If Kieran Healy was in Silcon Valley rather than some primitive outpost of the british empire he’d capture a pattent: shake and bake business model for research and development. He outlines a simple DYI method – take two large rich complex world views, slam them into each other, study the result. I used to joke that particle physics proceeded from the presumption that if you need to understand the automobile the right approach was to slamming cars into each other a very high volocity and then weigh the debris. For example here is an example of running Quaker and Puritian world views into each other the result formed a big thick interesting book.

Of course the dark side of this amusement arises when the two big world views are two institutional forms locked in mortal combat. It’s all in in good fun until somebody loses an eye.