Introduction: After Knowledge

To attain anthropological validity, a study should take into account three dimensions with variable input. It should provide social analysis (of spheres), cultural analysis (of frames) and life-sensing. Overlooking one or more dimension will obstruct insight in tensors. Science and engineering reduce the dimensions in order to ‘simplicate’, which is to translate events into predictable processes (vectors). Avoiding political correctness increases the fragmentation of society because ignores the sphere (the one maintaining the status quo) which a social analysis reveals. Socioeconomic measures worsen the automation of thought if they disregard the frame, the logos in the nomos, derived from cultural analysis. A combined social and cultural analysis points the way to fight discrimination (via newspaper columns, blogs, school books, sensitivity readers and corporate diversity cells) but the interventions will seem partisan unless their frame and sphere are grounded in life, a third dimension starting with the sources of production the species taps into and cares for. Cultures do not result merely from historical convergence.