C and I were recently on vacation in Chikmagalur with our parents and Baby M. I watched with fascination as my family - who are hyper-vigilant about our newborn - handed over Baby M to two local women they just met for a vigorous traditional massage. This contradiction raised an interesting question: why did we so readily trust these women we just met, when they were evidently not trained professionals? What makes us, in certain moments, imbue folk wisdom with such profound authority?
We live in an age that venerates Science and empirical evidence (this was not always the case). Today, there are distinct moments - like birth, childcare and death - where we consistently reach for sources beyond the scientific laboratory for guidance. Some of these include spiritual ideas and folk wisdom: knowledge passed down through generations, validated not by controlled studies but by accumulated human experience. This pattern isn't unique to our time - the fundamental questions about consciousness and meaning that we face today have been addressed by different authorities across millennia (on this, I recommend God, Human, Animal, Machine)
I recently read Nicholas Spencer's 'Magisteria' (my reflections here), which explores the history of different realms of authority and knowledge. This concept, which the evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould developed as 'non-overlapping magisteria', suggests how different forms of understanding — most familiarly, like Science and Religion — can coexist, each authoritative in its own sphere. We instinctively apply this framework to different types of knowledge: we look to science to understand mechanisms, to traditional wisdom and spiritual leaders for meaning and purpose. Each authority claims its own domain of expertise, but there are a range of fault lines where there each authority has a claim.
I posit that the thread connecting these moments - birth, childcare and death, and perhaps more - is their profound impact on human identity and meaning. They mark transitions not just in physical state, but in who we understand ourselves to be. In these moments, we seem to intuitively understand that different types of knowledge serve different aspects of human experience.
But why do we trust folk wisdom in these moments? This is likely because traditional knowledge, passed down through generations, carries a different kind of empirical weight. When a traditional doula or midwife says she has helped deliver a thousand babies, she speaks from a kind of longitudinal study that, while not controlled or double-blind, carries its own validity. Folk wisdom often emerges from centuries of trial and error, surviving because it worked, even if the underlying mechanisms are not understood.
I find the interaction between these sources of authority fascinating. Reading Anne Fadiman's 'The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down' (my reflections here) profoundly shaped my perspective on this topic. The book follows a Hmong child with epilepsy, illustrating how her American doctors and her family approached her condition from radically different worldviews. While the doctors saw her condition through the lens of neurological misfiring, her family understood it as 'qaug dab peg' - when the spirit catches you and you fall down. For them, it was both a medical condition and a spiritual distinction. The Hmong concept of 'txiv neebs' - shamanic healers who negotiate with the spirit world - offered a different kind of expertise than that of neurologists. The clash between these worldviews led to tragic consequences, but it revealed something profound: how different systems of knowledge attempt to make sense of the same human experience. Hospitals exist to serve humans and need to factor for the entire humanity of their patients, not just their illness. To the point that the Californian hospital in question ended up employing a Txiv Neeb.
Philosophers often reference this multi-homing instinct. Plato's 'Phaedo' depicts Socrates' final moments not as a medical event, but as a philosophical journey. Rumi wrote extensively about how illness transforms from a medical condition to a spiritual journey. More recently, Susan Sontag's "Illness as Metaphor" explores how we reach for meaning beyond clinical descriptions when confronting serious illness.
Beyond identity-evolving life events like birth, childcare and death, I see another class of situations where we often encounter these questions: areas that are not yet understood by Science - women's health, mental health, chronic illness etc. We look to alternate sources when our default magisterium remains incomplete or historically understudied. Women's health offers a stark example: in the face of conditions like endometriosis, which took centuries to be properly recognized by medical science, women have long turned to traditional knowledge networks and community wisdom. The average time to diagnosis for endometriosis remains seven to ten years, and during this period, many women find themselves navigating between medical specialists and alternative sources of knowledge about their own bodies.
As I watched those women in Chikmagalur massage Baby M (including nonchalantly holding her up by the neck while she visibly enjoyed it!), I saw their movements carrying more than just technique - they carried a cultural memory of how generations have welcomed new life into the world. While their authority does not come from modern medical education, they offer something equally powerful: the accumulated wisdom of countless human experiences, passed down through generations of hands and hearts.
I have been reflecting on how best to navigate these situations. While I do not think there is a clean ex ante solution, I think it is worth being more deliberate on the magisteria we have access to and which ones we choose for a particular situation. I suspect our answer to that question will also reveal our implicit worldview on what canons we value. I also wonder if this framing will serve as a useful guide in navigating disagreements around traditional fault lines on these topics - how do you find common ground with someone who reveres a completely different source of authority?
Baby M, however, is less concerned.