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Dear Ryan, 

Do you really believe (like most STS scholars) that contexts are so
important? For example, can you discover from this message whether it was
written on a laptop or a desktop, on a PC or a Macintosh? If you would not
know, could you recognize my age or gender from it? No: this is STS rubbish.
(It enables them to legitimate the writing of thick histories.) 

Contexts matter only if they are structural. For example,
university-industry relations may matter in pharmaceutical research or in
the food industry. But it would not matter in itself whether I had a brother
who was running a company. The crucial question is whether variation is
significant. If it is, we may be able to hypothesize structural factors.

With best wishes, 


Loet
________________________________

Loet Leydesdorff 
Amsterdam School of Communications Research (ASCoR)
Kloveniersburgwal 48, 1012 CX Amsterdam
Tel.: +31-20- 525 6598; fax: +31-20- 525 3681 
[log in to unmask] ; http://www.leydesdorff.net/ 

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