But to receive knowledge of this sort, to participate in this way of knowing, requires a certain posture on the part of the learner: a posture of attentive listening, and openness to what is being revealed, by the corn plant, by the animal, by the patterns of wind and weather.

What I also find fascinating is how you can find traces and echoes of this approach to science carrying on through history even into the present day. There are echoes of the accepting attitude toward the unknown in some of the differences which Dagg and Beauchamp discovered in their survey of Canadian women scientists. For example, in their inclination to go back to square one, to pay attention to what is Instill unexplained, and to tolerate ambiguity .. "more than most men" (9).

This is what prompts scientist like Margaret McCulley to let research subjects speak (or reveal themselves) on their own terms. It is this spirit or scientific posture which makes for ethical, accountable, participatory research, instead of how-to manuals and ethics experts scripted from the same old mindset of authoritative final words from remote centres of control.

I don't want to do any major summing up but to suggest simply the centrality of relationships to what that life is about, and the striving to become a respectful, observant participant in that inter-dependent dialogue. I could say that I hope the ideas of this paper will help to set science free from its remote ivory tower perched atop the military industrial mountain (10). This way of knowing is central to Pam Colorado's account of native science and scientists.

Heather Menzies, is a writer and lecturer based '" in Ottawa. Her latest book is Fast Forward and Out of Control; others include Women and the Chip, Computers on the Job. This article is an abridged version of a paper given at Carlton University's Institute of Women's Studies', lecture series on women in science and technology.

1. Anne Innis Dagg and Rachelle Sender Beauchamp, "Is there a Feminist Science? Perceived Impact of Gender on Research by Women Scientists," (research in progress), 1991.
   
   
2. Margaret McCully and Martin Canny, "Pathways and processes of water and [nutrient movement in roots," Structural and Functional Aspects of Transport in Roots, B.C. Loughman et al. (Eds.) Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1989.
   
   
3. Senta Troemel-Ploetz, "Mileva Einstein-Maric: The Woman who did Einstien's mathematics." Women Studies International Forum, Vol. 13, No.5, 1990.
   
   
4. Dorinda Outram, "Before Objectivity: Wives, Patronage and Cultural Reproduction in Early Nineteenth Century French Science," Uneasy Careers and Intimate Lives: Women in Science, 178.9-1979, P.G. Abir-Am and D. Outram, (eds.), Rutgers University Press, 1987.
   
   
5. Michael A Weiner, Earth Medicine-Earth Foods: Plant Remedies, Drugs and Natural Foods of the North American Indians. New York: Collier, 1972.
   
   
6. Ibid, p.5.
   
   
7. Autumn Stanley, "Daughters of Isis, Daughters of Demeter: When Women Sowed and Reaped," Women Studies International Quarterly, Vol. 4, no. 3, 1981.
   
   
8. Pam Colorado, "Bridging Native and Western Science," Convergence, Vol. XXI, No. 2/3, 1988.
   
   
9. Dagg and Beauchamp, p. 11.
   
   
10. Half the world's scientists are engaged in military research. In the U.S., one research institution alone is credited with having set and driven the arms-race research agenda for the past 40 years. This is the Lawrence Livermore Lab outside San Francisco. It occupies one square mile of land, employs 3,000 Ph.D. level scientists and has a budget of $1 million a year. Source: "Civilizing Science," produced by journalist Stephen Dale on CBC Radio's "Ideas" Program January 17,1991.