertarian free will, and universal call for salvation. Residing between two opposing theological ideologies, John Milton, considered a compatibilist because of his work in De Doctrina Christiana, believed free will and predestination were compatible and could not exist apart. As religious conflict was a dominant component of English society during his lifetime, Milton’s work, Paradise Lost, reveals the conflict inherent in 16th century society, and his attempt to reconcile what appeared to be irreconcilable religious beliefs has remained to this day a subject for academic debate. While his work conjures up a plethora of questions that induces much controversy, one question in particular that has retained its importance within critical discussions on Paradise Lost is whether or not Milton’s character of God is a good God or a bad God. Since Milton first avowed to “justify the ways of God to men” in the opening book of Paradise Lost, Milton’s depiction of God has resulted in many interesting debates in which critics have used several different approaches, such as theology, aesthetics, and theory, including both psychoanalysis and structuralism, focusing primarily on the narrative form, to determine whether or not Milton succeeded in his goal (Paradise 1:26).
Theological arguments about God’s character abounded in the mid-20th century between C. S. Lewis and William Empson, who was considered an Anti-Miltonist by reader response critic Stanley Fish. To begin, Lewis, in his famous monograph, A Preface to “Paradise Lost,” worked to reverse the effects Romanticism had over Miltonic criticism and return to the time in which Milton was remembered as a Christian poet, not of the “Devil’s party” ever since the infamous line by William Blake, a critic during the Romantic period, who said that Milton “was of the Devil’s party without knowing it” as well as the other famous Romantic critic, P. B. Shelley, who argued that Milton attributed “no superiority of moral virtue to his God over his Devil” (Blake 211, Shelley 1107, Rudnytsky 255). Lewis, unlike the Romantic critics, who attributed no “superiority” to Milton’s God, celebrated how the “degrees of value are objectively present in the universe” and “the goodness, happiness, and dignity of every being consists in obeying its natural superior and ruling its natural inferiors” (Lewis 73). Furthermore, Lewis adds that “the great moral which reigns in Milton is…that Obedience to the will of God makes men happy and that Disobedience makes them miserable… If you can’t be interested in that, you can’t be interested in Paradise Lost” (Lewis 71). Ultimately, Lewis argues that those who criticize Milton’s God simply “dislike God” in general (Lewis 130).
While Lewis opposed the Romantic critics, Empson in his work Milton’s God actually adopts the same vein of argument as Blake and Shelley, “who said that the reason why the poem is so good is that it makes God so bad” (Empson 13). Poetically, Empson appreciates Milton’s work and even his representation of God saying that “the poem is not good in spite of but especially because of its moral confusions,” but as a work of theology, Empson finds fault with Milton’s God (Empson 13). Though he agrees with Lewis that Milton’s God is “merely the traditional Christian God, to Empson, “the Christian God the Father…is the wickedest thing yet invented by the black heart of man” because of his sadistic treatment of his Son (Empson 25). Empson believed that for the Son to bargain with God in regards to his death on the cross, God first has to have a “craving to torture his Son” (Empson 246). Furthermore, the scene in Paradise Lost in which Satan is deluded by God into believing he has escaped, by his own power, from the Stygian lake, which ultimately leads to the Fall of Man, strengths Empson’s claim that God “was determined to make man fall” and also that he “intended to lead [Satan] into greater evil” (Empson 112, 42). In the end, Empson argues that the only way the poem can be read without a “growing horror” is to “reject its God” (Empson 25). To Fish, however, Empson is not a “fit reader” because he does not do justice to Paradise Lost, which is “in favor of the epic voice rather than an eagerness to put that voice on trial,” and if one were to consider Lewis’ comment, Empson’s argument becomes diluted because the only reason he attacks and rejects Milton’s God is because he already doesn’t like the Christian God, making him a biased reader as Fish would argue.
According to Peter Rudnytsky in his article “Freud as Milton’s God: Mapping the Patriarchal Cosmos in Psychoanalysis and Paradise Lost,” Lewis has “gained the upper hand over the Romantic scion” that is Empson, whose baseless attacks focus more on “the metaphysical truth claims of Christianity” than on Milton’s God, within this critical debate over Milton’s God (Rudnytsky 259). However, Rudnytsky suggests a way in which the debate could turn in Empson’s favor. Rather than focus on the obviously subjective, atheistic claims made by Empson against God, Rudnytsky says that Empson’s arguments about the character of God when looked at through a psychoanalytic framework hold ground against theologians like Lewis as well as critics like Fish. For instance, Empson’s comparison of God to a parent when he says, “A parent who ‘foresaw’ that the children would fall and then insisted upon exposing them to the temptation in view would be considered neurotic, if nothing worse; and this what we must ascribe to Milton’s God,” only holds water when looked at comparatively to John Rumrich’s work Matter of Glory: A New Preface to “Paradise Lost” as well as Bernard J. Paris’ Heaven and Its Discontents: Milton’s Characters in “Paradise Lost,” which focus more heavily on psychoanalysis (Empson 116).
In his work, Rumrich writes about the theme of glory in Milton’s work and says that “from psychoanalytic perspective, the usual emphasis of Milton scholars on oedipal issues of law, obedience, and punishment has resulted in the corresponding neglect of the epic’s primary, pervasive concern with negotiations between narcissistic longing for perfect recognition and the recalcitrance of an unresponsive reality” (Rumrich 4). Expanding on Rumrich’s idea of “narcissistic longing for perfect recognition,” Paris boldly proclaims that God is the narcissist, who “is extremely dependent on others,” and through his dependence, Heaven is unmasked as a “glory system” (Paris 43, 11). To explain the glory system, Paris uses the quote by Raphael – “freely we serve / because we freely love” – to argue that although Heaven appears to be based on freedom it is actually based on “coercion and the threat of punishment for disobedience; all that remains “is a choice between service freely rendered and service exacted against his will,” and to Paris, such a choice is “ominous when it is seen to be a manifestation of God’s narcissism” (Paradise 5: 539, Fish 18, Rudnytsky 269).
For further explanation, Paris draws a parallel from Shakespeare’s King Lear and the love test Lear gives to his daughters to God and his treatment of Lucifer and His Son because both father figures reward the child that gives them what they want. Not only a narcissistic parent that picks favorites among his children, Paris also argues that Milton’s God is an abusive parent while his children, i.e. Adam and Eve, exhibit self-blame, which is typically found in trauma victims. Under the guise of free will, Paris, in attending to Adam’s response after the fall in which he “absolve[s]” God and blames himself, argues that God invariably convinces humans that the fall is their fault when in actuality it is God who caused the events that led to their fall from innocence. A quote by Donna Orange clearly expounds on Paris’ argument: “‘[trauma] always included two moments if it were to become pathogenic” the original shocking repetitive abuse or neglect’ – God’s series of actions that lead to the Fall – ‘followed by the disavowal, hypocrisy, and rejection both by the perpetrators and by others to who the devastated child might have turned’ – the brainwashing of Adam and Eve by God and his deputies into believing that they are the guilty ones’” (Orange 79, Rudnytsky 272). In using Paris’ psychoanalysis of God’s character, who he considers an abusive father figure, Empson’s original rejection of Milton’s God as being good turns the table on Lewis’ argument, at least in Rudnytsky’s opinion.
The other critical debate that interests Rudnytsky focuses on Fish versus A. J. A. Waldock, who like Empson was labeled an Anti-Miltonist. While Lewis and Empson argued on the basis of whether or not Milton succeeded in “justifying the ways of God to man,” Fish and Waldock focus their attention on the issue of whether or not Paradise Lost is a consistent or self-contradictory piece of poetry. To Waldock, Adam’s decision to fall with Eve induces “two incompatible responses” – to believe that Adam did both right and wrong – but for Fish, these conflicting responses are consistent with Milton’s intention by positing that Milton expects his readers to view the conflict “in a context that would resolve a troublesome contradiction and allow him to reunite with an authority who is a natural ally against the difficulties of the poem” (Waldock 56, Fish 47). Fish argues that the poem can only be read as inconsistent, as Waldock argues when he points out the clash between Adam’s love for Eve and his obedience to God, if it is read “from a point of view that excludes God,” and Fish, as a reader response critic, claims that such a reading is a fault of “the distorted perception of the reader rather than in the flawless design of the poem” because no clash can exist when readers align themselves with God’s point of view (Fish 264, Rudnytsky 257). While Waldock’s emphasis on the structural contradictions that he deemed to be defects appear convincing, Rudnytsky argues that a stalemate exists between the two debaters because Waldock’s claim cannot assail Fish’s declaration that all those who oppose him are simply fallen readers.
Much in the same way that he used psychoanalytic theory to support Empson’s argument, Rudnytsky suggests that Waldock’s argument may trump his opposition so long as it is viewed through a theoretical framework. Using Kenneth Burke, Waldock’s argument moves away from the theological approach to God and towards the logological approach, or in other words the rhetorical and narrative approach that focuses on the way in which God is presented in Paradise Lost rather than on the metaphysical claims of truth connected to Christianity. In essence, Burke’s logology acts to highlight the “inescapable contradiction[s]” Waldock argued about but was unable to clearly explain, such as the conflict between the God’s foreknowledge and the notion that Adam and Eve possess free will (Rudnytsky 256). To elucidate, Burke shows how free will cannot exist from a logological perspective:
Theologically, Adam could have chosen not to sin, he could have said yes to God’s thou-shalt-not. But logologically, Adam necessarily sinned. For if he had chosen not to sin, the whole design of the Bible would have been ruined…Logologically, to say that Adam didn’t have to sin would be like saying that Oedipus didn’t have to kill his father and marry his mother, except that in the case of Ada, it looks like more of a choice. (Burke 252).
In other words, Burke is arguing that if considered a narrative then the story of the fall and the idea that Adam had a choice is nothing but an illusion because the reader knows the outcome in advance as it must match the “whole design of the Bible.” The logology and theology are at odds with one another because the narrative structure of the poem requires that the reader turn a blind eye to the hegemonic theology and entertain the notion of free will. Like Empson who found difficulty accepting the passage of Satan escaping from the Stygian lake by his own will, Waldock cannot accept the paradoxical line, “the will / And high permission of all-ruling Heaven,” or the line, “with reiterated crimes he might / Heap on himself damnation, while he sought / Evil to others” (Paradise 1:210-215). To Waldock, this scene is not an example of free will but rather it shows that only by God’s permission can action take place, and in accordance with Burke’s theory, the narrative has to match the Biblical narrative so ultimately the notion that Satan has a choice in what he does is foolish. Yet despite this logological attack on free will, Lewis and Fish both ascribe to the Augustinian idea that “though God has made all creatures good He foreknows that some will voluntarily make themselves bad and also foreknows the good use which He will then make of the badness” (Lewis 67). This debate then reaches an impasse resembling the rabbit-duck paradigm as Rudnytsky argues that Paradise Lost can be approached either theologically or logologically but not both simultaneously (Rudnytsky 263).
Like Rudnytsky’s conclusion that Milton’s God can be either good or bad depending on which perspective the reader chooses – theology or logology in regards to free will – Samuel Fallon in his essay “Milton’s Strange God: Theology and Narrative Form in Paradise Lost” argues that “positive theology demands negative poetry,” which is based on Joseph Fletcher’s theological poem, which incidentally left out any mention of God in it, because to Fletcher, in accordance to William Ames Calvinistic belief, one’s “understanding of divine action is a convenient illusion” (Fallon 34). So instead of focusing on the issue of free will versus predestination that was the central conflict of the debate between Lewis/Fish and Empson/Waldock, Fallon focuses on the incompatibility of God’s immutability and his ability to act – can God act if he is unchanging? Is there any point in trying to justify the ways of God to man as Milton did? For Fletcher and Ames, the answer is no, evident by Fletcher’s avoidance of bringing God into narrative form, which would require bringing an eternal and infinite God into temporal punctuality, but Fallon, focusing on Milton’s narrative, particularly the relationship between God the Father and his Son, attempts to understand how an eternal being can enter into a temporal world. Even Milton, within his more methodical systematic theology of De Doctrina Christiana, addresses this conflict when he says, “Admittedly, God is always described or outlined not as he really is but in such a way as will make him conceivable to us. Nevertheless, we ought to form just such a mental image of him as he, in bringing himself within the limits of out understanding, wishes us to form” (Doctrina 6:133). In other words, narrative, according to Milton himself, will never accurately depict God as he truly is, but regardless, Milton attempts to explain the metaphysical issue of God acting in time in his epic poem through his depiction the relationship between Father and Son. For instance, in Book 10, when the Son descends to earth to dispense punishment to Adam and Eve, his distinction as the Son is replaced with “the more ambiguous and expansive God,” whereas in heaven the distinction is clearly made between the Father and the Son distinguishing them as two different entities, but on earth they merge to become one (Fallon 41). By losing the distinction, Milton can keep the Father “safely beyond this world” (Fallon 42). The issue appears not only in Book 10 but throughout the poem as it highlights the Father’s ineffability by instead describing the Son as seen in Book 3, “Beyond compare the Son of God was seen / Most glorious, in him all his Father shone / Substantially expressed, and in his face / Divine compassion visibility appeared” (Paradise 3:138-41). In this scene, the Son is turned into the sign of the Father, referencing William Shullenburger’s argument of structural linguistics in regards to this filial relationship. As Fallon argues, the Son acts first as the signifier, or the representative, of the Father and then slowly guides him into self-expression removing him from “inaccessible limbo” (Fallon 43).
To explain himself, Fallon references the Father’s speech, the Son’s plea, and the angel’s hymn in Book 3. Starting with the initial speech by the Father, Fallon reminds his readers that the Father, who despite his thundering presence, is not understood by his angels as they only grasp an “ambrosial fragrance” and a “[s]ense of new joy ineffable diffused” (PL 3:135, 137). However, once the Son engages the Father and acts as mediator by redirecting the speech away from the Father’s “dry logic” not understood by the angels towards a plea to save humanity, the Father responds more fluidly with a prophetic story to assure man’s salvation seen in lines 3:175-82 with the dialogue eventually ending more smoothly than his first speech as the angels sing; through the Son, the Father is “coax[ed]…into personality, into sociability, into narrative” (Fallon 43-44). Without the Son to mediate though, the Father’s words are lost in translation evident when he honors the Son, which ends in disaster as it is the moment that leads to Satan’s rebellion; ultimately, the Father needs the Son. Furthermore, Fallon addresses the angels themselves by calling them unreliable narrators because like humans they are “locked in time and place” and are “attempting to understand the events they have just witness, to make sense of this God and his Son…they are liable to misread God” (Fallon 49). The angels too in the way they refer to the Son reinstates the hierarchy of the Father as superior to the Son, in their hymn on lines 3:372-415, as they continually follow their praise of the Son with prepositions referencing the Father. Despite the Son who is the one hurling the thunderbolts, for instance, the Father is actually credited with praise – “He heaven of heavens and all the powers therein / By thee created, and by thee three down” (Paradise 3:390-91). These prepositional phrases – “He by thee” and “Son of they Father” – are the “only way to keep the Father in the story. The action belongs to the Son” (Fallon 51).
Even though Fallon reveals how the Father, by means of his Son, interacts with his creation through dialogue, he addresses how the Father still exists outside of the poem’s narrative by pointing out how “an immutable God cannot become human or die,” making him appear vulnerable, even impotent, in comparison to the Son, which reveals the structural problem unavoidable within the narrative – “the limited sphere of action in which the Father can move” (Fallon 45). He cannot do what the Son or Satan can do, which is “match the story’s progression with any growth of his own;” he is not a dynamic character making him uninteresting to readers, who can more easily sympathize with Satan or the Son as they are better equipped for narrative (Fallon 47). After comparing the dynamic and static status of the characters, Fallon draws his conclusion:
[God] resists narrative expression, and even when the Son gradually leads him into it, his entrance remains in many ways hollow. He never quite belongs, and is never completely understood either by his angelic audiences within the poem or by his readers outside of it. Ultimately, it is not hard to see how this metaphysical remoteness could be translated into ethical estrangement, into personal coldness and indifference. (Fallon 47)
Finally, Fallon finishes with the statement that “God is, if not inexpressible, better left unexpressed” because “God fails narrative as much as narrative fails God” (Fallon 52).
Whereas most critics thus far have tended to see Milton’s theological and poetic impulses as mutually antagonistic, believing that the poem’s theology makes God attractive and Satan unattractive, while the poem’s poetry does the opposite, Joel Slotkin, on the other hand, in his article “Poetic Justice: Divine Punishment and Augustinian Chiaroscuro in Paradise Lost,” argues that these elements – the theology and poetry of Milton’s poem – work together to create the dual character of God because as structuralism teaches, something is only understood by its opposite. To support his argument, Slotkin uses aesthetics, primarily sinister aesthetics, as well as the Augustinian chiaroscuro, “the fusion of light and dark,” to analyze God’s character, in effect “presenting divine punishment and the infernal as a source of aesthetic pleasure” so as to “grant God some of the appeal of a Renaissance literary villain” (Slotkin 101). Essentially, Slotkin’s aim aligns with Milton’s ultimate purpose; he wants to justify the ways of God, especially God’s justification of the existence of evil and to first achieve this Slotkin references Milton’s De Doctrina to create a theological baseline of what God’s relationship with evil is. To summarize, Milton believes in the Augustinian concept previously summarized by Lewis, which is that God creates good but foreknows that some will choose to be bad – a badness that he also foreknows how to make good. Additionally, within De Doctrina, Milton also makes the claim that God’s providence governs both evil and good occurrences, and he clearly “distinguishes between the evil that God permits”, which is “malum culpæ,” the evil of crime, and “the evil that God causes,” which is “malum pœnæ,” the evil of punishment (Slotkin 103).
Upon describing Milton’s theological standpoint on the existence of divine evil, Slotkin moves on to explain how Milton’s theology fits within sinister aesthetics by labeling God as a “sinister allegorist” because he “afflicts his creations with punishments (malum pœnæ) that are horrible representation of their own evil for artistic purposes, namely to delight and instruct heavenly and human audiences” (Slotkin 106). So by punishing evil with evil, Milton’s God falls into the Augustinian chiaroscuro as he possesses elements of both light and dark, evident by his creation of both heaven and hell. Even within heaven itself, Raphael says that God elicits from his angels a “grateful vicissitude” as he alternates between day and light – “(For we have also our evening and our morn, / We ours for change delectable, not need)” – which because of its normative aesthetic variety not its practicality gives pleasure (PL 6:8, 5:628-29). As for hell, God designs it using the same chiaroscuro elements but with a sinister twist as he alters between ice and fire; because Satan attempted to pervert God’s heavenly design, God punishes him with an inverted “hellish” heaven – the punishment must befit the crime. As they are his creations, heaven and hell reveal the light and dark qualities belonging to God that fall into both normative aesthetics as well as sinister aesthetics, which is exemplified by the Son, who is Milton’s chiaroscuro vision of God as he is both savior and punisher (Slotkin 112). Though Slotkin incorporates the normative aesthetic virtue of God’s character, he devotes more attention to the sinister because it acts as both a descriptive and proscriptive medium that teaches readers the importance of “internal worship” (D 6:656). In the end, Slotkin concludes that Milton’s God can be best understood by his aesthetically appealing darkness that balances his light, by his chiaroscuro combination of sinister as well as normative, and lastly by his use of divine punishment (Slotkin 120). These three aspects of God’s character that Slotkin highlights show that “Milton’s own use of the sinister is not his poetic self rebelling against his religious self, but rather his poetic self enabling his internal worship” (Slotkin 120).
In the end, Paradise Lost is, for some, such as Empson, a great work of literature lacking in theological truths, and for others like Waldock, Milton’s work is a poetic fail riddled with contradictions. To these men, Fallon concludes that a positive theology cannot exist within narrative. Then there are the other critics like Lewis and Fish as well as Slotkin who find no fault with the theology in Milton’s epic poem. So whether analyzed on the basis of theology, theory (psychoanalysis and structuralism), or aestheticism, the character of God within John Milton’s Paradise Lost is, to this day, an irresolvable issue.
Blake, William. The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. New York: Oxford University Press, 1956. Print. 210–215
Burke, Kenneth. The Rhetoric of Religion: Studies in Logology. Berkeley: University of California, 1970. Print.
Empson, William. Milton’s God. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981. Print.
Fallon, Samuel. “Milton’s Strange God: Theology and Narrative Form in Paradise Lost.” ELH 79.1 (2012): 33-57. Project MUSE. Web. 16 Dec. 2015.
Fish, Stanley E. Surprised by Sin: The Reader in “Paradise Lost.” Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971. Print.
Lewis, C. S. A Preface to “Paradise Lost.” London: Oxford University Press, 1971. Print
Milton, John. De Doctrina Christiana. See The Complete Prose Works of John Milton. Ed. Don Wolfe, Vol. 8. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1953. Print.
—. Paradise Lost. ed. Alastair Fowler. 2nd ed. Harlow: Longman, 1998. Print.
Orange, Donna M. The Suffering Stranger: Hermeneutics for Everyday Clinical Practice. New York: Routledge, 2011. Print.
Paris, Bernard J. Heaven and Its Discontents: Milton’s Characters In Paradise Lost. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 2010. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 24 Dec. 2015.
Rudnytsky, Peter L. “Freud as Milton’s God: Mapping the Patriarchal Cosmos in Psychoanalysis and Paradise Lost.” American Imago 71.3 (2014): 253-287. Project MUSE. Web. 16 Dec. 2015.
Rumrich, John P. Matter of Glory: A New Preface to “Paradise Lost.” Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1987. Print
Shelley, Percy B. A Defence of Poetry. In R.B. Noyes (ed.), English Romantic Poetry and Prose New York: Oxford University Press, 1956. Print. 1097-1112.
Slotkin, Joel. “Poetic Justice: Divine Punishment and Augustinian Chiaroscuro in Paradise Lost.” Milton Quarterly 38.2 (2004): 100-27. Wiley Online Library. Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Web. 16 Dec. 2015.
Waldock, A.J.A. “Paradise Lost” and Its Critics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966. Print.


Single Reality. Science is a way to look at reality. Reality is observed, if possible measured, in a way that is as objective and reproducable as possible. There is only a single physical reality.
Objective Observations put into Scientific Language. Science creates languages to describe the observations. Either new words are created or old words get a more specific, well-defined meaning. There is no consistent language of science but many different jargons serving different parts of science.
Theories for Predictions. Science creates theories that put observations into a useful order of cause-effect relationships. These theories may allow to understand phenomena, but - more important - to make predictions that can be compared to reality. Only at this stage science becomes applicable to economy or society.
Science Society. Science works within an academic society according to certain rules and values. Original publications are of primary importance to work up the hierarchy. Famous universities, renowned journals, scientific networks, access to fundings play an important role (in the end the Nobel Price). Authority and reputation are the cornerstones of this system.
"In order to talk about the nature of the universe and to discuss questions such as whether it has a beginning or an end, you have to be clear about what a scientific theory is. I shall take the simpleminded view that a theory is just a model of the universe or a restricted part of it, and a set of rules that relate quantities in the model to observations that we make. It exists only in our mind and does not have any other reality (whatever that might mean). A theory is a good theory if it satisfies two requirements: It must accurately describe a large class of observations on the basis of a model that contains only a few arbitrary elements, and it must make definite predictions about the result of future observations. For example, Aristotle's theory that everything was made out of four elements, earth, air, fire and water, was simple enough to qualify, but it did not make any definite predictions. On the other hand, Newton's theory of gravity was based on an even simpler model, in which bodies attracted each other with a force that was proportional to a quantity called their mass and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. Yet it predicts the motions of the sun, the moon, and the planets to a high degree of accuracy.
Any physical theory is always provisional, in the sense that it is only a hypothesis: you can never prove it. No matter how many times the results of experiments agree with some theory, you can never be sure that the next time the result will not contradict the theory. On the other hand, you can disprove a theory by finding even a single observation that disagrees with the predictions of the theory. As philosopher of science KarlPopper has emphasized, a good theory is characterized by the fact that it makes a large number of predictions that could in principle be disproved or falsified by observation. Each time new experiments are observed to agree with the predictions the theory survives, and our confidence in it is increased; but if ever a new observation is found to disagree, we have to abandon or modify the theory. At least that is what is supposed to happen, but you can always question the competence of the person who carried out the observation."
Stephen W. Hawking, in "A Brief History of Time", p. 11
The quotation serves the purpose to show how on of the greatest living scientist looks at science and how naturally the view of the scientific process by KarlPopper is accepted as appropriate. -- HelmutLeitner
Science is at least broken up into:
Each of these investigate a different domain with different characteristics that require different methods to gain new insight into them.
Science is measured against reliability and validity. Reliability is how likely the result can be reproduced by another person. Validity is how closely the result corresponds to the situation at hand. The natural sciences have the easiest time of doing this since their frame of investigation is nearly uniform for all observers and it doesn't change that much over time. Thus, two groups doing the same experiment in different locations at different times should get the same result. Further, the results of an experiment do not significantly affect future investigation. That is, natural science is nearly mutually exclusive.
That isn't the case with social sciences. The frame of investigation varies for all observers, and it changes frequently over time. Worse, the results of an experiment can significantly change the results of future experiments. If we discover that purple people run slower than green people, purple people may be inspired to train, and eventually they as a group may come to run faster than green people.
Natural sciences also benefit from subject-object dichotomy, since it is essentially solipsist. The observer, being humans, cannot gain direct access to the frame of investigation. The external world is a substratum to the social or cognitive world, and thus nothing we think can change it. While it is frequently the case that scientists collectively hold some ridiculous conceit for some period of time due to PeerPressure and SocialNormalization, eventually the Truth (i.e. the external frame) will assert itself after enough observations. The nice thing about the external world is that at certain sizes, energies, and speeds it happens to be consistent and coherent according to Classical Logic (or, rather, Classical Logic is a reflection of the natural universe at a human-oriented frame of reference), and thus it is difficult to hold an illusion for too long before things crumble apart.
The social sciences do not operate like this. First, the observer is intimately a subject in the linguistic system that formulates the frame of investigation. While there are techniques to limit the degree to which the observer transfers information into the socio-linguistic network (society) she is investigating, fundamentally the very act of observation can transfer transformative information into the network. Unobtrusive observation fares better, but even then the observer's modelling system is affected by the frame being observed. Note that Classical Logic does not change by slamming particles together, but a social scientist's stereotypes of the situation might.
As a subject in the network, then, sometimes it's best to just accept this and invert the need to monkey the subject-object dichotomy from the natural science. The researcher can become a full and active participant in the society being observed, even attempting to actively change it in some radical way. The reliability may be low, but the validity may be high. Or not. We're talking about storytelling.
For what it's worth, Science has not reconciled this problem. The need for Science to be repeatably testable and means that its investigations should not modify the observed frame. Politics is like a science that is testable, but not repeatably so. Still, we do learn things over time about how to run a society, but we do not know how to do this as efficiently as we investigate the natural world.
Not Humble. Science tends to overestimate its own achievements and importance. In building authority, the certainty of knowledge often becomes misrepresented. A scientific "best guess" or "state of the art" easily becomes a false "truth". Politics and economy request "the right answers" for their money in exchange. Let's forget that most of science is built on simplification. Humbleness doesn't fit in.
Not Open. Science tends to diminish the reality of phenomena that are hard to observe or measure. Love, joy, beauty or consciousness have no equivalent theories or terms in science. So science and its application - technology - are basically unable to produce joy or beauty. The problem is not so much, that science can't cope with these, but that we have lost the confidence to be able to judge in terms of these superior values. For example: modern architecture strives for new technical effects, not that people have joy, perceive beauty or feel at home.
Not Freedom of Will. Science works primarily in a deterministic cause-effect thinking model. The natural scientific model of a human being or mind is that of a machine. This is the case, even though we know and experience every day, that it is different. Deterministic thinking is - although we have the picture of "clockworks versus clouds" - dominating our modeling the world in a way that hinders to see and solve problems correctly. How shall a society of free people be built, when we are effectively disabled to think about what "free" means.
Not Understandable. Science tends to work in an analytical way towards miniscule details, losing the big picture. This is a problem from the scientific system. It is much easier to specialize on a detail and observe something new (and publish) than to find new ways to synthesize a picture (and be accepted and publish). Although the big pictures are much more needed to make science accessable and useful to the public.
No Spirit. Sciencist often falsely assume that an objective reality is all that we can understand and know.
Our understanding is naturally limited by what the brightest minds can understand, but the second part is even more problematic because it means that science will not even consider external influences which are outside of the whole. So, for example, the notion of a creator of the universe that exists outside the universe is unscientific, because there is no possible evidence that could prove (even to a small degree) the existence of such a creator. Science simply says nothing about such a creator and many people mistake this silence for negation - worse, some people turn to science searching for an assent to their beliefs about the creator (or a lack thereof) when really the question is not a scientific one at all. These persons are asking a question in the wrong language, and, unsurprisingly, tend to come up with nonsense for an answer.
One interesting idea I've heard about Science (capital S) is that it is instrinically Protestant, specifically Calvinist, which is why it doesn't translate well to other cultures. -- SunirShah
This idea is highly questionable. The Muslim world led the world in science during Islam's golden age. There have been many Jews in scientific research. What the Jewish and Muslim cultures had in common were strong rationalist traditions. Indian mathematicians discovered ideas in math and astronomy long before Luther. AdinaLevin
My current thoughts on science are here [science] but I am not sure if this stuff is OnTopic and also it might cut a little close to philosophy of religion. Incidentally, don't get put off by copyright disclaimer meatball terms are fine. --AndrewCates
Classical logic is incomplete. It only works in certain frames, particularly discrete and mutually exclusive frames. There are other logics, like something I call the Logic of Flows. -- SunirShah
Do you mean that we are too focused on the moment that we miss the process? And, in fact, our language is very poor in describing processes in any other way then as a sequence of events. -- Gideon FormerContributor?
Exactly. We focus on events out of time and in "measurable" stasis, rather than seeing the world as fluid. Hence an obsession with TheIndividual in 19th and 20th century Western culture which is a, erm, logical end result of Greek classical logic. Other societies do not have such an atemporal viewpoint, but rather take a LongView?. Of course, you might get into Eastern Fatalism as well. The advantage of only thinking about the next quarter and never looking back is that things are always capable of changing. The disadvantage is that things can get worse. The only LongNow memory we have to stave ourselves against destruction is ArchitecturalCollaboration? (i.e. putting a rail on a cliff's edge) or other things embedded in an external frame, which may include a PrintCulture? TextAsObject? frame (i.e. a LegalSolution).
The difference would be trying to control each and every single spammer by IP address or content rather than looking at spam as a statistical problem of flows. If we create an opportunity, out of the mass of AnIndividuals, there will be some pressure to exploit that opportunity. If we close that opportunity, that mass of individuals will be blocked. If we make that opportunity expensive, a smaller number of those individuals will try. At some point, the level is tolerable, like dust in a room. It's can never be zero, but we want it to be tolerable. We do not live in a hermetically sealed room, but instead we close the doors & windows and dust. The SurgeProtector is about this as well; block major energy bursts so that TheCollective can get the rest. Classical logic is incapable of dealing with this, which is why statistics was invented. (cf. http://www.paulgraham.com/spam.html)
The interesting thing about decomposing things down over and over again, at a certain point you have so much data you can only analyze it in a logic of flows (i.e. statistically). PostModern science is about that, and that is partially why it investigates communities rather than individuals. And a lot of that has to do with the growth of computers in the investigation of science since there was enough power to number crunch vast reems of data, and thus the impetus to collect it. At least that's the case in the social sciences. -- SunirShah
I sometimes wonder how science would have developed if we would have had fast computers in the 17th century. I guess our mathematics would look very differently: we would have invested much more effort in to algoritmics instead I guess. This means in a sense that science is a subjective view influenced heavily by language, history and chance, and is in fact not an objective view of the world. -- Gideon FormerContributor?
I like some line of thoughts Andrew follows on his webpage. He talks about the "explanatory power" and "predictive power" of science. One could add "descriptive power" as a first stage. This - together with noting the power-element of science - could create another view onto science. -- HelmutLeitner
Science should not have dogmas, it should have theories. Science should not have assumptions, it should have hypotheses. Both hypotheses and theories are used to guide exploration of the unknown, but they are always tentative and open to refutation and redesign. Science is a process by which a community of information gathering and processing units (observers) cooperate to produce representations (models) of physical systems and understanding of physical reality. We have no way of knowing what physical reality includes until we explore.
Carl Sagan took seriously the idea that there might be a creator or intelligent designer. His novel Contact explores the issue of the form that might be taken by evidence for a creator of our universe. Francis Crick took seriously the idea that life on Earth could have originated somewhere off of Earth. It is possible to hypothesize that intelligent beings from another planet have in the past intervened in the development of life on Earth, possibly creating new forms of terrestrial life. We simply have no existing data to support these creation hypotheses.
If mathematics is the queen of science, physics must be the king. It has been a common sociological phenomenon that many physicists, ignorant of other sciences, assume that the features of physical science define all of science. In particular, some physicists have made a dogma out of the idea that science MUST make predictions. Scientists from other branches of science (such as Ernst Mayr) have made to point that prediction is of little importance to some scientific endeavors. Some aspects of the universe are worthy of scientific study but do not readily lend themselves to prediction. Physicists often dismiss such scientific disciplines as butterfly collecting, but that does not stop other scientists from exploring topics such as the diversity and evolution of life. -- JohnSchmidt
Maybe we do have data to support these and other hypotheses, but are we limited by our cultural, philosophical, or religious bias from understanding them? It's like not being able to see a reality which is stranger then we are able to imagine. A reality for which we don't even have the proper words and syntax to express our ideas in. This is a human limitation, not a scientific limitation.
Just look at the hypotheses of the earth going around the sun. All the evidence was there for many centuries and still it did not fit the scientific framework of the time. When facts don't fit the framework, the facts are filtered out, while the framework remains. How is a scientist going to DefendAgainstCulturalBias? of her time?
[There are things you can not say] because they break the framework most powerful people are working on. Frameworks which they have build their whole careers upon. Often it takes generations for frameworks to change. Heretics are often punished, only a few hundred years ago one could be put to death for expressing the idear in the previous paragraph. Only much later, when the frameworks have changed, will their genius be recognised.
Science to me is no more then a idea: A general methode of investigation. I don't belief any more in Science (with a big S) or in scientific proof. It's all just interpretation based on filtered facts, while not all filters are known. The Truth is only one of many truths, the truth as we see it today; Tomorrow is another day, maybe it will bring it's own truth? -- Gideon FormerContributor?
This is a remarkably anti-science screed (not the discussion afterwards) for a page with a very neutral title and fairly neutral introduction. "Science is a way of describing the world....SUITABLE FOR JOYLESS EGOTISTS WHO HATE BEAUTY AND WISH TO DESTROY FREEDOM AND UNDERSTANDING." Unless someone wants to move this to WhatsWrongWithScience?, I will begin making additions to the top portion of the page to describe the enormous benefits of classical logic, mathematics, and scientific inquiry. -- JasonCorley
You really don't have to shout. You have a good point, although it might be more WhatsWrongWithCurrentScienceCulture?.
Science as a tool has enormous benefits. However, no tool is useful for all things and one needs extreme skill to handle any tool. Especially a hard to use and powerful tool like science. Most of the problems noted above have nothing to do with science, but with the sad fact that most scientist don't really have the skill and sophistication to handle the power of this tool. Most scientist suck at science. Human nature may not be compatible.
Maybe we could redefine Science? Maybe this should be the number one task of every scientist. What is there beyond science? It there some tool which is more powerful and more suitable then science? Maybe we are looking for a new kind of science? Current science has its roots in the renaissance, maybe this is TheSecondRenaissance? where we find ourselves in need of a better tool then good old science? -- Gideon FormerContributor?
Jason, Gideon, I wonder why you see this page primarily negative. Science has positive and negative aspects and both are represented. Science is a way to look at the world and as many people as possible (everybody) should understand the fundamentals, the methods and the limits. There are no stronger tools for the same purpose, but we can use the tools more skillfully. -- HelmutLeitner
Helmut, the good point I was referring to was that idea that maybe part of the things on this page should get their own page. I have no problem with science in itself nor with this page as such, just that some parts are maybe a little off-topic.
I'm not sure that there are no stronger tools then science, but maybe these tools could augment science instead of replacing it? I tend to agree that we need more people to understand the fundamentals and principles of science. We need to promote [Scholarship].
The science in scholarship are the principles and fundamental concepts of investigation, research and objective peer review. This can be augmented to deal with new subjects of research when the time comes. This is the kind of science which should be taught and explained to as much people as posible. Scholarship does not enforce a framework upon its users, it allows the freedom to augment and extend it when needed.
There is however another kind of Science, the popular cultural framework of natural philosophy which claims to contains The One and Only Scientific Truth. It has little to nothing to do with the science from the previous paragraph. It will be very damaging to humanity if this where to become a new (false) religion where the framework of thought and adherents to the opinions of some elite (dogma) are more important than objective research and honest facts.
We should really have two words for these concepts. Maybe we should use ScientificMethod?  for the fundamental principles and concepts, but use NaturalPhilosophy?  when we talk about the current populair framework? This distinction would clean up much of the confusion of the page. -- Gideon FormerContributor?
I like the idea that science need some kind of update. Modern science started in a time when most people could not have direct access to the activity of scientists. It is now possible to put every working scientist on the internet. Maybe if all scientific activity took place in the public domain in a open source fashion, there would be less of a division between the world of science and the rest of society. Everyone agrees that science can have powerful impacts on society. Maybe this power needs to be regulated by making science (particularly science funded by tax dollars) more open to public review. -- JohnSchmidt
Let us also not forget that the FirstRenaissance? caused a reading culture to emerge, perhaps this SecondRenaissance? will cause a scholarship culture to emerge? Like then it would have been hard to imagine a world where most (if not all) people could read. In turn it maybe hard for us to imagine a world of scholars, just try it. This could however be a posible outcome. Both blogs and wiki seem to point in this direction. (This is one of the themes of meatball it seems).
This will change scholarship and the whole concept of reading/writing; no longer will it be author to audience but instead it will become peers to peers (notice the plural). Likewise science will chance in the process, it may return to its root meaning (latin: knowledge). -- Gideon FormerContributor?
As I am beginning to edit, I am noticing that the "problems with science" section appears to be full of, well, how can I put this diplomatically - falsehoods. Alternately, if they are not falsehoods, they are not actually talking about science. "Not humble"? Compared to what other human endeavour? A method of seeing the world that depends almost entirely on carefully carving out a piece of ignorance from a vast sea of uncertainty is not humble? It says "A scientific "best guess" or "state of the art" easily becomes a false "truth"." A) in what universe? and B) even if it did, how is that conceivably a fault that can be laid at science's feet, when it's a tremendously unscientific view?
The bit about modern architecture being sterile and technical and completely ignoring emotion and anything not easily quantifiable also appears factually incorrect. I just picked a random architectural journal from Google, [Architecture News], and on the front page at this moment (31 Jul 2005) is an article about a Penn Station renovation that is aimed at keeping the famous sky-lit appearance of the historical (and certainly emotion-laden) New York landmark, an article about reclaiming an industrially blighted San Mateo area as a public park with essentially the whole article given over to examining how to allude to nature in every piece of the architectural design of the park, and, one click away in the "Design and Trends" section is a piece entirely about emotion - an analysis of the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin. This is just with a couple of clicks. I am sure that an architectural professional could tell us far more about the subject than just these few blurbs.
My cognitive science knowledge is limited, but I can tell you that even with the tiny introductory course that I took several years ago, I know that the statement "The natural scientific model of a human being or mind is that of a machine." is one hundred percent incorrect. That is not even remotely close to where cognitive science is, or at least how it is taught. And the question "How shall a society of free people be built, when we are effectively disabled to think about what "free" means?" again seems to be talking about something other than science altogether. If we can't think about what 'free' means, how is that science's fault? How is that a "problem with science"?
The only thing I could find to salvage at all is the very last of the "problems", regarding science's completeness. I've done what I can to fix it, but there really is a lot to do up there and I'm wondering, given the direction the discussion is going (more fruitful, less about science) if the page should just be split up and started over. -- JasonCorley
Jason: Replace natural scientific with natural philosophical and that statement about the mind as a machine is correct. Lack of completeness is not really a problem, because we barely know al the questions to ask so how could be ever have all the answers? Depending on where you are in this page the word science can mean anything: ScientificMethod?, NaturalPhilosophy?, ScientificCommunity? or AcademicCommunity? and more. It does not really answer the question WhatIsScience? very well.
What I think has happend, is that one or some of the pages which point here had a discussion (I may have participated) which caused this page to be written with a minor bias towards the subject. At that time we did not realize that our usage of the word science was very broad and under-defined. I think the time has come to resolve this with a compleet rewrite. But first I want to read some of the pages which point here to understand the usage of WhatIsScience. -- Gideon FormerContributor?
An excellent resource is Latour's Science in Action, which I'm building a summary & roadmap on SocialConstructionOfScience. -- SunirShah
I think the page is pretty good as it is (no wonder, I wrote a large number of the initial paragraphs). It doesn't claim to talk about the science community and it doesn't. A sociological perception of science won't help much, because it contains increased constructivism. Suddenly the importance of "controversy" and "rhetoric" comes in. This is not how science is done or advanced. It comes afterwards, when you want recognition. It's human cover.
If I remember correctly, WhatIsScience was originally a reaction to the question whether Meatball does scientific work and what that means in this context. In my opinion it means: to observe, to explore, to create language, to exchange experiences, to build models, to look whether the models produce useful results. Natural science show best how this may work, it has the most valuable results, it is the ideal that others try to follow.
Costin noted in private communication, criticising pages like WhatIsScience, that a lot of world view topics and politics crept into Meatball recently. I think this is true, one can observe it. I'm not sure, whether this is good or bad. Obviously, these topics are interesting to Meatball's current active members, so this content is accepted. It probably wouldn't have been three years ago. This creates an inconsistency, especially if certain political statements are rejected. Suddenly the question turns up, whether MeatballWiki has a political color - it would then cease to be like a society.
Science is also always under attack of political forces that want to exploit the term. Non-science wants to sell as science (for example Marxism). Politics constantly wants to buy science, for example to change perception (e. g. to deny global change of climate from air pollution). But in giving such examples, one becomes political at the same moment. This is the point to become realistic and simple, not philosophical, sociological and complex. -- HelmutLeitner
All this means that science has become overloaded with different and incompatible meanings which makes it a non-sense term in practice. Without a clear and neutral definition one can not use it anymore. This confusion only serves the people who want to exploit this term for their own agenda. Therefor I advised the use of different terms instead. For now I suggest that we refrain from rewriting until we come to some consensus about the meaning of science on this page. -- Gideon FormerContributor?
Gideon, perhaps you could put an alternative view side by side. Currently it's totally unclear to me, which direction this could lead. -- HelmutLeitner
I must confess that the potential problems section does not reflect what I expect science to be. Instead, it looks like a prejudice collection from people outside of science, or an analysis of the social effects of science. It is not at all a reflection of how I viewed myself while I studied biology, nor a reflection of what our professors seemed to believe. Perhaps we can just look at the first point in that list: Not Humble. How do I even start my argument when my experience indicates that is not true? There's no example for this point, so I can't criticise the interpretation or selection of the example. Should I post a counter-example? Should I cite Socrates? Talk about Popper? Maybe that's part of the frustration Gideon feels as well. -- AlexSchroeder
The problem relates to the title of the page vs. the content. "WhatIsScience" leads to invalid sentences like "Science tends to overestimate its own achievements and importance." 'Science' is not an actor, but a process, and it's not true that the process of Science leads inevitably to hubris. WhatIsScience is more accurately specified on SocialConstructionOfScience, but that only looks at it anthropologically rather than from the myths and ideals and objectives that motivate Science, which is probably more what this page ought to be. What's written here is more of a Social Criticism of Scientists, which is not very convincing in its current "Science is" form. -- SunirShah
Mmmh, maybe a language or perception problem? I'm not responsible for all points of the "potential problems" section, but for the majority. "potential" doesn't mean "always existing", it means "inherent", maybe "lurking below the surface". That people take their business more serious than it is, is a general problem, not a social construction. For the preacher his belief is most important, for the artist the culture, for the politician his political view, for the scientist his scientific truth, for the entrepreneur the money, most philosophers think their theories supreme, Plato thought he (the philosopher) should sit on the throne. Einstein wasn't humble when he said "God doesn't throw dice", obviously he felt to know about the nature of God (and he was wrong). Artifical Intelligence wasn't humble about its goals and ETAs. No scientist going for funding is humble or even realistic about what he will achieve. These problems are not everywhere, but they can be found regularly and they are not constructed but part of human nature or the systems. Just as I can state without doubt that "openness" is a potential problem of online communities. Maybe InherentProblemsOfScience? to avoid thinking that science is meant to be criticised unfairly. -- HelmutLeitner
I've been experimenting recently with avoiding the word "science". I still talk about the same things, but I substitute some other, more specific word than the generic "science" or "scientists", as suggested by Gideon. For example, "Physicists invented the atomic bomb". "Chemists synthesized aspirin". "Experimental physicists invented the transistor. Later, quantum physicists explained the principles of operation of the transistor." "Mechanical engineers invented the steam locomotive and Jell-O(TM)."
It helps me avoid pointless debates on the definition of terms. (Did "scientists" send a man to the moon, or was it "engineers"? Or perhaps "technologists"?) (Are the people who set up "political experiments" really scientists?)
But perhaps I'm succumbing to exactly the sort of "reductionist" thinking that AndrewCates warns about. -- DavidCary