“ What is new then? And, as often uttered, who says that the ancients were old-fashioned? Quite simply, there are different (or a plurality) of ways of knowing one-and-the-same single level of reality. (i.e., ways of being). That is why the epistemological questions (e.g., Indigenous, non-Western and Western ways of knowing) are secondary to the ontological questions (i.e., the way of reality).
I now quote a befittingly relevant passage from the text of the interesting article above, "As ways of knowing, Western and Indigenous Knowledge share several important and fundamental attributes. Both are constantly verified through repetition and verification, inference and prediction, empirical observations and recognition of pattern events."
In the case of Tonga, where both the quality and beauty and utility and functionality of things are merged in the creative process, as in the event of science as a special way of "knowing" the world, knowledge is theoretically critically but practically functionally gained in education as a psychological process by way of trial-and-error through experimentation, verification, observation and prediction.
By the way, the indigenous Tongan philosophy or theory of education parallels education in a scientific sense, when it involved a temporal-substantial, formal-substantial (and practical-functional) transformation of the human mind (and thinking), in dialectical ways, from vale, ignorance, to 'ilo, knowledge, to poto, skill, in that logical order of precedence.
From the newly-emerged indigenous Tongan ta-va philosophy / theory of reality, based on the affinity or proximity with Western concepts and practices "time" and "space," the fundamental dispute between ontology and epistemology is one between reality as "it is" and reality as we "know it."
The fundamental dispute is therefore not how we know what we know, nor where we know what we know, nor when we know what we know, nor why we know what we know; but rather what we really know (which is, in this case, reality)..
There is, it must be pointed out, no knowledge of and in itself; but rather it is always knowledge of reality. By the same token, knowledge is knowledge of ta and va, time and space, on the one hand, and of fuo and uho, form and content, on the other.
Knowledge outside of ta and va, time and space, on the one hand, and fuo and uho, form and content, on the other, belongs in the worlds of mythology and of fantasy, where there are merely no causes and effects or logical consequences.
However, I find the assertion in the text of the article above that "Indigenous science does not strive for a universal set of explanations but is particularistic in orientation and often contextual" highly problematic.
Given that the universal and the particular, as well as the whole and the parts, are inseparably two sides of the same thing, process or state of affairs, in nature, mind and society, both do apply as much to Indigenous science (and Tongan knowledge) as they do to Western science (and Western knowledge).
This is most evident in the tavaist proposition that, in general, everywhere in reality, tempospatiality or four-sided-dimensionality is fakafelavai or intersection, that is, fepaki or conflict, and there is nothing above fakahoko or intersection and fakamavahe or separation.
This is, in particular, manifested in terms of mata (eye) and, its mirror image, ava (hole), where ivi (energy) is organised into kula (red) and 'uli (black), as in mata kula (red eyes) and ava kula (black eyes) and mata 'uli (black eyes) and ava 'uli (black holes) and so on and so froth. ”