Thoughts on Latour, We Have Never Been Modern

This entry has been edited somewhat since being written. In the end I’ve decided to put up one of the earlier drafts of the entry which covers the earlier chapters of “We have never been modern”. It’s a difficult book to criticise.

So far there seems to a pattern in the chapters in that he spots a really interesting problem, thinks his way through it, makes a unjustifed assumption* and then bases his conclusions on this assumption. Bafflingly these assumptions should be obvious to anthropologists and archaeologists so I’m really struggling to see the attraction. I think it’s probably down to the fact that his central problem is actually rather appealing to archaeologists and anthropologists. How do we construct reality? He looks at how society recognises and responds to the hole in the ozone layer. Our concept of this hole is based on three things. One is that the hole is real and exists whether we recognise it or not. Another is that the fact we recognise it as a hole and agree where the hole ends, the fact it’s over the south pole etc, this is all the social aspect of the hole. This might seem like stating the obvious, but this is not necessarily the case. The Greenhouse effect works whether we believe in it or not, but the social interpretation – it’s either a global disaster or a hippy conspiracy – is entirely human. Then there’s the segment of discourse. The Greenhouse Effect is a global disaster, but perhaps only if you only make the assumption mass human death a Bad Thing. We also talk about an ozone hole, but is it? Could be a thinning bald patch?

There are these three ways of looking at things, none of which necessarily crossover with each other. How do we then discuss and analyse things like the holistic ‘ozone hole’ concept? He argues in the modern world we can’t and that modern modes of thought have broken down (in some sections of the book) or never existed (in others). He notes this isn’t a problem for anthropologists who can mesh this altogether. He argues that this is because anthropologists study pre-modern peoples and that an anthropology of the modern world can’t be done.

It can and it has, but Latour is either unaware of this or ignores it. This is giving me difficulty. If he did acknowledge anthropology of moderns does exist then he could have wrapped up the book at the end chapter one, thus leaving the reader free to read something more comprehensible.

He also seems to have narrowly missed the point of science in his book, which is a huge shame as he’s close to a really interesting and fundamental problem of modern science. He argues that with the advent of science, natural facts become speakers in society through scientists as their authorised representatives. I would argue the big revolution isn’t that nature has authorised speakers, it that it shows that nature can be interrogated by anyone. There isn’t a specifically British Law of Gravity and we can’t keep the Human Genome hidden as a state secret. We could refuse to disseminate knowledge of it, but if the North Koreans wanted their own Communist Human Genome then they could discover it for themselves. This, scientists argue, is the beauty of science and its danger. Knowledge is for anyone.

But it doesn’t work like that.

Sure the North Koreans could research the Human Genome with the right equipment, but this is a nation that can’t afford to go down to the corner shop for a pint of milk. Many of the experiments now are so expensive and so specialised that only an elite can afford to make them. I can’t hope to smack a variety of different objects into Comet Temple to see what happens, so I’ll have to take the Deep Impact results on trust. Which scientific results am I willing to take on trust, which ones will I reject?

On evolution I’d believe Gould or Dawkins without specifically examining the same evidence as them, yet I’d reject Duane Gish out of hand. Why? The reason is that I find the findings of Gish ludicrous but most scientific opinions are not so clear cut, and I can’t have expertise in every field. What do I do in the grey areas? What criteria affect whether I, or society, accept a scientific fact?

I’m also struggling with his attacks on the “Constitution of the Moderns”. He seems to have arbitrarily created a nonsensical constitution for modern thought and is now hammering it for being nonsensical.

I think he could make a big case for the “We have never been modern idea” if he examined how much of our acceptance of scientific fact in fields we have no expertise in is social. I think that would be fascinating. Right now it’s intellectual shadow-boxing and worryingly his shadow seems to be landing a few hard punches.

*The earliest drafts actually read makes a simple but fundamental mistake and then bases his conclusions on this mistake. I changed this because I thought mistake was too harsh. I’m not convinced, but I’m open to the idea that his reasoning is sound in a social sciences context. However I think he misapplies methods from sociology to other fields. I’ll try and give an example in plain English in a later post on phase spaces. —–