Epistemological preferences in Western academies over the centuries became the measuring rod for what is to count as valid knowledge in thinking about development. The genealogy of the sciences of law and economics can be traced back to the Roman and British empires. The problem is posed in this paper as to the question of how remnants of these genealogies continue to influence development models and to what extent the academy may be in need of transformation by the inclusion of epistemologies and ethics found in modernity's "other", i.e. in cultures that continue to exist outside modernity. This transformation of the academy by enlargement, it is argued, would become more feasible by scientific methodologies inspired by forms of transdisciplinarity, trilateral science, and "praxis."