THE LITERATURE
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Moving on to the reading for Tuesday, January 22 you will come to see that Chapter 1 of Science in Action
provides us an understanding of the ways in which scientific articles (and expert articles more generally) and the
claims they contain are collective fabrications (in the sense that they are the product of labor, of work; that is, they
are made, they are “built things” put together and solidified by many people—but not “made up”). In this chapter
(and the next selection about the laboratory) we follow a naïve outsider, a “dissenter” who attempts to doubt
expert claims. This means the "dissenter" is attempting to move "upstream" where science is in-the-making. Note
that Latour works with three examples: a claim about missiles, a claim about a molecule, and a claim about fuel
cells. What do you figure is his point in that? Why not just give us one example to follow (which would be a heck
of a lot easier, given that keeping track of Latour's sentence numbers requires close attention on our part)? In this
diagram I have pulled together the series of claims about the Soviet missile test (the circles are numbered as they
are in Latour’s chapter). The first claim (1) is set out as factual and (2) treats it as such and action is taken as a
consequence. But then claim (3) leads us to doubt (1). Claim (4) makes a shambles of the everything; claim (1)
comes completely undone. However, claim (11) undoes all the doubt.
(4) The undercover agent 009 in
Novosibirsk whispered to the
housemaid before dying that he had
heard in bars that some officers
thought that some of their [missiles] in
ideal test conditions might [have an
accuracy] somewhere between [100]
and 1000 [metres] or this is at least
how the report came to Washington.
4
(3) Advocates of the MX in the
Pentagon cleverly leak information
contending that [new Soviet missiles are
accurate within 100 metres].
1 3
(1) New Soviet missiles
4
11
aimed against Minutemen
silos are accurate to 100
metres.
1
1
(11) The CIA's certainty concerning the 100metre accuracy of Russian missiles is not
based on the agent 009's report, but on five
independent sources. Let me suggest that
only groups subsidized by Soviets could have
an interest in casting doubts on this
incontrovertible fact.
1 2
(2) Since [new Soviet missiles are
accurate within 100 metres] this means
that Minutemen are not safe any more,
and this is the main reason why the MX
weapon system is necessary.
!!
Note also that Latour (as we have already been doing) uses the image of a stream, locating “finished facts”
downstream and the fact-building processes upstream. That image is useful; we can align it with the movingback-and-forth-through-time model we used in class discussions. We can also imagine that the “dissenter” is
attempting to wade or swim upstream—a difficult thing to do if you have ever tried it. It is this difficulty that is
Latour’s point; upstream claims must be challenged, their underpinnings undone. We have to see whether the
dissenter is up to the task.
!
Pay attention to the structure of the chapter. What are its major sections? Its subsections? What goes on in each
section; that is, in what order does Latour make his argument? On page 27 Latour makes a provocative part of
that argument: “the status of a statement [what we are calling a claim] depends on later statements.” What do
you make of that idea? On page 28 Latour notes that what gets said later (by those who are referring to earlier
claims by others—and then offering up counter-claims: "He said that back then; I am saying this now")
retrospectively transforms the “truth value” of earlier sentences. How does Latour illustrate that idea? In what
ways does that idea make sense to you? If it’s confusing to you (and it is a somewhat tricky idea that he is playing
with here), in what ways is it confusing? Is it the sort of time traveling that appears to be going on? Or is it the
idea that a past claim surely can't keep changing from true to false to true to false just because we continue to
debate counter-claims (and counter-counter-claims) downstream? And now turning to a different question, what
do you understand Latour to mean when he says (page 29) that fact-making is a collective process? Does that
claim square with our exploration of "the collective" up to this point (that is, does it make sense in terms of the
argument Latour treated us to in the short “Crisis” excerpt from We Have Never Been Modern)?
!
Note the key concern of Part B (page 30 onward): when the dissenter moves from the realm of “daily life” to the
places where experts carry out their work he moves from controversy to even more controversies. That is,
examining the work of scientists and experts and what they have to say about disputes does not settle matters;
rather, things are even more unsettling. Going upstream leads to greater complication and difficulty. Why and
how is that difficulty demonstrated by Latour? How does Latour make his argument at this point? Pretty soon we
are in the midst of authors utilizing several citation tactics to strengthen their case and weaken that of their
opponents. What are those tactics? Later (page 38) Latour shows us how and why it’s important to be referred to
by later texts. How and why is that so (pay special attention to pages 42-44)? What does Figure 1.6 show us? You
may find it useful to think of the downward arrow as downstream and the upward arrow as the direction the
dissenter is moving as he madly paddles upstream in his attempt to challenge the claims coming out of the
laboratory.
!
THE LABORATORY
!
Latour ends his first chapter with a section (not included in our reading) entitled "Numbers, more numbers"
wherein he reminds us that "fact-writing" produces texts (scientific articles in particular, expert articles more
generally) that give the reader three options: giving up (“This stuff is just too difficult and besides it holds no
interest for me”), going along (“I can use this bit of knowledge to improve my diet”—thus contributing to making
the article's claims more solid), or continuing to play the dissenter who must leave the expert literature and enter
the laboratory—and go through the continued task of doubting what is being claimed, this time amidst the dayto-day practices and instruments of the lab. And this is where we readers head as we move into Chapter 2. Before
doing that, however, it's worth asking (as a number of his critics have) just where the "social" is in his argument.
Those critics expect that what science finds is affected by social factors that impinge on science from the outside,
much like a hand (the social) would squeeze and shape a ball of clay (the sciences). His answer is to redefine the
social by considering it to be the association of heterogeneous components—the arrays of persons/text/things
that we saw in the news article exercise the first day of class and in the newspaper accounts Latour writes about at
the beginning of We Have Never Been Modern (notice that he's smuggled the "socia[l]" inside the larger word,
association). He will often call such an association an "assemblage." Thus, the "social" is not something outside
that can push, pull, distort, shape the science conceived as inside a surrounding context. As a result of this
redefinition, the deeper we go into a text (and now into a laboratory) the more associational the situation
becomes rather than less. When we go into the laboratory we do not leave the social (or the political or economic
or cultural) behind; everything becomes more entangled, more associated. More and more must be shown to
hang together, to cohere.
!
The section of Chapter 2 entitled "From texts to things: a showdown" is a “bridge” from the expert article to the
place (in this case, the laboratory) where the expert produces the various forms of data that show up in articles.
The dissenter leaves the debate about claims in texts (all those numbered sentences of Chapter 1 that showed the
dynamic world of claims, counter-claims, counter-counter-claims,...) and enters the laboratory. As the dissenter
moves further upstream he encounters data (the “inscriptions”), then the instruments that produced the
inscriptions, then the person (the “spokesperson” who explains how the instrument works and what the data
mean—“facts” about the circumstances of the lab, about how everything works, do not speak for themselves), then
the whole array of instruments that populate the laboratory and a field of study, then the objects (the black boxes
from prior studies) that an ongoing research project can take for granted, then all the past activity that produced
those objects and so on. But let's head back to Latour. He introduces us to "inscriptions"; what the heck are they,
why are they important? What do we learn when Latour shows us how difficult it sometimes is to produce good
inscriptions, good data? What's important (to our learning about going upstream and downstream in the
laboratory) about what happens on pages 66 and 67? Why does Latour insist that when we leave the "words" of
expert texts we do not go directly to Nature, to the world? How does Latour define an instrument/an inscription
device? By the bottom of p. 68 and on to p. 69, what sorts of things does Latour include in the definition of
instrument? It's important to note that this inclusive definition shows us that Latour's argument in this book is
not limited to the "science" of biologists, chemists, physicists and geologists. We can imagine the argument being
applicable to a range of experts and the tools they use to make claims.
!
What is Latour driving at in the "spokesmen and women" section? And what more do we learn when we hit the
"trials of strength" section (at the end of which the dissenter gives up)? What sorts of things does the Professor do
to fend off the dissenter's ongoing doubt? And why does the dissenter eventually have to give up? As that section
comes to an end notice how Latour redefines what is meant by objectivity and subjectivity. In what ways do his
redefinitions make sense? What reasons do you have to resist his new definitions?
!
Finally, after skipping a number of pages that have been left out of the excerpt you have in hand, Latour discusses
Nature. This section is provocative in many ways, especially since we are at once turned around by Latour's bold
claim: Nature does not explain the power of some claims to settle a controversy; Nature is the result of the
settlement. Latour knows this section is crucial to his argument; he even says (about “the double-talk of the twofaced Janus”) that “[t]he whole book is in jeopardy here.” You may find that you have to read this section more
than once to appreciate the argument Latour is making here. I will be interested in hearing what you think of this
section and how you think it helps understand politicoscientific controversies.