Product Description

Bruno Latour was once asked him: "Do you believe in reality?" This text is an attempt to answer this question. Through case studies of scientists in the Amazon analyzing soil and in Pasteur's lab studying lactic acid, he shows the steps by which physical events become scientific knowlege.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #148119 in Books
• Published on: 1999-05-28
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

Customer Reviews

A major reformulation of science studies
This book is an attempt by Latour to summarize some of his research in the 1990s and to write a rebuttal to the 'science warriors' of the US Academia. The book takes us to as diverse field sites as Boa Vista, Brazil, Athens in Antiquity, Pasteur's laboratory, speed bumps in Paris, a desecrating Brahmin in India, etc. The path is as winding as Ariadne's thread.

The main questions the book tries to answer are: What kind of reality does science studies describe? How did the irreality of traditional realism come about? Meticulously the book describes the steps by which science transforms the world into circulating knowledge, how humans exchange properties with objects and, finally, asks the question of how we can live with the scientific and technological objects we have made.

The book represents a major reformulation of Latour's theories, which started with 'We have Never been Modern'. The aim of this reformulation is to avoid the reading of his theories as a generalised machiavellianism. Similarly Latour tries to avoid that the results of science studies should be used as weapons in the social scientists' and the humanists' fight against natural scientists and engineers.

A book of outtakes
This book is like the album that bands make to fill out their recording contracts, so they can move to another record label. Nothing very new here, except perhaps for the level of rambling that Harvard seems to tolerate in Latour. There are a couple decent stabs at explaining the metaphysical implications of actor-network theory. But frankly if it weren't so easy to slap some actor-network theory on a piece of ordinary empirical work to make it shimmer, I doubt that people would take this stuff so seriously. Historians of tomorrow will have a good laugh at our expense.

A book to think with
If you want answers this is the last Latour book you want - i would start with his ealrier works. To appreciate this book you really have to be prepared to think differently about all forms of knowledge practices and accept that scinces may not be a exacting as you would think.

Many might find his reviews of science disturbing - i found it refreshing forciong one to apprecaite that our human centre approach can easily become to complicated to actually say anything!