Re: Luke Rondinaro's world system theory

 SPEAKING TRUTH TO POWER ABOUT THE SCIENTIFIC EMPEROR'S CLOTHES
                         A Review Essay 

of Naked Science. Anthropological Inquiry into Boundaries, Power, and
Knowledge edited by Laura Nader. New York & London: Routledge 1996,
xvi,318 pp. $ ??
                              by

       ANDRE GUNDER FRANK


abstract
      
The editor explains: "The point is to open up people's minds to other ways
of looking and questioning to change attitudes about knowledge, to reframe
the organization of science - to formulate ways of thinking globally about
science traditions ....  There are different kinds of knowledge that
provide valid truths of use to human kind. If a dominant [Western] science
silences that knowledge, we all lose.... The myth of a single science can
be seen as a myth; the false separation between science and nonscience may
be considered a barrier to new thinking; and a whole range of vital and
experimental thinking is possible" [23-24].

The central theses and the abundant evidence in this book are that
"science is not free of culture; rather, it is full of it. Militarization
has certainly had an effect on American science... [and] has also fired
the pervasive commercialization of the scientific
effort.... Politicization of science is unavoidable,
[because] behaviour is affected by those who control funding and who often
determine the research questions [and] virtually all science has social
and political implications.... Denial of a contexutalized science, or the
assertion that science is autonomous, strikes at the scientific endeavor,
defined as a process of free inquiry" [xiii,9].





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               ANDRE    GUNDER      FRANK

Senior Fellow                                      Residence
World History Center                    One Longfellow Place
Northeastern University                            Apt. 3411
270 Holmes Hall                         Boston, MA 02114 USA
Boston, MA 02115 USA                    Tel:    617-948 2315
Tel: 617 - 373 4060                     Fax:    617-948 2316
Web-page:csf.colorado.edu/agfrank/     e-mail:franka@fiu.edu

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