The whole system of agriculture of the Wakara is as carefully balanced, controlled and sophisticated as nature itself. Big Science, with its pesticide and fertiliser overkill seems clumsy and crude by comparison. The peasant farmer on the island of Ukarat is clearly a better, more responsible and more effective scientist than the highest-paid biotechnology researcher in any Palo Alto, Calif., lab. The relationship between Western science and Third World science is as crushing and exploitative as the relationship between rich and poor anywhere. This makes it hard, if not impossible for Western science to perceive the real needs of the Third World and act appropriately.
Tigers are hunters, deer the hunted.
The questions tigers put to their environment are different from the questions a deer puts to the same environment. And when tigers begin to speak in general terms about the future of animals, they obviously have in mind something quite different from the hopes of deer. This parable is also a metaphor for male and female science. Men dominate science, we know. And women have, on the whole, been exploited by and excluded from it.