>In a society dominated by commoditized relations and alienated values, the attempt to close science off from its relations with the values of its contexts makes a tortuous kind of sense. All the same, however, this undialectical and decontextualizing activity seems ultimately to betray an implicit allegiance to a now venerable religious, psychological, and philosophical tradition: THE QUEST FOR THE ABSOLUTE (as the early nineteenth century phrased it). Indeed, this particular characterization of *the impotent in pursuit of the impossible* may fittingly stand as an epitome of the Imaginary and even morbid quest of the academic discourse for what we might call the *System of Systems* — for the ultimate closed system where desires are facts and All is One. 😀