Chapter 6 investigates the reasons why the teaching of agronomy in Peruvian universities excludes native agriculture despite its contributions in the realm of agro-biodiversity. Peru is one of the nine world centers of biodiversity in cultivars. The chapter investigates why indigenous agriculture is regarded as pre-scientific, superseded by “scientific” agriculture. In the second part of the chapter, the pre-scientific status of native agriculture motivates a focus on the Church's doctrine of “supersessionism,” a view that all religions before the advent of Christ have been superseded by...

Chapter 6 investigates the reasons why the teaching of agronomy in Peruvian universities excludes native agriculture despite its contributions in the realm of agro-biodiversity. Peru is one of the nine world centers of biodiversity in cultivars. The chapter investigates why indigenous agriculture is regarded as pre-scientific, superseded by “scientific” agriculture. In the second part of the chapter, the pre-scientific status of native agriculture motivates a focus on the Church's doctrine of “supersessionism,” a view that all religions before the advent of Christ have been superseded by Christianity, a doctrine implicitly taken over by Science. The last part of the chapter focuses on a history of mathematics that reveals a crucial link between the rise of the market economy and the mechanization and disenchantment of nature.