The farce of finding Canterbury rivers’ ‘Life Force’

OPINION

New age TV writers and esoteric paranormal spiritualists give the Life Force a good run, as do alternative medicos who interpret the Life Force as a kind of numinous positive energy whose flow must be balanced against negative energy.

Unbalanced, you’ll attract ill health, ghosts and demons.

The Maori word for the Life Force is Mauri – a power that gives vitality to mountains, rivers, lakes, ecosystems, plants, animals and people.

For hundreds of years, scientists have tried to put their finger on the vitalistic Life Force but have come up empty-handed. It gets no mention at any medical school.

Because the so-called Life Force is scientifically unknowable, unfalsifiable, and because it’s useless in making any sort of prediction, scientists have long abandoned the idea. There’s no such thing. But hey, what’s this? Despite the Life Force having no scientific credibility, the Minister of Science is offering $100,000 to an agency wanting to improve the Life Force of Canterbury rivers.

That’s right. Science and Innovation Minister Paul Goldsmith and Maori Development Minister Te Ururoa Flavell have launched the latest round of the $4 million Matauranga Capability Fund. The fund aims to strengthen connections between Maori and science, to improve Maori health and wellbeing, and unlock the science and knowledge potential of indigenous people.

The fund underwrites many worthy proposals, such as those improving beef profitability, encouraging Maori to use the internet, monitoring the effects of 1080 poison, assessing tuna population dynamics, investigating the potential use of seaweeds, and so on.

Among the proposals is one from six Canterbury runanga who have commissioned Mahaanui Kurataiao Ltd and Lincoln Agritech Ltd to research improving ‘‘both the Mauri and life-supporting capacity of Canterbury groundwater’’.

Research on the life-supporting capacity of the rivers seems a comprehensible and worthwhile undertaking, but spending $100 000 on the non-existent Mauri or Life Force flies in the face of scientific endeavour.

Can I suggest that the runanga concentrate on the life-supporting capacity of the water and leave Mauri out of the equation?

Not so flea-bitten

A correspondent writes that he used to kill hedgehogs on his farm because they carried mange, ringworm, leptospirosis and fleas.

Yes. Hedgehogs carry mange, ringworm and leptospirosis but only the species or strains that never or rarely infect people or any other animal.

They are ‘‘species specific’’ infections.

British hedgehogs are real fleabags but they lost these parasites on the long voyage to New Zealand on old sailing ships.

Our hedgehogs carry the odd flea but it’s the kind that usually rides about on rats.