Bruno Latour Key Contemporary Thinkers Lee Braver, Heidegger John Burgess, Kripke Claire Colebrook and Jason Maxwell, Agamben Jean-Pierre Couture, Sloterdijk Rosemary Cowan, Cornel West George Crowder, Isaiah Berlin Gareth Dale, Karl Polanyi Colin Davis, Levinas Oliver Davis, Jacques Rancière Gerard de Vries, Bruno Latour Reidar Andreas Due, Deleuze Edward Fullbrook and Kate Fullbrook, Simone de Beauvoir Andrew Gamble, Hayek Neil Gascoigne, Richard Rorty Nigel Gibson, Fanon Graeme Gilloch, Siegfried Kracauer Graeme Gilloch, Walter Benjamin Phillip Hansen, Hannah Arendt Sean Homer, Fredric Jameson Christina Howells, Derrida Simon Jarvis, Adorno Rachel Jones, Irigaray Sarah Kay, Žižek S. K. Keltner, Kristeva Valerie Kennedy, Edward Said Chandran Kukathas and Philip Pettit, Rawls Moya Lloyd, Judith Butler James McGilvray, Chomsky, 2nd Edition Lois McNay, Foucault Dermot Moran, Edmund Husserl Michael Moriarty, Roland Barthes Marie-Eve Morin, Jean-Luc Nancy Stephen Morton, Gayatri Spivak Timothy Murphy, Antonio Negri William Outhwaite, Habermas, 2nd Edition Kari Palonen, Quentin Skinner Ed Pluth, Badiou John Preston, Feyerabend Chris Rojek, Stuart Hall Severin Schroeder, Wittgenstein Anthony Paul Smith, Laruelle Dennis Smith, Zygmunt Bauman Felix Stalder, Manuel Castells Georgia Warnke, Gadamer Jonathan Wolff, Robert Nozick Christopher Zurn, Axel Honneth Bruno Latour Gerard de Vries polity Copyright © Gerard de Vries 2016 The right of Gerard de Vries to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published in 2016 by Polity Press Polity Press 65 Bridge Street Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK Polity Press 350 Main Street Malden, MA 02148, USA All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-5062-3 (hardback) ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-5063-0 (paperback) A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Vries, Gerard de, 1948- Title: Bruno Latour / Gerard de Vries. Description: Cambridge, UK ; Malden, MA : Polity Press, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016001169| ISBN 9780745650623 (hardback : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780745650630 (pbk. : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Latour, Bruno. | Science–Social aspects. | Science and civilization. | Science–Philosophy. Classification: LCC Q175.46 .V75 2016 | DDC 303.48/3–dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/201600116 Typeset in 10.5 on 12 pt Palatino by Toppan Best-set Premedia Limited Printed and bound in the UK by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CRO 4YY The publisher has used its best endeavours to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate. 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For further information on Polity, visit our website: politybooks.com Contents Preface vii Abbreviations ix 1 Empirical Philosophy 1 1.1 Making Paris visible 5 1.2 The path towards ‘empirical philosophy’ 11 1.3 The power of addition 17 2 Science Studies 21 2.1 The ‘Sociology of Scientific Knowledge’ 26 2.2 An anthropologist visits a laboratory 31 2.3 Anatomy of a scientific paper 37 2.4 Realism in and about science 46 3 Science and Society 53 3.1 ‘The Pasteurization of France: War and Peace of Microbes’ 57 3.2 ‘The Pasteurization of France: Irreductions’ 63 3.3 Another turn after the social turn 68 3.4 The turn to ontology 76 4 Another Social Science 82 4.1 Deploying what makes up the social 87 4.2 Deploying how the social is stabilized 95 4.3 Shifting focus 100 vi Contents 5 A Philosophy for Our Time 114 5.1 ‘We Have Never Been Modern’ 118 5.2 The modern Constitution 124 5.3 Relationism 129 5.4 Cosmopolitics 136 6 A Comparative Anthropology of the Moderns 149 6.1 A research protocol for a comparative anthropology 153 6.2 ‘Empirical philosophy’ redefined 166 6.3 Enquiring modes of existence 174 6.4 The modern experience: fifteen modes 181 6.5 Facing ‘Gaia’ 191 References 202 Name Index 212 Subject Index 215 Preface “When men cannot observe, they don’t have ideas; they have obsessions,” V. S. Naipaul wrote. The modern philosophical tradi- tion holds observation in high regard; nevertheless it is obsessed by a worldview that feeds off dualities – between humans and nonhumans, nature and society, facts and values, science and poli- tics. Bruno Latour wants us to observe better, with a finer resolu- tion. To become more attentive, to redescribe the world we live in, and to better understand our current predicament, he introduced ethnography and comparative anthropology as vital methods for philosophy. Latour is an ‘empirical philosopher’. This introduction to his work follows Latour in his footsteps, both as an ethnographer and as a philosopher. The light tone of much of Latour’s writing may easily conceal its profundity. Latour takes issue with much of what we take for granted as intuitively evident. By following Latour’s moves closely and by providing some background from science studies, philosophy and sociology, to show to what extent and in what sense Latour’s work stands out against the tradition, I hope to ease access to what Latour claims to be a richer vocabulary to account for who we are and what we value, that is, a better, fairer common sense. Latour is a prolific writer on an amazingly varied set of topics, so some selection was inevitable. To introduce his empirical work, Latour’s studies on science, law and religion will be discussed in detail; they led to substantial philosophical innovations. Latour’s philosophy – his thoughts on science, on actor-network theory, cosmopolitics and his anthropology of the Moderns – is introduced viii Preface roughly in the order in which they took shape. But this is not an intellectual biography; the historical and intellectual context in which Latour’s thoughts evolved is only touched upon. That also holds for the reception of his work. This is an introduction to Latour’s philosophy; not to science studies as a discipline, nor to the work of those who have followed Latour, used his ideas, or thought they did. To write about a living author is an unquiet affair. With the advantage of hindsight it becomes apparent that Latour’s work has been driven by a coherent heuristic. But those who followed his work were often puzzled when he took his thoughts to new levels and new domains or when he introduced conceptual innovations. We met in the early 1980s and stayed in contact ever since. Time and again he forced me to rethink his position, as well as my own. I want to thank Bruno Latour and my Dutch friends and col- leagues Huub Dijstelbloem, Rob Hagendijk, Hans Harbers, Josta de Hoog, Noortje Marres and Annemiek Nelis for their comments on the draft of this book. I’m also very grateful to John Naughton for his comments and for helping me out with the subtleties of the English grammar. As always, my gratitude to Pauline extends far beyond her comments on my writing. Abbreviations For full bibliographical details see the References. AIME An Inquiry into Modes of Existence – An Anthropology of the Moderns AR Aramis or the Love of Technology CB La Clef de Berlin et autre leçons d’un amateur de sciences CM Petite reflexion sur le culte moderne des dieux faitiches FG Face à Gaïa ICON Iconoclash – Beyond the Image Wars in Science, Religion, and Art IRR Irreductions (part 2 of The Pasteurization of France, cited by paragraph number) LL Laboratory Life – The Social Construction of Scientific Facts LL2 Laboratory Life – The Construction of Scientific Facts (2nd edition) ML The Making of Law MTP Making Things Public – Atmospheres of Democracy NBM We Have Never Been Modern PF The Pasteurization of France PH Pandora’s Hope – Essays on the Reality of Science Studies PN Politics of Nature – How to Bring the Sciences into Democracy PVI Paris ville invisible RAS Reassembling the Social – An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory REJ Rejoicing – Or the Torments of Religious Speech SA Science in Action SPI The Science of Passionate Interests 1 Empirical Philosophy A truly bewildering Wunderkammer. The collection of Bruno Latour’s publications brings an early-modern cabinet of curiosities to mind. Their subject matters range from laboratory life in Nobel Prize winner Roger Guillemin’s Salk Institute (LL); the shared history of microbes, microbiologists and society (PF); the tragic fate of an innovative public transport system (AR); file handling and the passage of law at the French supreme court for adminis- trative law, the Conseil d’État (ML); geopolitics in the epoch of the Anthropocene (FG); religion (REJ); economics (SPI); ethnopsychia- try (CM); modernity (NBM, AIME); to Paris (PVI), politics (PN, MTP) and philosophy of science (SA, PH). Pick up any of Latour’s books and you will be guided again through a maze of surprising connections – from the technical details of a rotary motor to meet- ings at the Transportation Ministry and a photo-op with French Prime Minister Jacques Chirac; from Pasteur’s laboratory in Paris to a farm in Pouilly-le-Fort; from the Conseil d’État in session to its mail room and to the file folders, stamps and paperclips in a sec- retary’s cubicle; from a dialogue between lovers to Fra Angelico’s fresco of the empty tomb in Florence; or from the Salk Institute’s lab benches to the hectic travel schedule of its boss on his way to meet an endless array of colleagues, firms and high-level civil servants.