"The structures of knowledge, or how many ways may we know?"

Immanuel Wallerstein

pp. 71-77

in: Diederik Aerts, Hubert Van Belle, Jan Van Der Veken (eds), World views and the problem of synthesis, Berlin, Springer, 1999

Abstract

The Report of the Gulbenkian Commission bears the title, Open the Social Sciences. The title bears witness to the sense of the Commission that the social sciences have become closed off, or have closed themselves off, from a full understanding of social reality, and that the methods which the social sciences had historically developed in order to pursue this understanding may themselves today be obstacles to this very understanding. Let me try to summarize what I think the Report says about the past 200 years, and then turn to what this implies for what we should now do.