杏吧原创

Pandora鈥檚 Hope by Bruno Latour, Harvard, $19.95/拢12.50, ISBN
067465336X (paperback)

B-52 BOMBERS do not fly, Bruno Latour cordially insists. And if you ask
Latour, who is Professor of the Sociology of Innovation at the School of Mines
in Paris, whether microbes existed before Louis Pasteur discovered them in 1865,
he may well answer that it depends what you mean by 鈥�1865鈥�. Some readers may
already be jumping to conclusions鈥攑erhaps involving the words 鈥淔rench鈥�,
鈥渋ntellectuals鈥� and 鈥渕erde鈥�.

These sound like the claims of 鈥渟ocial constructionist鈥� sociologists. These
insist, on average, that because science is an activity of our culture
everything about it鈥攊ncluding what scientific theories say about the
world鈥攊s determined by social forces.

Not so fast. Show Latour an intellectual war zone and he鈥檒l leap into the
middle, to do battle with both sides. On one flank are those he calls 鈥淪cience
Warriors鈥�, figures who answer the question 鈥渨hat exactly is it that scientists
do?鈥� with a dogmatic 鈥渄iscover an external reality that exists independently of
辞产蝉别谤惫补迟颈辞苍蝉鈥�.

He is yet more annoyed at the social constructionists on the other flank, not
least because the Warriors tend to lump him in with them and all others who
challenge their faith. The results include Latour鈥檚 opening story of a
non-combatant academic approaching him to ask, with trepidation: 鈥淒o you believe
in reality?鈥�

So what is the platform from which he declares an anathema on both these
houses? Frankly, it isn鈥檛 finished yet, so please bear with some approximation.
In Pandora鈥檚 Hope he aims to draw together the threads of his earlier
work and to start the project of building what he has called 鈥渁 successor
language to science and politics鈥�.

And why would we need one of those?

Practically speaking, the interaction between politics and science is fraught
with difficulty. Such matters as climate change, for example, require political
decisions now. And political culture demands that these be based on science. But
science cannot provide the kinds of answer that politics demands, at least not
until after climate change is well under way. The inevitable scientific
uncertainty and dispute provides politicians with the perfect excuse for doing
nothing.

More abstractly, consider the definition of science as the realm of
objectivity about an external world. In the ideal it generates exact theories,
even if they鈥檙e provisional in that a more exact theory may come along. And
politics is defined as subjective, the field of values.

To Latour, the assumption that there is a great and unbridgeable divide
between these is the core of 鈥渕odernism鈥�, and he鈥檚 agin it. He traces the
origins of this worldview to Plato鈥檚 account of a dialogue between Socrates, the
logician, and Callicles, the rhetorician. Plato fixes the dispute in favour of
Socrates, throwing in the killer argument that the absolute truths of geometry
trump the mere body politic. If that is modernism, post-modernism and its
drinking partner social constructivism are merely reactionary, taking the side
of rhetoric against geometry.

Latour proposes destroying the divide, and declares that this will involve
abolishing the distinction between subjectivity and objectivity. That
distinction is so thoroughly incorporated into our language that it鈥檚 hard to
write about an alternative: he sometimes resorts to humour and paradox.

Forget, he says, all of philosophy鈥檚 expansive maunderings about a mythical
brain-in-a-vat and its relation to an external reality. Think instead of reality
as a network of entities, acting upon each other in various degrees. These
include minds, necessarily interacting with the bodies they inhabit, with other
minds and with other things鈥斺�漬onhumans鈥� in Latour鈥檚 word. Taken seriously,
such a network view makes the concept of an 鈥渆xternal鈥� reality
redundant鈥攅xternal to what? Everything, including your brain and the
subjectivity which inhabits it, is in the network.

A little mathematical imagery would go a long way towards making the network
apparent, or even respectable, to scientific thinkers. This book provides little
to help us, beyond the example of the B-52s mentioned above. Latour is right
that individual bombers don鈥檛 fly. The United States Air Force does fly
(sometimes), as an entire networks of what he calls 鈥渁ctants鈥�, from engineers to
rivets.

Of course there are facts, Latour says. Scientific facts are made, through
the rigorous application of scientific method. Think of this, perhaps, as
actants in the network鈥攕cientists, laboratories and
methods鈥攊nvestigating the reality of other parts of the network. If you
read it in the old modernist way, you鈥檒l be as misled as the brain in the
vat.

I still don鈥檛 know about the microbes. Latour argues that they existed quite
a lot in the 1866 version of 1865, and totally in 1999鈥檚 version. But in the
1864 version of 1865? Just as a mental exercise, let鈥檚 ask whether they had a
strong potential to exist, in the sense that their discovery was a 鈥渄ownhill
race鈥� in the space of the grand network of humans and nonhumans. Another book,
please鈥� in the meantime, you can rely on this one to shake your ideas up.
And that鈥檚 almost never a bad thing, in science or elsewhere.