Re: Luke Rondinaro's world system theory

Dave Richardson wrote:

Luke Rondinaro in a recent posting gets at information and cultural entities in world systems, e.g., science.  Has any other work been done on such non-political and non-military ties in world systemsw?

Andre Gunder Frank wrote: 

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 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 contextualized science, or the assertion that science is autonomous, strikes at the scientific endeavor,defined as a process of free inquiry" [xiii,9].

Luke Rondinaro responds:

Mostly, I can agree with what this message says.  It certainly is important 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.”

I can even agree to an extent that “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"

Certainly, “science is not free of culture; rather, it is full of it.”

I’m nearly 98.5% in line with this argument up to the next passage right to the end.  Granted the militarization factor is important in our theory of World Systems (up to a point) and so is the politicization factor.  But, here’s the slippery slope.  Are those factors primary determinants of World Systemic/world-systematic activity or they themselves effects of the larger socioeconomic and socio-communicative dynamics of the System (not even to mention psycho-historical factors and “Eonic effect” evolution)?  I do understand that politics and militarization exercise an influence upon human communities within the frameworks of the overall World System. The question is: are they primary determinants of what’s happening in the System or rather secondary instrumental causalities that influence events in the WS’s localities and more regionalized expanses?  I go with the latter interpretation in world systemic affairs.

I don’t trust these “primacy of politics and military influence” interpretations.  They’re too ideological for one thing.  Far too much in them suggests ‘might makes right’ models and the idea of politicized marketing for influence (both in terms of control over others and getting-in with the elite crowd).  Given such a perspective, they seem far too Illuminist for my taste.  They seem to suggest that it’s perfectly valid in an ethical sense for a ruling class to bilk off its people in a nation and for a military power to run rampant in another’s country with no culpability for it.  Granted these things happen in human events; this “is” what happens a lot of times in history.  But we must be careful not to confuse the “is” of what occurs with the “is” of a status-quo (which seems to say that’s its perfectly natural, perfectly good for these things to happen; by in fact saying that ... ‘well that’s just what IS.  It’s not going to change, nor should it change, because it’s what Is’) Our primary concern is [or at least should be] more about “IS-FOR-IS” in an ontological and socioeconomic (or socio-behavioral) sense and less about “IS-FOR-OUGHT” and “IS-AS-OUGHT” in the socio-politicized sense of the “Continuing Soap Opera.”

As paradigms of social science analysis, they’re far too wrapped up in the notion of tracking these many (political, social, financial) “finite games” we watch day-in and day-out on the TV news [as I described in my WSN posting “Economics, Social Science, and the Continuing Soap Opera.”]  I don’t trust these interpretations at all.

That’s why, even though P. and M. exercise some influence within the World System (and even though it’s important to look at them in terms of our case studies and practical issues in WST and world history), they can’t exercise a primary influence over the System.  It is true they have influence within the System’s units; the question is whether they exercise influence over the World System.

Onto the Science issue more directly ... People’s minds should be “opened up” to other ways of mapping one’s science understanding and one’s conception of knowledge in general.  We should consider “chang[ing] attitudes about knowledge” and “refram[ing] the organization of science.”  We should “think globally” [as well as more multiculturally] “about science traditions.”  I also agree that there’s “different kinds of knowing” for different kinds of human circumstances and that they all have their own brand of validity/utility for the people who apply them.  Fair enough!

However, by making Science subservient to Politics and faddish social conventions (ultimately controlled by social elites), we run the risk of 1984 and Brave New World scenarios happening in our future (by virtue of the consequences to such ideas).  Yes there are “different kinds of knowledge.”

If a dominant [Western] science silences that knowledge, we all lose....” I’d agree with this assessment also.  But if Science silences say Pseudo Science (ala Eric Von Daniken)and/or some of the crazier ideas of our postmodern, media-crazed culture does it really matter? Are we the worse for it if five or six generations down the road people end up remembering Aristotle, Confucius, A.N. Whitehead, and Arnold Toynbee more than they would Madonna, Britney Spears, the WWF, and Temptation Island? ...

“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" ... I’d agree with this also.  However, like many other “myths” and “fantasies”, this one has its own usefulness also.  Better to think of a single Science (and an Episteme, Scientia)than to have a “science” that shifts upon every word that comes from the news media, social elites, or government.  Just as it’s better to have an Independent Media, so too is it better to have an Independent Science that doesn’t hang on the latest social whims but on truth, reality, and good, grounded empiric methods. Better to have a good distinction between Science and non-Science than to have “new thinking” whereby people engage in mass suicides or genocides because their leadership with “secret knowledge” told them that God said they should do it.  Better to distinguish between Science and Non-Science than to have children influenced by ‘shoot ‘em up’ video games that suggest to kids it’s good to murder their classmates because that’s the “message” they get from those games.  Better to distinguish between Science and Non-Science than to have scientific knowledge/fact/truth subsumed under government, news media, entertainment, or corporate influence that decides “what is true.”  Without the grounded criteria of a concrete, independent Science (and the scientiaefic reasoning to match), the whole flurry of this “new thinking” ends up subjugating all other knowledge (science, philosophy, etc.) to faddish social thinking and ultimately societal/government control over such.  That wouldn’t be helpful at all; all it would do is create a BNW, 1984 scenario.

Science is indeed “full of culture.”  But by subjugating both Culture and Science to social whims and undue governmental influences, we do ourselves no favors.  Just because political factors (and politicization) can influence Science (and just because militarization can influence science as well) doesn’t mean they should; it doesn’t mean we should let either politicians or military officials determine what our science should be in its content, ideas, idea.  (Honestly, it would scare me to have either George W. Bush or Donald Rumsfeld determining the future of what our science and social science was going to be by force of their political influence)(Better to have the inefficiency of scientists and other scholars mulling about with “knowledge” than to have either the efficiency of corporate America or the Federal Government on the job, even with all the power carried with these institutions)(Better to have ‘autonomous’ scientists and other scholars on the job of ferreting out truth and facts than to have this type of thing be taken up by the news and entertainment media establishments).  “[T]he assertion that science is autonomous, strikes at the scientific endeavor, defined as a process of free inquiry?"  On the contrary, an independent and “autonomous” science is essential to the process of free inquiry.”  To have anything less would be to publicly invite social fads and eventually undue political/governmental influence into the forum of knowledge.  This is a sure recipe for bringing the Brave New World upon us in the future and ushering-in the destruction and collapse of true science in the public domain.

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