Bloor, Latour and the Field

Stud. Hist. Phil. Sci., Vol. 31, No. 3, pp. 503–508, 2000Pergamon 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

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Discussion

Bloor, Latour, and the Field

Eve Seguin*

The debate between Bloor and Latour is based on a fundamental misunderstandingdue to too narrow a view of what Bloor calls ‘the field’. The boundaries of this ‘field’are not defined by the sociological analysis of the content of science: SSK and Latourdo not share the same object of study. Latour’s approach marks a shift from the socialdeterminants of scientific knowledge to the ontological labour performed by scientificactivity. The research on the science/society interface has generated two approaches.Some works tackle the social factors which determine science. Their object is societyin science. Other works address the social role of science. Their object of study isscience in society. The difference in the way SSK and Latour look at science isan incarnation of this division. A re-conceptualization of ‘the field’ based on theacknowledgement of these two objects is perhaps the only way to allow for a diversityof approaches in the study of the science/society interface. 2000 Elsevier ScienceLtd. All rights reserved.

In ‘Anti-Latour’, Bloor remarks that the sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK)and Latour’s approach are mistakenly put together under the label ‘social construc-tivism’ (Bloor, 1999a; p. 81). Bloor’s comment is undoubtedly right and providesan excellent starting point to reconsider his criticism of Latour, and to understandwhat is at stake in their debate. My contention is that in spite of the massive attackhe mounts on Latour’s work, Bloor underestimates the distance between Edinburghand Paris. The debate is not based on a disagreement but on a fundamental misun-derstanding. This is due to too narrow a view of what Bloor simply calls ‘the field’(Bloor, 1999b; p. 132), as if this phrase was not in need of clarification. Theresistance of SSK supporters to Latour’s approach has often been explained interms of the conservatism of the new orthodoxy (Friedman, 1998; Woolgar, 1992).In what follows I try to shed new light on the debate by offering an alternativereading of Latour’s work. This will allow me to propose a more comprehensive

* Department of History, University of Aberdeen, U.K. (e-mail: [email protected])Received 15 November 1999; in revised form 18 February 2000.

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mapping of the vast domain of research that tackles the links between scienceand society.

When Latour states ‘I think David is right in everything he says’ (Latour, 1999a;p. 113), we should not see any irony in his remark. Indeed, Bloor’s difficulty inaccepting Latour’s work comes from his addressing it from the viewpoint of SSK.Change the viewpoint and the work under attack changes accordingly. Bloor’sthesis is that ‘the two approaches are deeply opposed’ (Bloor, 1999a; p. 81). Ofcourse, Latour agrees. Unfortunately, it seems to me that to read the debate in suchsimple terms is to miss something crucial. Bloor’s statement suggests that the twoapproaches are intended to explain the same phenomenon in divergent ways. Butwhat phenomenon exactly? No doubt that for Bloor, Latour seeks to develop analternative to SSK for studyingscience as knowledge: ‘His aim is to produce somemanner of non-sociological, non-reductionist analysis of knowledge...’(Bloor,1999a; p. 86). ‘Knowledge’ is a collectively held belief system. For exponents ofSSK all belief systems are equal in the sense that their credibility is explainableby social factors (Barnes and Bloor, 1982; Bloor, 1976). Here, we touch the greatestachievement of SSK—that is, the secularization of scientific knowledge. But forLatour the analysis of science in terms of belief has limited value because it ignoresthe distinctive character of science as practice. Exponents of SSK do not addressthis question for the excellent reason that their goal is to eliminate the gap thatepistemology builds between science and ‘irrational’ beliefs.

For Latour the interesting aspect is that science differs profoundly from othercosmologies. The difference between science and other forms of ‘knowledge’ liesin the activity of the laboratory. This is perhaps the most important component ofhis work. His description of lactic acid, for instance, beautifully captures the impor-tance he gives to the scientific laboratory: ‘...the acid is not presented as a substancedurable in time and defined by its attributes but rather by a collection of verbsreferring to laboratory gestures. Acid is ultimately aprocedure, a recipe, and iscoextensive with a course of action.’ (Latour, 1996; p. 83). This means that scienceis not to be regarded as a collection of beliefs. It is a set of procedures that activatea reality. Latour concludes his account of Pasteur’s discovery of lactic acid yeastby stressing the role of science in the production of realities: ‘...he [Pasteur] hasgiven a phenomenon its chance’ (Latour, 1996; p. 87). This clearly shows that weare no longer in the study of science as knowledge.

Latour’s approach marks a shift from the social determinants of scientific knowl-edge to the ontological labour performed by scientific activity. As we will seebelow, such activity is political through and through, and Latour has nowaccomplished the task of giving science a political philosophy. Here, the point thatmust be stressed is that the boundaries of what Bloor calls ‘the field’ are not definedby the sociological analysis of the content of science: SSK and Latour donot sharethe same object of study. Insofar as SSK seeks to shed light on the social intereststhat condition the formation of scientific knowledge, its object can be called

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‘society in science’. In contrast, Latour is trying to theorize the social functionexerted by science. His object is therefore ‘science in society’. As he and Callonput it: ‘We have never been interested in giving a social explanation of anything,but we want to explain society...’ (Callon and Latour, 1992; p. 348).

The linking of science to society has a long history. Already Luka´cs was claim-ing that science is a bourgeois enterprise (Freimiller, 1998). Unfortunately, it oftenremains unnoticed that the study of the society/science interface has generated twobroad approaches which correspond to the objects mentioned above. The differencein the ways that SSK and Latour look at science is an incarnation of this division.Yet, they are seen as forming one field because they share a micro-approach,marked in a preference for detailed case-studies. As we will now see, this featureundoubtedly differentiates them from the other perspectives that exist for the studyof the link between science and society.

On the one hand, we find the works that tackle the upstream of science. Theyscrutinize the conditions of possibility of the scientific enterprise: its method,research priorities, funding, bureaucratic organization, ideological assumptions,personnel training, disciplinary divisions, and so on. These critical studies comefrom various quarters: Marxism, feminism, radicalism, environmentalism. Theygive rise to the object I have above called ‘society in science’. The sociology ofscientific knowledge belongs here. However, as already mentioned, SSK introducesa novelty in the study of the determinants of science, that is, a focus on the mostesoteric aspects of science, along with careful analysis of the micro-mechanismsthat account for the content of scientific knowledge. The originality of this ‘microturn’ cannot be overemphasized.

On the other hand, there exists a corpus of works that address the role of sciencein society: its downstream. Here the point of departure of the analysis is scienceitself and the aim is to assess its impact on society. The above critical perspectivesare present here too, and form the social interests thesis. They derive the socialrole of science from its conditions of possibility. Being a phallocratic, capitalistand productivist undertaking, the only function science can exert is to reproducethe dominant social interests and the existing order. Thus, in this view science isnot granted any original activity, nor is it seen to make any accomplishment of itsown. It merely reflects the pre-existing social interests that condition it. The worksthat make up the social interests thesis combine the two objects I am distinguishinghere. For instance, the feminist analysis of the reproductive technologies shows thatreproductive biology feeds on the subordination of women and, via reproductivetechnologies, reinforces it. This could explain why the distinction betweenupstream and downstream studies is often not perceived.

This distinction becomes evident when the technocracy thesis is taken intoaccount: this is the polar opposite of the social interests thesis. Studies that callupon the notion of technocracy are diverse but can be classified into two sets. Inits limited version the thesis holds that experts within the state use scientific tech-


niques in decision-making to reduce the uncertainty inherent in political decisions.Science is thus transforming liberal democracy into a new, technocratic, politicalregime. In the generalized version of the thesis, the complexity of contemporarysociety means that every field of social activity is ruled by technoscientific prin-ciples mastered by a new expert dominant group. Here science is granted the powerto turn industrial society into a new, post-industrial, technocratic society.

Analyses in terms of technocracy have their shortcomings. Their failure to payattention to the concrete business of science means that the latter appears as analien enterprise. Also, they tend to draw a rather gloomy picture of the impact ofscience on modern society. That being said, they are very important because unlikethe social interests thesis, they demonstrate the possibility of ascribing to sciencean original contribution to, and effect on, society. Crucially, Latour adopts a micro-approach to science, but shares with the technocracy thesis a commitment toaccounting for the centrality of science in contemporary society. He has nowdevised a theory of the role of science which takes the form of a political philo-sophy treatise (Latour, 1999b).

Latour argues that at present our public life is organized in a bicameral systemthat seriously impoverishes the quality of our democracy. One chamber deals withvalues and society, and its political character is acknowledged: it is called politics.The other chamber is concerned with facts and nature, and is officially apolitical:it is called science. This organization is defective because the sociology of sciencehas shown that science is in fact entirely political. With their laboratories, machinesand instruments scientists perfom a collecting work, endlessly mobilizing andadding new, non-human entities to the collective. This associative labour is theantithesis of the unified nature of modernity whose function is, in the guise oftranscendence, to limit and constrain politics. Thus, science is the activity wherebythe natural order is decided by scientists behind closed doors. It is therefore thelast remain of an absolutist regime in which public debate and the participation ofthe people are not allowed. For Latour, this anti-democratic organization calls fora republican transformation in which the common world will be democraticallyestablished.

This political theory clears up any doubt regarding Latour’s aims. His study ofscience is a means of understanding society as a whole. Despite scrutinizing scien-tific articles or laboratories as SSK practitioners do, Latour has crossed the borderthat divides the vast domain of research on the science/society interface. Indeed,the beauty of his work lies in the combination of close-up observation of scientificpractice with a theoretical concern in the organization of society. Crucially, hisapproach opens up new possibilities for studying the political function of science.In particular, the functioning of scientific discourse and the impact of its circulationin the public sphere can now be analyzed (Seguin 1996, 2001).

Failure to acknowledge the existence of two different objects in the study of thelinks between society and science can only prevent new explorations. ‘The field’

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Fig. 1. Studies of the science/society interface.

should give way to a conceptualization along the lines suggested in Fig. 1. Thisis perhaps the only way to do justice to this rich area of research and to allow fora diversity of approaches.

References

Barnes, B. and Bloor, D. (1982) ‘Relativism, Rationalism and the Sociology of Knowledge’,in M. Hollis and S. Lukes (eds),Rationality and Relativism(Oxford: Blackwell), pp.21–47.

Bloor, D. (1976)Knowledge and Social Imagery(Chicago: University of Chicago Press).Bloor, D. (1999a) ‘Anti-Latour’,Studies in History and Philosophy of Science30A(1),

81–112.Bloor, D. (1999b) ‘Reply to Bruno Latour’,Studies in History and Philosophy of Science

30A(1), 131–136.Callon, M. and Latour, B. (1992) ‘Don’t Throw the Baby Out with the Bath School! A

Reply to Collins and Yearley’, in A. Pickering (ed.),Science as Practice and Culture(Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press), pp. 343–368.

Freimiller, J. (1998) ‘Unnatural Discourse’,Social Theory and Practice24(2), 283–299.Friedman, M. (1998) ‘On the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge and Its Philosophical

Agenda’,Studies in History and Philosophy of Science29A(2), 239–271.Latour, B. (1996) ‘Do Scientific Objects Have a History? Pasteur and Whitehead in a Bath

of Lactic Acid’, Common Knowledge5, 76–91.


Latour, B. (1999a) ‘For David Bloor … and Beyond: A Reply to David Bloor’s ‘AntiLatour’’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science30A(1), 113–129.

Latour, B. (1999b)Politiques de la nature. Comment faire entrer les sciences en de´mocratie(Paris: La De´couverte).

Seguin, E. (1996) ‘L’analyse politique de la science: technocratie vs discours scientifique’,Politix 36, 181–193.

Seguin, E. (2001) ‘Narration and Legitimation. The Case of In Vitro Fertilisation’,Dis-course & Society12(3), forthcoming.

Woolgar, S. (1992) ‘Some Remarks about Positionism: A Reply to Collins and Yearley’,in A. Pickering (ed.),Science as Practice and Culture(Chicago/London: University ofChicago Press), pp. 327–342.

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Bloor, Latour and the Field