A scientist friend asked Bruno Latour point-blank: "Do you
believe in reality?" Taken aback by this strange query, Latour
offers his meticulous response in "Pandora's Hope." It is a
remarkable argument for understanding the reality of science in
practical terms.
In this book Latour, identified by Richard Rorty as the new
"bete noire of the science worshipers," gives us his most
philosophically informed book since "Science in Action." Through
case studies of scientists in the Amazon analyzing soil and in
Pasteur's lab studying the fermentation of lactic acid, he shows us
the myriad steps by which events in the material world are
transformed into items of scientific knowledge. Through many
examples in the world of technology, we see how the material and
human worlds come together and are reciprocally transformed in this
process.
Why, Latour asks, did the idea of an independent reality, free
of human interaction, emerge in the first place? His answer to this
question, harking back to the debates between Might and Right
narrated by Plato, points to the real stakes in the so-called
science wars: the perplexed submission of ordinary people before
the warring forces of claimants to the ultimate truth.
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