Discovery Today

When we say that John Cabot “discovered” North America 500 years ago, what does this mean? Obviously the land already existed, was inhabited, and probably had already been visited by other Europeans.

So in what sense did Cabot make a discovery? At a roundtable discussion June 12 at Memorial, chaired by Dr. Robert Paine, the layers of meaning in the word “discover” were explored from many different points of view.

To poet Carmelita McGrath, discovery has to do with movement — but she prefers words like “exploration” and “journey.”

“The word ‘discovery’ has become ’sloganized’ and Western culture is less interested in looking at what discovery means and more interested in images of invasion,” she said, adding that poetry is a creative process of discovery involving empathetic imagination.

Dr. Stuart Pierson, History, also spoke about the creative process involved in discovery. He said the theory of knowledge has treated observation as if the eye were a passive receptor, but the history of science shows that as we discover we also create. “Creation is action and discovery is something you take part in,” he said.

Dr. Harold Williams, Earth Sciences, spoke about the development of the theory of plate tectonics. He noted that at one time no one believed in continental drift, even though all the elements to support the theory were there. “It was just a matter of somebody putting it all together,” he pointed out.

Dr. Moire Wadleigh, also of Earth Sciences, said plate tectonics has been one of the great unifying theories of earth sciences, bringing together many subdisciplines. As an environmental geochemist, Dr. Wadleigh said she has learned the importance of considering the human dimension in scientific research.

She has participated for the past three years in an interdisciplinary project on sustainability in a changing cold ocean environment.

“We had to overcome our prejudices and deal with the challenge of integrating the different kinds of data we collected,” said Dr. Wadleigh, noting that some of this data was traditional ecological knowledge (TEK), in which the opinions of people like fishers were researched.

Dr. Peter Pope, Archaeology, spoke about what it meant to discover something in 1497. “Discovery for a navigator like Cabot was as much a political act as it was a geographical act. Contemporaries of Cabot and Columbus credited them with discovering new lands because they came with news, they drew attention to them. John Cabot’s celebrated voyage was a public exhibition of national claims in which he discovered these lands to Europe, in the sense of discovery as uncovery.”

Dr. Pope said one of the most significant metaphors in the history of Cabot’s exploration is non-contact. “He did not meet native people. He unfurled the King’s banner in the presence of his crew, but in the absence of native people.”

Shayne McDonald, legal adviser for a number of Native groups, including the Conne River Mi’kmaq, said the notion of discovery doesn’t play a prominent role in Native society. “What is central is what discovery led to, and that is contact and settlement.”

Dr. Carolyn Harley, Psychology, looked at discovery from the point of view of a scientist who has made discoveries relevant to the biology of memory. She initially had difficulty getting her observations published because they did not fit in with conventional wisdom. “But in the decade since my results were published they’ve become part of the story of how memory works. It points out that it is terribly important in doing science not to limit it to a few scientists who already have the story.”

Dr. John Scott, Philosophy, drew some of the threads of discussion about discovery together in his comments. “We are all converging on something that lies between discovery and invention, an intuition that grounds invention — mainly that there are certain structuring dynamics that yet need to be named, and that in part our process of discovery is a political interdisciplinarity, sharing evidence in order to invent or discover.”