Jeremy Narby (born in Montreal in 1959) has spent his life trying to reconcile scientific knowledge with the traditional knowledge of Amazonian peoples. This effort can be seen in two of his books: the recent “Ayahuasca, Tobacco, and the Quest for Knowledge” (2021) and the famous “The Cosmic Serpent,” where he attempts (and succeeds) to connect shamanic visions from various ancestral cultures with the double helix structure of DNA, first described in 1953.
Narby recently participated in The Onaya Project podcast, part of The Onaya Science, a project led by Dr. Simon Ruffel, a member of a new generation of researchers who have grown on the shoulders of giants like Narby. Ruffel shares with Narby the effort to build bridges between both knowledge systems: scientific and shamanic.
Here are some excerpts from Narby’s words:
“(…) When really I arrived at the point in which I considered that what the Amazonian peoples said had a validity comparable to scientific validity, and that they were not two entities completely different, the first feeling was that it flooded me with self-criticism. In other words, I myself had maintained the separation between the two. In the world in which we live, there is an abyss between science and indigenous knowledge, but I understood that I had collaborated in maintaining that abyss because I did not think that they really were at the same level. So it flooded me with a feeling of sadness; I had to set aside my previous vision of the world because I no longer believed in it. I no longer believed that rationalism had the monopoly on knowledge. On the contrary, its way of exercising that monopoly was to say: “We are the only valid system of knowledge”. I had subscribed to that, and I knew that I had to leave it behind. That was the first thing, and it was like something similar to mourning.”
“Molecular biologists and shamans are talking about the same reality, but from different points of view”
“I finished writing the book [‘The Cosmic Serpent’, 1998]. I knew what I was doing was building a bridge, and I wasn’t saying that shamanism was equivalent to molecular biology, but saying: ‘Look at all these things that shamans say here, and look at all these things that molecular biologists say, and how they align.’ They seem to be talking about the same reality, which is cellular life on Earth, of which we are part, and what’s beneath the surface, what you normally don’t see. But they’re approaching it from different points of view, and this is like camera angles: you see the game from one side of the field with the main camera angle, and then you can see the same action from the reverse camera angle and learn things from that other perspective.”
“I’m talking about bilingualism, not schizophrenia”
“Once I published my book, I started talking about it and began to say: ‘There are these two approaches that are compatible with each other.’ A French intellectual didn’t like the book at all, and said of it: ‘This book is threatening rationalism with schizophrenia.’ That really affected me. I thought: ‘No, I’m not threatening rationalism with schizophrenia.’ I pondered it and finally one day I thought: ‘I’m talking about bilingualism. It’s like when you can say things in one language, and if you speak another language, you can say things in that other language. Sometimes it doesn’t translate, but you can go back and forth most of the time.'”
“It’s usually the Western knowledge system that has the power to validate or refute indigenous knowledge”
“It’s not bilingualism, I’m talking about bi-cognitivism. That’s what I’m talking about. I didn’t use that word in ‘The Cosmic Serpent’, but that’s what I wanted to express. By analogy with bilingualism, you can be a rational, scientifically-oriented person who wants to know about the molecules inside plants, and that’s fine. Then you can take the same question and ask: ‘What would a shaman think about this? What would be their point of view?’ (…) I’m totally convinced that the way we progress as a species, in general, is by listening to each other and placing different knowledge systems on the same level, instead of putting one above the other, giving it the power to validate or refute the other.** And normally it’s the Western knowledge system that gets the power to validate or refute indigenous knowledge. But I’ve also encountered people who completely turn their backs on Western medicine and science and put indigenous knowledge on a pedestal. I think it’s important to learn from both, figure out where they fit and where they don’t. That’s how we’re going to progress and advance.”
Image: Amazon Frontline.
“Putting indigenous people on a pedestal instead of scientists is not the solution”
“(…) We don’t want to put anyone on a pedestal. Enough with pedestals. Putting indigenous people on a pedestal instead of scientists is not the solution either. But when it comes to administering ayahuasca, honestly, psychiatrists are in kindergarten. Today there are living people in the Amazon who are true masters. There aren’t millions of them, but there are certain people who have great knowledge. It’s not that psychiatrists should act like shamans, but I think if psychiatrists want to progress in how to administer ayahuasca for a good therapeutic effect, they should reflect on the fact that in the Amazon, when people ask if someone is a good master, one of the criteria is whether they sing well. ‘How many icaros do they have? What is the power of those icaros?’ This is really central. Psychiatrists probably aren’t going to start singing in the immediate future, but there’s something there: the human voice, its melody. Nowadays we hear about playlists, the Johns Hopkins playlist, people put on headphones and it’s all very technological. Okay, the psychiatrist has a playlist, but that’s not it. I think it’s worth meditating on the human touch, the human voice, and its power, its magic. There’s something there in terms of warm, acoustic human presence that’s conveyed in the act of singing, as anthropologists say. Maybe.”
The text also mentions that you can find the full episode of The Onaya Project podcast with Simon Ruffel and Jeremy Narby on Spotify.