The Interuniversity Institute (INU) is an entirely independent, non-governmental institution founded in 1980. As the Founding Act states, it promotes the collaboration of academics with diverse backgrounds and affiliations in the field of human sciences adhering to principles of strict scientific standards.

• Founding act

• INU Forum:

• research activities and priorities

• Current main project: Global Communication without Universal Civilization

• INU Press

• Last Research Note

1) Freeing the human sciences from any Western-centered or other authoritarian arguments and sophism by researching and applying universally acceptable principles and methods, as it is the case in other sciences. Accordingly, the INU promotes research especially in those areas, where methods and paradigms can be developed that allow exact formulation, conceptualization in operational terms and inductive proofs. The objectives and approaches are detailed in the Founding act.

2) Contributing to the construction of a truly universal world civilization by systematic appreciation of approaches and accumulated knowledge emanating from the different living civilizations. (See Current main project.)

The field of activities includes - besides research - conference organization, lectures, documentation and publication (INU Press).

Indeed, the INU elaborates concepts and ideas, brings to light facts as well as proposes action. Although INU combats undisciplined thinking and the proliferation of information parading under the pseudonym of science, this self-imposed discipline in the creation and discovery of knowledge doesn't lead to a "weltfremd" mentality but implies a responsible approach to the solving of practical problems as perceived by individuals and communities. It also remains open to the discussion of any new ideas or findings with any group or individual independent of social status or prestige. This openmindedness, eliminating all considerations extraneous to its creative work, determines the INU's approach and spirit. The INU develops its own research program having its own priorities, disseminating the results for a broader audience, but it also serves as a clearing house for the communication of knowledge coming from others. The INU is a type of non-governmental cooperative university bringing together motivated people, a creative circle held together not by egotism but by common interests. It definitely doesn't try to perpetuate such traditional institutions as credentials and recommendations, affiliated or not, student or professor, full or associate, etc. Indeed, within the INU, dialogue is determined exclusively by complementarity and community of interest and knowledge. The INU is fundamentally against any form of self-complacency and fashionability.

Why and how to cooperate with INU?

As noted, the INU is open to the suggestions and arguments of groups and individuals from different cultural backgrounds without hierarchical considerations. It encourages, assists, and coordinates the work of individuals and groups following rigorous epistemological criteria.

In conformity with its goals the INU disseminates verified research results as well as verifiable ideas through its publications by INUPress and other modern non-conventional means - so far as these techniques are appropriate to channel scientific knowledge and do not serve as vehicles for undisciplined reflection however attractive the presentation might be.

The INU is not guided by other values than sound scholarship and scientific probity.

You can make commentaries by any of the above mentioned electronic or other means of communication. The INU replies to all inquiries.

For practical and financial reasons INUForum's "lingua franca" is English; however, as far as possible, any contributions or letters written in any other of the 6 languages of the U.N. - Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian, and Spanish - as well as in German - will be considered.

Feedback welcome: INU@INUGE.ch.

Recent publications:

-  Dirk Pereboom:   Logique et Logistique. Une initiation. 2nd enlarged edition. ISBN 2-88155-002-9
  Apprentissage pratique des bases de la logique et de la logistique, en 233 pages assorties de nombreux exercices et leur solution.

- Guy Ankerl: Urbanization Overspeed in Tropical Africa. Facts, Societal Problems, and Policy. ISBN 2-88155-000-2

- Théopiste Butare: Secteurs traditionnel et moderne dans un processus de développement. ISBN 2-88155-003-7

 NOW AVAILABLE:
- Guy Ankerl: Global Communication without Universal Civilization
  Book one:    Coexisting Contemporary Civilizations
               (Arabo-Muslim, Bharati, Chinese, and Western)
2000. XXIX+501 pp.
ISBN 2-88155-004-5 ISBN in Bookland/EAN 978 288 155 004 1.
$40 or 60 Swiss Francs.
Orders may be placed through your local bookseller or addressed directly to INU PRESS
1. case postale: 5044, CH-1211 Genève-11,
2. MITBox 397047, Cambridge MA USA 02139-7047,
3 fax 041-22-7341718 or by
4. e-mail: INU@INUGE.CH
5. site: www.inuge.ch , or
6. via: Amazon.com.
All orders must be prepaid by one of the following means:
1. money order to Postal Check Account: Genève, CCP 12-25493-3 or
2. money transfer to Union Bank of Switzerland UBS No 279-CO290749.0.

Contents:
Preface
Introduction
I.  Communication and Civilizations                             1
The Problem, Approaches, Methods and Presentation
II. Arabo-Muslim, Bharati, Chinese, Western Civilizations     49
Their Axial Institution and the Three Building-Blocks
(Shared Scripture of each one, Genetic Variation of
Breeding Communities and  Collective Self-Preservation)
III. The West as a Particular Civilization                    119
The Identity of the Western Civilization; its Parts;
Afro-Brazil Amalgam and the Anglo-American "Melting-
Pot" Paradigm
IV. Globalism                                                 245
The Globe as Anglo-American Sphere of Influence
V.  The Federative Agenda                                     339
From Hegemonic "Salvation of the Third World" to Co-
operation among Civilization-States
- Name Index with Bibliographical Reference
- Subject Index with Conceptual Cross-References

In preparation book two: A WORLD CIVILIZATION BY FEDERATION OF CIVILIZATION-STATES

This unorthodox penetrating study exercises a fundamental criticism on the bipolarizing approach of the Western social sciences and  politics.

The "civilized West" should accept that there are not only major past civilizations but more than just one living civilization with which - at least in the foreseeable future - the West should coexist, as well as each one with each other.
Identifying these living civilizations and the problems caused mainly by the Western pretense of being a universal civilization is the main concern of this work.
This first volume outlines the Arabo-Muslim, Chinese, Indian and  Western civilizations according to their own anthropological, material and scriptural building-blocks. Because - beyond the present Western "civilization of business" - every other civilization  ranks these 3 fundamentals differently and practices a different scale of values, each also has a distinct axial institution.
Within the Western world the  interplay of the Anglo-American core, the Latin-Catholic periphery and the Diaspora is treated and contrasted with the Chinese and Indian civilization-states as well as with the countries of the Arabo-Muslim civilization brought together in the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC).
In relation to the Western-inspired tendency toward globalism projected by a New-York-type cultural pattern and melting pot, the Brazilian model is also discussed as a more attractive one for the integration of the African civilization complexes.
The last, concluding part of the book introduces the second book. It proceeds with the falsification of the  Manichean formula of the Western mind set which divides the world into East-West, North-South or more precisely  into West and Non-West; consequently it looks for a valid replacement of so-called West-Third World dialogue by a round table of civilizations. Therefore the second book will design the passage from an unauthentic duologue to a  worldwide dialogue based on civilizational pluralism.

What is INU?

The Interuniversity Institute (INU) advances scientific research according to universal concepts of science, without committing itself to a national school of thought or a particular ideology.

The INU primarily promotes the application and dissemination of exact knowledge in human sciences.

The INU has basically 2 functions: a critical and a creative one.

1. What is its critical function?

By analyzing postulates, premises, and basic concepts of scientific theories, the INU strives to identify and eliminate arguments implicitly or explicitly extrinsic to scientific reasoning.

The INU is independent of any authoritarian argument that might come from political authority, economic organizations, information monopolies, academic institutions, or individuals.

Within the academic community, the INU combats sophism, which by its implicit rhetoric obfuscates creative scientific research. For that purpose the INU develops and applies the methods of epistemology (e.g., practical epistemology for scientific criticism of sociological books), and the sociology of scientific knowledge.

The INU encourages all publications solely for their intrinsic scientific merit. It considers anonymous publications such as Bourbaki's, as a very appropriate way to restore scientific debate and creativity to their true concern, because anonymity prevents ad hominem arguments and the proliferation of self-serving publications.

It is clearly within the scope of the INU to consider critically the exactness of established facts in general. To benefit the everyday praxis of public life, the INU exposes abuses of semantics as well as inaccuracies in information that misrepresent the data of social reality.

2. What is its creative function?

By considering the present state of the human sciences and their position in the scientific community, the INU claims for them the same exacting stature that the others have earned for themselves. The Institute strives to conduct research according to strict scientific standards. Rather than perpetuating the ambiguous distinction between 'hard science' and ' soft science', the INU promotes research especially in those areas of the human sciences, where methods and paradigms can be developed that allow exact formulation, conceptualization in operational terms, and inductive proofs by falsification procedures (e.g., exchange, communication, and other spatio-temporal collective behaviors).

By insisting on vigorous scientific standards, the INU remains mindful of the societal purpose of knowledge, which is to enlighten and fulfill human aspirations - individual, collective, and social. Moreover, the INU's insistence on an objectivistic and experimental research strategy enhances the internal validity of findings and so prepares the ground for relevant and responsible action.

Experimentally controlled research applied to answering concrete questions also contributes to verifying the effective predictive power of science and so gives new impulses to further research.

Public and private organizations as well as individuals consult with the INU, giving advice and expert opinions based on interdisciplinary and transnational cooperation for solving technical, political or clinical problems. In order to assure the full usefulness of its recommendations, the Institute, with out necessarily agreeing with it, refers ultimately to the preference system expressed by the decision-makers themselves.

However, these preference systems are not completely out of reach of possible scientific scrutiny. The INU not only applies the science of decision-making and assists the decision-makers to reformulate their questions in scientifically operational terms, but it might also suggest categories for a discipline, called private science, in order to explicitly restructure a preference system.

This is an on-line publication. Articles can either be added as a new entry or replace a previous version. Thus each point in time an "up-to-date" version is delivered.

Investigations in human science could be divided into the following spheres:

0.Categoriology and Practical Epistemology

Foundation of the universality of knowledge; universals of civilizations; prolegomenous questions in research; scientific methods of criticism (metalanguage of science, conceptual and terminological analysis).

1. Science of Collective Human Facts

Descriptive demography; data banks of cohorts, aggregates; inferences.

2. Egology: Behavioral and Psychological Self Studies as a Private Science

Patterns of external spatio-temporal behavior; categories for handling of introspective data and of self-decision; "equations" with normative and behavioral terms for complex personal decision-making.

3. Social Communication Science

Human social entities and processes as interaction networks and structures.

4. Human Ecosciences

Economics and ecology; systematic interaction of human social entities with the whole non-human sphere.

5. Societal Decision Making and Engineering

Operationalization of the system of public objectives; usable knowledge (applied science, trial and error) for societal and physical planning; complex (interactive) models.

Sciences have their internal dynamics, since in most instances a new question is implied in the response given to a previous one. The history of science shows, however, that the selection of issues that receive priority, and to which are allocated material as well as intellectual means, does not necessarily proceed according to the inner logic of the science in question, but is largely determined by extrinsic factors, such as: authoritarianism, personality cult, position of power, political opportuneness that makes certain subjects fashionable (e.g., the energy crisis following the Middle East war in 1974). INU considers research priorities independently of these considerations and intends to counterbalance these tendencies with its limited means.

The determination of research priorities is an opportunity to return to essentials. As a matter of fact, recently the over-abundance of means generated a plethora of dubious, ephemeral, and theoretically unreflected data (esp. polls, survey and interview data) that obstruct outlook and encumber clear perspectives. In order to prevent further wasting of human and material resources, INU doesn't contribute to the proliferation of pseudo-scientific publications that serve personal promotion or vanity unnecessarily overloading our information systems. To this end INU often publishes research results anonymously and determines research priorities only according to its own criteria.

In general terms, INU considers it imperative for the development of the human sciences today that assumptions inherent in the concepts used be revisited and made explicit before generating new data. In the light of this conceptual control, data should be reevaluated, unreliable or invalid data discarded from data banks (however costly their production proved to be), and other data should be reinterpreted in this perspective.

The subsequent list of priority research topics doesn't claim to be exhaustive but represents an invitation to reflection. At the same time INU has neither the intention nor the means to carry out research on all these questions on its own, but rather submits them as suggestions to fellow researchers.

1. Issues of the epistemology and sociology of scientific knowledge (esp. human sciences).

What are the requirements for a publication to be called a "communication in human sciences"?

How can it make its content controllable in order to detach scientific knowledge from journalism at least as clearly as a publication in physical science does?

Anatomization: syntactic rules, terms (defined technical and non-technical terms: e.g., verbs), direct (experimental) or indirect (inferential) falsifiability.

Which format facilitates (or hinders) the scientific control of the publication's content?

Pragmatics of scientific communication process; texts and hypertexts, transparency (formal versus natural language) and exclusion of distracting extrascientific argumentation (such as terms with affective connotation, stylistic prowess, unproductive professional ritual and mannerism, plain authoritarian arguments).

By which procedure can scientific criticism (book reviews, etc.) fulfill its control function?

Development of scientific methodology for criticism (metalanguage of practical epistemology, criticism of actual book review praxis of scientific periodicals).

Threshold of scientific communication: the entry of a title in a special bibliography. Elements and construction of a scientific title. Methods for automatic selection and abstracting. Thesaurus construction.

2. Issues in studies of the making of a world civilization.

(See Current main project.)

How does a civilization define itself by its universals?

How should coexisting civilizations be enumerated as geopolitical blocks? How can current geographical and political labeling prejudge the enumeration of actually coherent blocks?

How is the spatio-temporal variety of living civilizations being reduced to a mainly temporal succession of civilizations, (from "aires" to "ères") a globalistic doctrine of econo-centered development?

How does the different approach to international social policy and humanitarian action delineate and classify subsidiarily coexisting civilizations?

Degrees of solidarities... Universalist-altruistic versus particularist...Solidarity by shared script(ure), ancestral affiliation (race-preservation) and/or shared collaboration for livelihood (collective self-preservation).

Are true universals of a world civilization in the making or just one-sidedly Western values and categories diffused by global communication?

Coexisting and dominant civilizations. (Criteria for their enumeration and mapping... Classifications... Ideo-pictographic... Alphabetic scripts... Oral...Categorial and conceptual arrangement of their thoughts.)

Civilizational interactions. Descriptive assessment of the world's communication networks and flows with their dominant positions (Nodes of diffusion...The unique position of American-English... Broadcasting telemedia versus reciprocal processes... Existing systems, tendencies, policies...)

The universal character of specific scientific knowledge (Conditions... Characteristics... Proofs through its predictive power and replicability in application.)

Underlying assumptions of concepts and theories. (Universals of general models.. in systems theory.)

Which kinds of approach to problem-solving did different civilizations develop?

Their assessment from this viewpoint...Relative effectiveness of scientific problem-solving...Inadequacy of end-means dichotomy models... Non-analytical, action-oriented, interactive and other problem-solving procedures... Immediacy of goal achievement... Satisfaction...
Behavior of other mammalia in life situations.

3. Issues of objective sociology.

How can social behavior be studied exclusively by correlations between external (physical) variables?

Macro- and micro-population systems, geographical distribution, movements.

Spatio-temporal substrata of communication networks and structures. Face-to-face communication and telecommunication systems. Transformation by transportation. (Telecommunication- transportation tradeoff.)

Natural and architectural space variables. Sociological experimentation in built (artificial) space systems.

Probability of encounter as an urbanity index.

4. Issues in the study of the transposition of ecological phenomena into economic terms (the economics of primary resources).

How are natural (non-processed) goods priced?

Pricing of rare, non-renewable resources... Absolute ground rent...Differential ground rent... Urban land.. Artificial rarity and speculation... Oil prices expressed in the price of gold...

5. Issues of forecasting human actions.

How is the predictive power of a body of knowledge a criterion for its scientificalness?

Individual behavior...Social events...

Extrapolations and models..Limits in time and scope...Supervention as insufficient proof. (Incidental occurrence...Futurological sophism: repercussion of published predictions on future events and thus unverifiability of the epistemological value of past predictions. Self-fulfilling prophecy.) Modern augury: deliberate use of ideological effects ("Historical necessity", Cassandran alarmism, doomsday catastrophism...)

Is value-free forecasting possible and how could it be realized?

The exhaustive listing of alternative policy options...Tacitly accepted taboos and disregard of some possible scenarios. (E.g., Evaluation of the OECD's forecastings... Model adequacies. Dichotomic reasoning and suboptimal policy decisions: either unemployment or inflation...either unemployment or technological stagnation...)

6. Issues of policy evaluation.

What is the relation between categories of personal value judgment, those of collective choice, and those of external observation?

Value judgments objectivized in rhetorical policy justification. Goal-setting and decision-making...

How to compare ideal-types of societal systems?

Distributive and competitive systems...Archaic and technological progress-oriented...Other bipolarities...

How to measure the discrepancy between the rhetorics of ideal-type and the functioning of real-type systems?

Societal policy as a general, value order setting model...Political competence distribution among decision-making centers...

Societal efficiency and economics...

Efficient overall use of resources... (Discrepancy in growths of stock, shares, production and employment...) Production, distribution and conservation... with spec. emphasis on processes besides national accounts (Informal and quaternary sector...)

7. Issues of suicidology.

What is revealed by suicide?

The measure of eudemonia by its negative, the manifest negation of the value of life... Objective description. (Demographic... Of personal history... Life-cycles... Health... Life-long contacts... Social frequentations... Other activities.)

How can a counselor enter into the private science of self? How can he revise categories of self-image and enumerate alternatives?

Life problems... Perceiving... Analyzing... Solving...

We are more and more in a Global Age.

It is well-known: our time's (a) instantaneous telecommunication, (b) worldwide (jet air) mass transportation and (c) increasing world trade globalize the social connectedness or coherence.

The social cohesion itself is structured by (a) social heritage preserved by various Scriptures, (b) parenthood for race-preservation and (c) collaborative (eco-)resource management for self-preservation.

Global Age and its rhetoric of "globalism" doesn't bring spontaneously universal civilization but rather the ambition for global hegemony of (1) the so-called "West", which does not recognize the necessity of civilizational cooperation based on reciprocal interdependence.

This corresponds to the tenet that the Western ideology, the economism, attributes to the model, which will and should be imitated by all. The vitality of the existing civilizations having other cardinal institutions and other core values than the Western ones such as (2) the Chinese and peri-Chinese (Japanese, Korean), (3) the Hindu, (4) the Muslim (originating in the Arabic Scripture of the Koran) and (5) the Brazilian (Afro-Euro-Indian) - American - alloy is denied, archaized and ostracized.

In short, we approach the exposed scope of the problem by identifying the active civilizations of our age as actors by their coherence and actual cohesion, as well as their specific relations and interactions. If we conjecture the existence of the enumerated actors, we do not privilege the relation between the West and Non-West but study all 10 competitive and cooperative relations between them. Finally, we overcome the Western-centered viewpoint also by asking the representative intellectuals of each civilization considered not only to discuss its own but in parallel all the 5 civilizations with its 10 relations. (See also G. Ankerl: Variation of the Concept According to Different Civilizations in Democracy and Tolerance UNESCO, Paris, 1995, pp. 59-78.)

 In 2000 we published the results of the first phase of the project (see INU Press) and work on the second one: A World civilization by Federation of civilization-states.

We are more and more in a Global Age. The ideological rhetoric of  'globalism' implicitly postulates that globalization will inevitably, and regardless of circumstances, lead to the creation of a universal civilization. In reality, the means prioritized, and the particular stages through which the process passes, cannot be looked upon indifferently, as they both have a considerable effect upon the character of the globalization achieved. - There are 2 main variants:  (1)(a)  The "NEW-YORK-TYPE MIXING of individuals of various civilizational origins by means of unruly migration,  (b) accompanied by the boundless penetration of Western-type consumerism into all civilizational areas under Anglo-American predominance or 'leadership',  or (2) a passage by  (a) by enlarging and  enforcing  the internal bonds within living civilizations, and (b) by  the constitution of  CIVILIZATION-STATES, like India and China,  through the assembling of smaller national states (cf. EU). A truly universal civilization is constructed on an initial basis of civilizational regionalism, within relatively autonomous geopolitical areas, which is then followed by a co-operation among equal partners based on consensus. (Reciprocal interdependence.) This  mutualist approach prevents hegemonism, and among others, civil war-like conflicts within states caused by intrusive and invasive large-scale migration; and, as an end result, it produces worldwide solidarity. As Ankerl exposed in his "Coexisting Contemporary Civilizations: Arabo-Muslim, Bharati, Chinese and Western"  (2000), 'civilization' signifies a genuine collective life-style, and 3 "glues" provide societal cohesion: (1) A type of livelihood, (eco-)resource management for collective self-preservation; (2) an anthropological component for race preservation (including awareness of common ancestry) and (3) a writing-system,  Scripture that relates to a shared sacred heritage.  Nations are mostly mother-tongue-based entities, civilizations are  writing-based. (E.g., Chinese pictographic-originated,  Muslim Arabic-based.) - Euro-centric continental-based divisions (cf ., 'Asia',), as well as  'Oriental' or ' Third world' civilizations are empty terms to constitute an amalgam of  the whole non-West to be colonized ("The West and the Rest").
If  "dialogue among civilizations is the key to a safe future" (for everybody) and only equal sovereign international actors  can have true exchange (and avoid dictate), the constitution of an universal civilization needs first and foremost strong autonomous civilization-states.

In our age, the development of (a) efficient and instantaneous forms of telecommunication, and (b) the worldwide (jet air) mass transportation system increase connectedness and make globalization possible. However, the preference given to far-reaching connections and broad-spectrum mixing, and to the promotion of international exchange and 'trade'
 (at the expense of national, 'vicinal', and local forms), at any price (e.g. by inexpensive export credits), is largely an ideological option. The rhetoric of the ideology of 'globalism' implicitly postulates that this process will inevitably, and regardless of circumstances, lead to the creation of a universal civilization. In reality, the means prioritized, and the particular stages through which the process passes, cannot be looked upon indifferently, as they both have a considerable effect upon the character of the globalization achieved.

In short, we can distinguish two main variants:

A./ (a) The "NEW-YORK-TYPE MIXING of individuals of various civilizational origins by means of unruly migration, (b) accompanied by the boundless penetration of Western-type (fancy) consumerism into all civilizational areas under Anglo-American predominance or 'leadership'; or

B./ A passage by other stages: first at all, (a) by enlarging, enforcing and intensifying the internal bonds within living civilizations, and (b) - by following the example of presently existing CIVILIZATION-STATES
 such as India and China - by the constitution of new civilization-states, such as the European Union, through the assembling of smaller national states. Put briefly, a truly global civilization is constructed on an initial basis of civilizational regionalism, within relatively autonomous geopolitical areas, which is then followed by the promotion of co-operation between these groups.

This second way contains two fundamental promises: avoiding chaotic, civil war-like conflicts within states caused by intrusive and invasive large-scale migration; and, as an end result, worldwide solidarity within the framework of a truly universal civilization, brought about by co-operation among civilizations on the basis of reciprocal interdependence. This mutualist approach to globalization is already prefigured in the five principles ( "panca sila" ) of co-operation outlined in the Declaration of the Bandung Conference of Non-Aligned Countries in 1955.

CIVILIZATION signifies a genuine collective lifestyle, sustained by an encompassing and sufficiently large population which, by extension, occupies a sufficiently large (resource-rich) area (Ankerl 2000, 28).

Each civilization has three vectors that serve as 'glues' to provide societal cohesion:

1. A type of livelihood (also summarily called 'mode of production'). This signifies collaborative (eco-)resource management for collective self-preservation (including class solidarity with regard to income distribution);

2. The anthropological component includes the awareness of a common ancestry beyond genealogical (lineal and affinal) kinship for race preservation.

3. The third 'glue', by no means the least important, is a Scripture that relates to a shared sacred heritage. Despite being one of the most tangible characteristics of a civilization, this element is frequently neglected by Western science, due to the more or less phonetic nature of all Western writing systems. Indeed, while nations are mostly mother-tongue-based entities, civilizations are writing-based.

The Chinese civilization, for instance, is fundamentally shaped by the Confucian ideograms. New concepts are transcribed into the pictographic-originated scripture, which thus assures China's continuity in time and space. The Brahmi-Devangari writing is  the medium of  the Veda, the shared tradition of all Hindus, while for the whole 'constituency' of the Muslim civilization, the Koran's Arabic writing is an essential relying base. (Many writing systems in non-Arabic Muslim countries originally derive from Arabic.)

This being granted, the importance of each of the three vectors varies between different civilizations, and each civilization establishes a different cardinal institution (economy, religion, family, ethnicity, etc.).

Our present Western civilization is fundamentally a business civilization that establishes an econocratic society. (In Old English, bisinesse was opposed to 'art'.) In this ideological system, 'progress', 'modernization', 'rationalization', and other key terms become defined and measured by profit-oriented calculation. Business-type, short-term reasoning becomes the norm. Its science of 'universal history' interprets longum et latum the ultimate cause of any historical event by historical economism. This statement is valid for both liberalism and the post-Ricardoian Marxist school. The West also applies sciences to its colonization of the world. In this perspective, all contemporary, geographically co-existing civilizations are arranged in temporal order and, as a result, all non-Western ones appear as archaic and behind the times.

Yet how can we conceive of different co-existing civilizations if all human values are universal? Human values may indeed be universal; however, they do not perforce exist in harmony together. It is therefore necessary - in the case of conflicting obligations - to rank them, and each civilization arranges (subordinates) values and institutions differently, according to its principles.

Living civilizations cover geopolitical areas. This should not be confused with the CONTINENTAL division of the globe, such as Europe or Asia, particularly as these divisions and denominations are noticeably Eurocentric and do not have a firm foundation in physical geography. Why should India be a 'subcontinent', and why is Europe a 'continent' and not a subcontinent of Eurasia? (The calculation and comparison, for instance, of an 'Asian average' or a 'European average' consequently become scientifically meaningless operations.)

The most important point for us is that the existing continental divisions are not substantiated divisions in terms of civilization. For geopolitics, as well as for human geography, only the civilizational division of geographical areas is relevant, such as the Chinese, Bharati, Arabo-Muslim, Western and Sub-Saharan civilizations.

As a matter of fact, the concept of 'Asian civilization' is misleading; so too is 'ORIENTAL' or even 'Third World' civilization. Not one of them is a scientific concept with heuristic value. They are confusing empty boxes, Euro-colonial amalgams. Their true content is negative, namely, that of a NON-WESTERN mass, passively awaiting colonization by 'Promethean Western business'. Edward Said, Professor of English Literature at Columbia University, of Christian Arab Palestinian origin, made a pioneering work that demonstrates how Orientalism
 is a tendentious science. However, by seeking the true content of the Orient, he misses the essential point, namely the fact that an 'oriental civilization' is itself a false, non-operating concept. In contrast, the Indian-Singaporean Ambassador to the U.N., Kishore Mahbubani's formulation of "the West and the Rest" suitably expresses the purely negative nature of the concept 'Orient'.

Through independent and impartial observation, it becomes clear that the differences between the Chinese and the Arabo-Muslim civilizations - both frequently labelled as "oriental" by the West - are as significant as their respective differences to the Western civilization. Are there indeed any characteristics common to the so-called oriental civilizations, beyond a comfortable colonizing prejudice? (For that matter, when the Chinese pilgrim, Xijou Ji, traveled to India, he called his trip, "Voyage en Occident".) Incidentally, the term 'Third-World civilization' shares the same negative connotation as the aforementioned binary distinction. It suggests that the non-Western world is little more than a civilization of misery. Taken together, these binary conceptualizations of the West fulfill one sole function: to conceal and to obliterate the identity of all living civilizations other than the Western one.

The WESTERN civilization presents itself as a model for an eventual universal civilization. Its ambitions are hegemonic. As set out in our "Coexisting Contemporary Civilizations" (pp.50-245), it is composed of several relatively coherent forces that operate together: (a) The Anglo-Saxon grouping includes Anglo-America and the 'white' Commonwealth. Presently, its predominance and its cohesion are visible on the international scene. Against all its pretensions, we cannot admit that the English language, spoken by less than 10 % of the world's population, is the bearer of a universal civilization, as many publications on globalization would imply. While English is the most important international language, it is not a global language. (b) The populous Latin Catholic periphery is another important cultural and ethnic component of the Western civilization. (c) Over recent decades, the Jewish people have become an increasingly autonomous cultural, economic and political influence in the Western world, despite its large majority living in Diaspora.

For any civilization, by virtue of its yearning for permanence and an autonomous internal order that mirrors its value system, statehood constitutes an important historical landmark. In the globalization process, statehood has a particular system-value regarding the self-expression of each civilization. The EUROPEAN part of the Western civilization seeks a united statehood. The European Union has been in formation for a half century. So far, the steps toward unification have been largely based on the econocratic ideology prevailing in the West, namely, beginning the whole process with a 'common market' and following it up with a common currency. For the constitution of a federal or confederal state, its organs appear to look to the United States of America for inspiration. Other civilizations, however, such as the Chinese and the Bharati or Indian civilizations, have already constructed their civilization-states. Moreover, the human geography of Europe has far more in common with India than with the United States of America. Europe is composed of peoples with diverse linguistic and ethnic traditions, settled geographically in different countries. This is the case in the Republic of India, which is composed of   (pra)deshes or 'homelands'. The states in the U.S.A. do not possess this societal signification. The Anglo-American U.S. is composed mainly of immigrants of various origin, widely dispersed across its entire territory, with some reserves for the indigenous Indian populations. One language, English, is clearly predominant. It is becoming the sole (quasi-)official language. The constitution of a united European state would therefore provide an opportunity to reverse the customary (uni-)directional tendency of the international learning process. The constitution of India could serve for such a model.

CONCLUSIONS:

The differences of value and institutional order that exist between various contemporary living civilizations in no way necessitate a clash between them. Only the aggressive economic, cultural(-mediatic), and political(-military) penetration of the Western civilization into other (particularly Arabo-Muslim) civilizational areas can. indeed result in clashes. In this sense, Samuel Huntington's seminal book (The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. New York, 1998) is more an invitation and an agenda for Western imperial penetration into other - chiefly Arabo-Muslim - civilizational areas, than it is a historical description of the contemporary world situation. Salim Rashid's volume demonstrates this viewpoint clearly, among others, and recent events in the Middle East confirm this evaluation. However, the originality of each living civilization requires that the eventual construction of a universal civilization be brought about through dialogue and consensus building.

On the other hand, effective and fertile dialogue among civilizations on equal footing is only possible between partners who consider each other as equals. Again, recent events in the Middle East have demonstrated that only politically balanced power relations can provide such a ground and serve as a counterbalance to Anglo-American transnational econocracy. In this perspective, the next step towards globalization should be the reinforcement of currently existing civilization-states such as India and China, as well as the constitution of new ones, such as the European Union. The authentic political representation of the Arab-Muslim civilization in this international dialogue is a particularly timely and salient issue. It cannot be done by dividing the Muslim world and replacing the dialogue with the Organization of the State of Islamic Conference with "multiple unilateralism" (Hubert Verdine) involving individually weak and intimidated Arab, or other, Muslim states.

In this phase of globalization, the installation and perpetuation of Western econocratic world hegemony by means of the unilateral diffusion of Western merchandise and merchandized mass media products, as well as by the migration of individuals from various civilizational background as cheap manpower, are unproductive for the construction of a universally accepted world civilization. Such actions can additionally create chaotic socio-political conditions, awkward problems (e.g. in Canada, where the most important immigrant population now has Chinese as its mother tongue and writing system), the decomposition of families, and individual alienation. The promotion of such historical processes could produce a hotbed for both xenophobia and supremacism. The massive penetration of alien populations can engender feelings of invasion and generate xenophobia. (Furthermore, democratization is not necessarily a solution for deeply divided societies; the mechanic application of 'democratic' majoritarianism can lead to a dictatorship by fixed majority blocks.) In this context, xenophobia should not be confused with racism; xenophobia can be attributed simply to situations, whereas racism involves peoples' inherent, constitutive, and substantive characteristics. By crossing a border, a person can nullify his state as a 'foreigner', but he cannot change his race in this way. Racism, on the other hand, is a form of supremacism, and supremacism, as a prejudicial ideology, can be based not only on race but also on religion, oligarchic heritage, etc. Again, the assertion of existing anthropological group differences itself refers to the scientific field and issue of genetics, and should therefore not be equated simply with racism.

If a dialogue among civilizations is the key to a safe future", we should consider this dialogue not only in terms of an academic dialogue, but also as an exchange among actors in international politics. However, a civilizational dialogue among international actors can only occur when each actor recognizes the equal sovereign might of his partners. Thus the constitution of a number of strong, independent civilization-states is a condition for this dialogue and the key to a safe future for all peoples and states, be they Western or Arabic or other; it is the key to mutual international security based on world-wide consent and not on dictate.

NOTES:

 'Trade' refers to the increasing number of financial transactions - such as cosmopolitan transnational and multinational capital exports - operating on the basis of symbols instead of on natural or transformed raw materials.

 Ankerl, G.: Global Communication Without Universal Civilization. Vol. I: Coexisting Contemporary Civilizations: Arabo-Muslim, Bharati, Chinese, and Western. Geneva, 2000, 530 p. ISBN 2-88155-004-5, p. 28.

 Comte, A.: Bandoung, tournant de l'histoire. Paris, 1965. Jouve, E.: Le Tiers Monde. Paris, 1990.

 A parallel can be drawn between these and the Trivarga: Dharma (adherence to the (pre)Scripture); Kama (race-preservation through love); and Artha (self-preservation through economic and ecological activity).

 The Sikh's religion, for example, is related to Gurmuki writing, Buddhism to Prakrit, the natural Pali, Western Chiristian to Latin, and Orthodox to Cyrillic.

 Western sciences, which constitute a basis of our axiomatic belief system, are related to their own particular writing system. E.g., chemistry.

 Pirenne, H.: Grands Courants de l'Histoire Universelle. Paris, 1945-56. Sanderson, K. S.
(ed.): Civilizations and World System: Studying World-Historical Change. Walnut Creek,
Calif. 1995,

 Ankerl, G.: Tolerance. Variation of the concept according to different civilizations. In: Democracy and Tolerance. Paris-Seoul: UNESCO, 1995, pp. 59-78.

 Said, E.: Orientalism. New York, 1978. Said, E.: Culture and Imperialism. New York, 1993. Carrier, J. G. (ed.): Occindentalism. Oxford, 1995, p.4.

 Kishore Mahbubani: Can Asians Think? New York, 2nd ed., 2002.

 Ankerl, G.: Global … id. Pp.119-344.

 Oommen, T.K.: Ethnicity, Immigration, and Cultural Pluralism: India and the USA. In: Kohn, M. L. (ed): Cross-Cultural Research in Sociology. Newbury Park, Calif. 1989, p. 291

 S. Huntington's well-publicized theses are simple tools for substantiating Western rule in our time. Indeed, his enumeration (and description) of living civilizations is scientifically unfounded, and the historical necessity of a clash between them remains undemonstrated. See especially Salim Rashid (ed.)'s 'Clash of Civilizations?' Asian Response (Dhaka, 1997), Abul Kalam's chapter, 'Huntingtion and the World Order: Systematic Concern or Hegemonic Vision?' (839-64 pp.), Amit Gupta, 'The Clash of Militarized Civilizations?' (65-74 pp.), and Ankerl, G., op cit 2000, pp.133, 153, 174-5, 250-1, 274, 290, 308, 316, 360-2, 386, 428, 433, 452, 460, and 470.

 Keat, Russell: Cultural Goods and the Limits of the Market: Beyond Commercial Modelling. New York, 2001.

 Udell, J.: Toward Conceptual Codification in Race and Ethnic Relations. New York, 1979,
pp.25ff.
 
 

In societies with script the "scholastically" learned writing is already a deliberate intellectual integration in a wider (literate) social and historical entity (perhaps an empire) which relates the individual to what we call a civilization with shared scripture - Bible, Koran, Buddhist or Confucian writings. On this level of education the individual might already encounter other languages with which his mother tongue shares - or not - one and the same writing system (e.g. Roman, Arabic alphabets, Chinese morphemic writing, picto-, ideo-, logograms).

On this level of formal scholarly assimilation of "writing and reading" the language appears as a supplementary burden on people, possibly with a net disadvantage, for whom this step necessarily means the learning of a second language.

As far as the second language is concerned, it implies a deliberate passage of communication between cultures. By historical and geo-political circumstances this easing of intercultural compenetration could be (1) reciprocal or (2) one-sided, implying some hierarchization. In the first case the relation between contact languages could be symbiotic, while in the second accommodative - or even assimilative. Second language learning in the Helvetic Confederation, for example, is a mutual process, while the learning of Spanish by Indian immigrants in Ibero-American cities or that of English by Hispanic immigrants in the USA are examples of the second case. (See the exclusivist official English Language Movement in the American States as reborn nativism.) The latter is a matter of linguistic expansion which enlarges the cultural influence of one speech community, while it imposes on the others a multi-layer identity (and eventually a new enculturation) as the price for intercultural communication and understanding, and in the extreme maybe an alienation or acculturation. Depending on the lexical, structural, syntactical and scriptural proximity of a mother tongue as the "source" language to that of the learned second language indicates the cost of this integration into a wider, eventually global civilizational entity. Indeed, the construction of a globalistic world order requires a thorough transnational linguistic understanding.

Presently the development of multiform (mostly electronic) instantaneous telecommunication - largely thanks to ubiquitous computing - and partly that of the supersonic intercontinental mass transport generated an intensive globalization process, even if as yet it touched - esp. beyond the mass media such as radio and TV - unequally (and only a small proportion of) the world population. This fact and especially Internet generated a powerful tendency to use English - as well as the Roman writing pattern - in many alleys of international relations in exclusivity. The English language also penetrated the everyday life of many societies (esp. those with similar roots) with its idioms and "cultural configurations", - even if the reflection of a culture in each specific language is relative and not uniform.

We can empirically gauge the size, speed and the mechanisms of the implicit and explicit imposition of English (Crawford) by many ways and methods such as the number of anglicisms as neologisms, borrowed words, loan translations in newspapers, - and even deep interference of plain linguistic techniques (not only by phonetic and morphemic structural elements but by paradigmatic and syntactic features) - as well as by the statistics of the choice in second language learning.

The global and local - political and cultural - impact of these tendencies is a subject for timely studies.

Even if in our scientifically advanced epoch all of the world's languages have not yet been investigated by Western scholars, accumulating knowledge of facts and their effect on linguistic interaction helps us not only to comprehend the phenomenon but to prevent impending tensions due to loss of identity and the feeling of collective alienations as well as to reestablish equilibria in the coexistence of languages based on frank linguistic cooperation. The open, explicit discussion of the subject itself will smooth out the uneasiness felt about the world hegemony of one of the living languages due to "designatio unius est exclusio alterius".

Issues of discussion:

• Mother tongue as a first basic building block of cultural (and social) identification.

• Imperial and other constitutions of wider near-global civilizational spheres as an area of (second) identity determined by script(ure)s.

• The interaction of cultures by translation and second language learning and that of civilizations by transliteration of texts into different writing systems.

• The international political impact and the cultural significance of the diffusion of a mother tongue as a second language (and writing): (a) language use in official (external) international - global and regional - relations; (b) penetration of a foreign language as a denominative tool into the ingroup communication itself by novelties (anglicisms) in (specialized) functional spheres (technology, science, trade diplomacy, politics, multimedia, advertising, entertainment) in particular; and progressively (c) colloquial use of foreign language idioms in everyday life - in the present case - by means of the mystified use of English expressions, stereotyped as a symbol of modern, cosmopolitan, urban (prospective Western) lifestyle, norms and values.

• Peoples' - power elites' - and cultures' vested interest in the spread of their mother tongue as an International or Imperial Lingua Franca (ILF) and the story of vain efforts to constitute an artificial international language detached from any mother tongue (Esperanto, etc).

• The impact of the present candidacy of English, - the world's second largest language as the flagship of Western civilization - to become an exclusive ILF for global resp. universal communication.

• The (possible and probable) political confrontations around the ILF.

• The mistrust and eventual antagonism between the largest logo-pictographic Chinese and the alphabetic English scriptural spheres.

• The status and standing of the other 3 official languages - Arab, French and Spanish - within the "condominium of the 5 languages" of the UN as Languages of Wider Communication (cf. official versus working languages)

• The rear-guard battle of the Francophony as an ILF and the anti-Hispanic chauvinistic tendencies to preserve the USA exclusively as the English homeland in opposition to its cosmopolitan rhetorics in world politics

• The attitude and coexistence strategies of other major language spheres, i.e.

(within the Western civilization) Romance (besides French, Spanish and Portuguese), Germanic, Cyrillic-Slavic;
furthermore (Islam-)Arabic,
Hindi, and
other alphabetic languages (such as Bengali, Dravidian-Telugu, Korean), as well as
the non-alphabetic (syllabic) Japanese.

• The issue of "neutral" arbitration of language use: "intrinsic linguistic excellence and technological adequacy ascribed to English" (opposed to extrinsic factors) in the spreading of the use of English; the direction of the diffusion of technological innovations - esp. electronic - as a "neutral" arbitrator and the role of other means of linguistic imposition, military and/or legal coercion, economic blackmail, trade and mass media supported by advertising.

• Outlook: global communication without hegemonic globalism and linguistic totalitarianism: the preservation of civilizational and cultural diversity by peaceful coexistence between ILF based on multi-layer functional and regional division and the preservation of mother tongues.

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L'Institut Interuniversitaire (INU) a pour but de créer, d'appliquer et de diffuser des connaissances exactes en sciences humaines basées sur une conception universelle de la science. L'Institut exerce ses activités dans une perspective multicontinentale et polyglotte sans l'interférence d'idéologies, de préjugés ou d'autres considérations extra-scientifiques.

L'INU s'efforce de mettre au service de la communauté les découvertes des sciences humaines, tout en se référant aux acquis d'autres disciplines scientifiques.

Pour atteindre son but, l'INU s'engage à remplir une fonction critique et une fonction créatrice.

1. FONCTION CRITIQUE DE L'INU

Par l'analyse des prémisses, des postulats et concepts fondamentaux des théories scientifiques, l'INU contribue à l'élimination de toute considération implicitement ou explicitement extrinsèque aux raisonnements scientifiques, sans s'arrêter aux intérêts personnels. Il est affranchi de la tutelle de tout argument d'autorité émanant du pouvoir politique, de la puissance économique, du monopole d'information, du privilège acquis ou statutaire, académique ou de naissance.

Au sein même de la communauté académique, l'INU s'applique à combattre le sophisme qui, par sa rhétorique implicite, fait obstacle à la recherche créatrice. A cette fin, il développe et applique les méthodes de l'épistémologie et de la sociologie de la connaissance scientifique. Il soutient également les publications pour leur seul mérite scientifique. L'Institut considère la publication anonyme du type Bourbaki comme un moyen approprié pour ramener le débat et la création scientifique à leur véritable domaine, car l'anonymat empêche toute argumentation ad hominem et élimine la prolifération de vaines publications.

En conformité avec ses intérêts scientifiques et son opinion déontologique, il est, d'une manière générale, de la compétence de l'INU de soumettre à un examen critique l'exactitude des faits établis. L'INU révèle les abus de la sémantique et l'inexactitude des informations qui déforment la réalité sociale, en tant que données sociologiques, dans la pratique quotidienne de la vie publique.

2. FONCTION CREATRICE DE L'INU

Fondé sur la connaissance positive, l'Institut se propose de faire des recherches selon des critères épistémologiques les plus stricts.

Considérant l'état actuel des sciences humaines et leur situation dans la communauté scientifique, l'INU leur attribue un statut dévolu aux sciences exactes et expérimentales. Pour se garder de maintenir la distinction entre 'hard science' et 'soft science', l'INU favorise plutôt la recherche dans les domaines des sciences humaines où méthodes et paradigmes, permettant des formulations exactes, une conceptualisation en termes opérationnels et une vérification inductive, peuvent être développés. (Par exemple, recherche sur la communication, l'échange et autres domaines du comportement spatio-temporel).

Bien que l'INU mette l'accent sur la rigueur dans la recherche sociale, il ne perd pas de vue qu'une destination primordiale de la connaissance est d'éclairer les aspirations humaines - que ce soit au plan individuel, collectif ou social - et de contribuer à leur épanouissement. Bien au contraire, grâce à son orientation objectiviste et à sa préférence pour une stratégie de recherche basée sur l'expérimentation, l'INU renforce la validité interne des résultats obtenus et prépare ainsi le terrain pour une action relevante et responsable.

De plus, l'utilisation des résultats de la recherche expérimentale, pour résoudre des problèmes concrets, permet d'évaluer le pouvoir prévisionnel de la science et donne de nouvelles impulsions aux recherches futures.

L'INU recourt à la coopération interdisciplinaire et multinatio-nale afin d'établir des expertises pour des organisations publiques et privées, de conseiller des particuliers et ainsi de résoudre des problèmes techniques, politiques ou cliniques. Pour que ces recommandations soient pleinement utiles, l'Institut se réfère au système de valeurs exprimé par les responsables de décision ( decisionmakers), sans toutefois le partager nécessairement. Cependant, les systèmes de valeurs ne se situent pas hors de toute investigation scientifique. Outre que l'INU applique la science de la décision et assiste les responsables de décision dans la reformulation de leurs problèmes pratiques en une problématique scientifique, il développe aussi les catégories de la 'science privée' qui permettent de restructurer ces systèmes de valeurs en termes explicites.

L'INU est ouvert aux suggestions et aux arguments de groupes ou d'individus ayant été socialisés dans diverses cultures, sans considération hiérarchique. Il encourage, anime, aide et coordonne les chercheurs individuels et les groupes de recherche qui souscrivent à des normes épistémologiques rigoureuses. Conformément à ses objectifs, l'INU diffuse les hypothèses vérifiables et les résultats de recherche vérifiés par des publications et par l'emploi d'autres média - télétransmission, diffusion et communication - pour autant que ces techniques permettent d'acheminer des connaissances scientifiques et non des réflexions indisciplinées, même sous une forme esthétiquement très séduisante. L'action de l'INU est fondamentalement orientée vers la probité scientifique.
   

RECHERCHES RECENTES
 

Das Interuniversitäre Institut (INU) fördert wissenschaftliche Forschung nach einem universalen Wissenschaftskonzept, d.h. ohne sich zu Lehrmeinungen bestimmter nationalen Schulen oder besonderer Ideologien zu bekennen. Sein Character ist multikontinental und multizivilisatorsch. Weiterhin verbreitet en exakte humanwissenschaftliche Kenntnisse und wendet sie an.

In seinem Bestreben, der menschlichen Gesellschaft durch Anwendung wissenschaftlicher Forschungergebnisse zu dienen, konzentriert das INU sich auf die Humanwissenschaften, aber - wenn nötig - verwendet es auch Beiträge anderer Wissenschaften.

Um seine Ziel zu verwirklichen, erfüllt das INU 2 Aufgaben:

1. DIE KRITISCHE AUFGABE DES INU

Durch die Analyse des Prämissen, Postulate und Zentralbegriffe wissenschaflicher Theorien, sucht das INU alle Argumente, die implizit oder explozit einer wissenschaftlichen Beweisführung fremd sind, zu identifizieren und auszuschliessen. Diesen Aufgabe widmet sich das Institut ohne Rücksicht auf Personen oder persönliche Interessen. Das INU hält sich frei von der Vormundschaft autoritätsgläubiger Argumentation, die von politischen Instanzen, wirtschaftlichen Verbänden, Informationsmonopolen, akademischen Institutionen oder persönlicher Einflussnahmen ausgeht.

Im Bereich der Wissenschaft setzt sich das INU mit jener Sophistik auseinander, die mit im Grunde nur rhetorischen Mitteln produktive Forschung behindert. Zu diesem Zweck entwickelt das INU Methoden der Epistemologie und der Wissenschaftssoziologie und wendet sie entsprechend an. Es fördert Veröffentlichungen ausschliesslich um ihres wissenschaftlichen Wertes willen. Das iNU hält anonyme Veröffentlichungen - wie z.B. von Bourbaki - für ein geeignetes Mittel, die wissenschaftliche Auseinandersetzung und Porduktivität auf ihr eigentliches Anliegen zurückzubringen, da Anonymität eine personenbezogene Argumentation und das Überhandnehmen von Veröffentlichungen verhindert, die vor allem der persönlichen Eitelkeit dienen sollen.

Zu den Verpflichtungen des INU gehört weiterhin, die Exaktheit festgestellter Tatsachen kritisch zu überprüfen. Im Interesse der Alltagpraxis des öffentlichen Lebens stellt das INU semantischen Missbrauchen und ungenaue Informationen bloss, die Daten der sozialen Wirklichkeit entstellen.

2. DIE PROUKTIVE AUFGABE DES INU

Das Institut führt Forschungen nach stregen wissenschaftlichen Standards durch.

Ausgehend vom gegenewärtigen Stand der Humanwissenschaften im allgemeinen und ihrer Stellung in der Wissenschaft im besonderen, beansprucht das INU für sie denselben Rang, den andere, exakten und experimentellen Wissenschaften haben. Statt die Teilung zwischen 'hard science' und 'soft science' fortzuführen, fördert das INU Forschung auf jenen Gebieten der Humanwissenschaften, in denen Methoden und Paradigmen entwickelt werden können, die exakte Formulierung, operationalisierbare Begriffsbildung und indiuktive Beweisführung als Verifikation ermöglichen (z.B. Forschung auf den Gebieten der Kommunikation und anderes raum-zeit-lichen Verhaltens).

Indem das INU auf strengen wissenschaftlichen Standards besteht, sieht sich das INU nicht behindert, die gesellschaftlichen Auf-gabe der Erkenntnis zu berècksichtingen, menschliches Strebens - persönlicher, kollektiver oder sozialer Art - aufzuklären und in seiner Entfaltung zu fördern. Gerade indem das INU auf seiner objektivistischen und experimentellen Forschungsstrategie besthet, erhöht es die interne Gültigkeit seiner Forschungsergebnisse und schafft so die Voraussetzung für relevantes und verantwortliches Handeln. Ferner trägt die Anwendung experimentell kontrollierter Forschungsergebnisse bei der Lösung konkreter Probleme auch zur Überprüfung der Voraussagekraft der Wissenschaft bei und gibt damit künftiger Forschung neue Impulse.

Öffentliche und private Organisationen wie Einzelpersonen werden vom INU sachverständig auf der Grundlage interdisziplinärer und transnationaler Zusammenarbeit zur Lösung technischer, politi-scher und klinischer Probleme beraten. Um die praktische Brauchbarkeit seiner Empfählungen zu sichern, bezieht sich das INU letztlich auf das Präferenzsystem derer, die die Entscheidungen treffen, auch wenn es diese Präferenz nicht teilt. Diese Präfe-renzsysteme selbst liegen jedoch nicht völlig ausserhalb jeglicher wissenschaftlicher Überprüfung.

Das INU nutzt nicht nur die Entscheidungswissenschaft und hilft den Entscheidenen dabei, ihre Fragen in wissenschaftlich anwendbare Begriffe umzuformulieren, sondern es kann auch Kategorien für eine als Privatwissenschaft zu bezeichnende wissenschaftliche Disziplin anbieten, um das Präferenzsystem explizit rekonstruierbar zu machen.

Das INU ist offen für Vorschläge und Argumente von Individuen und Gruppen verschiedener kultureller Herkunft und unabhängig von hierarchisachen Erwägungen. Es ermutigt, fördert und koordiniert die wissenschaftliche Arbeit von Individuen und Gruppen nach strengen epistemologischen Kriterien. Im Einklang mit seinen Zielsetzungen verarbeitet das INU verifizierbare Indeen in seinen eigenen Veröffentlichungen und durch andere Medien der Fernübertragung, Diffusion und Kommunikation, insofern diese Techniken geeignet sind, wissenschaftliche Kenntnisse zu vermitteln, und nicht als Übermittler disziplinloser Spekulationen dient, auch wenn diese in ästitisch ansprechneder Form geboten wird. Das INU lässt sich von keinen anderen Werten leiten als denen der wissenschaftlichen Zuverlässigkeit.

Anfang
 
 

El Instituto Interuniversitario (INU) tiene como fin crear, aplicar y difundir conocimientos exactos en ciencias humanas basadas en una concepción universal de la cienca. El Instituto ejerce sus actividades con una perspectiva multicontinental y políglota sin interferencias ideológicas, prejuicios u otras consideraciones extra-científicas.

El INU se esfuerza en poner al servicio de la comunidad los descubrimientos de las ciencias humanas, refiriendose siempre a lo adquirido en otras disciplinas cientificas.

Para alcanzar su fin, el INU se compromete a desempenar une función crítica y une función creadora.

1. FUNCION CRITICA DEL INU

Por análisis de las premisas, de los postulados y conceptos fundamentales de la teorias cientificas, el INU contribuye a la eliminación de toda consideración implícamente o explícamente extrinseca a los razonamientos cientificis, sin pararse en los intereses personales. Está exento de la tutela de todo argumento de autoridad que emane del poder poltico, de la potencia económica, del monopolio de informacíón, del privilegio adquirido o estatuario, academico o de nacimiento.

En el seno mismo de la comunidad académica, el INU se aplica en combatir el sofisma que, por su retórica implícita, obstaculiza la investigación creadora. Con este fin, desarrolla y aplica métodos de la epistemologia y de la sociologia del conocimiento científico. Apoya igualmente las publicaciones anónimas, del tipo Bourbaki, como un medio apropiado para conduir el debate y la creación cientificos, a su verdadero campo, ya que el anonimato dificulta toda argumentación ad hominem y elemina la proliferación de publicaciones vanas.

Conformemente con sus intereses científicos y su opinión deontológica, es de manera general, competencia del INU el someter a examen crítico la exactitud de los hechos establecidos. El INU revela los abusos de la semantica y la inexactitud de las informaciones que deforman la realidad social, como datos sociológicos, en la practica cotidiana de la vida publica.

2. FUNCION CREADORA DEL INU

Fundado en el conocimiento positivo, el Instituto se propone hacer investigaciones según los criterios epistemológicos más estrictos.

Considerando el etado actual de las ciencias humanas y de su situación en la comunidad científica, el INU les atribuye un estatuto tan exigente como es el estatuto correspondido en dereche a las ciencias exactas y experimentales. Para poder manener la distinción entre 'hard ciencia' and 'soft ciencia', el INU favorece más las investigaciones en el campo de ciencias humanas, donde métodos y paradigmas, permiten formulaciones exactas, una conceptualización en términos operacionles y una verificación inductiva, pueden asi desarrollarse. (Por ejemplo, investigación sobre la communicación, el intercambio y otros campos del comportamiento espacio-temporal.)

Aunque el INU marca el acento sobre el rigor en la investigación social, no pierde de vista que un destino primordial del conocimiento es aclarar las aspiraciones humanas - sea en el plano individual, colectivo o social - y contribuir a su realización. Por el contrario, gracias a su orientación objectivista y a su preferencia por una estrategia de investigación basada en la experimentación, el INU refuerza la validez interna de los resultados obtenidos y prepara asi el terreno para una acción de realce y responsable.

Además, la untilización de los resultados de la investigación experimental, para resolver problemas concretos, permite evaluar el poder previsional de la ciencia y de nuevos impulsos a las investigaciones futuras.

El INU recurre a la cooperación interdisciplinaria y multinational afin de establecer peritajes para organismos públicos y privados, de aconsejar a los particulares y resolver asi problemas tecnicos, politicos o clinicos. Para que estas recomendaciones sean plenamente útiles, el Insituto se refiere al sistema de valores expresado por los responsables de decisión (decisionmakers), sin por ello compartirlos necesariamente. Sinembargo, los sistemas de valores no se situan fuera de toda investigación científica.

Además de que le INU aplica la ciencia de la decisión y asiste a los responsables de decisión en la reformulación de sus problemas practicos en una probelmatica cientifca, desarrolla tambien categorías de la "ciencia privada que permiten estructurar estos sistemas de valores en términos explícitos.

El INU esta abierto a sugestiones y argumentos de grupos o individuos socializados en diversas culturas, sin consideración jerárquica. Sostiene, anima, ayuda y coordina a los investigadores individuales y a los grupos de investigación que sus-criben a normas epistemológicas rigurosas. De acuerdo con sus objectivos el INU difunde hipótesis verificables y los resultados de investigación verificados por publicaciones, y por el empleo de otros media - teletransmisión, difusión y comunicación - siempre y cuando estas técnicas permitan canalizar conocimientos científicos no reflexiones indisciplinades aunque sea en forma estéticamente seductora. La acción del INU esta fundamentalmente orientada hacia la probidad científica.

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