ABSTRACT
To begin to talk about science without intending to dedicate an entire volume to its many subtleties and variations is perhaps folly. Nevertheless, the interplay between science and American herbalism is one of the hottest and most dangerous topics going and to leave it out of a synthesis of the field would render this discussion incomplete. As I mentioned in characterizing botanical medicine and holistic herbalism, the former depends upon the language of conventional biomedicine a great deal, and the latter struggles with being inclusive, allowing science and folk tradition to exist simultaneously. Each paradigm within American herbalism respects the idea of science as knowing by observing and documenting, but there is a strong objection and desire to leave behind some of the more negative qualities of an industrialized science: reliance on a mechanistic, reductionist framework rather than on a more dynamic, interconnected web (Capra, 1983); human as dominator with regard to ecology (Berry, 1988); and the move to squash or co-opt that which is competition (Whorton, 2002), to name a few. All herbalists have their position on the use, misuse, inclusion, or exclusion of science and hold onto it stridently, at times foregoing alliances that might serve to advance the community as a whole. The debate over science versus folklore—experimental versus experiential learning—has the strong potential to divide the herbal community into two irreconcilable halves.
