Quotes from Bruno Latour

epistemological disaster

Nancy Cartwright here in this School has written the funniest paper on scientific method ever, by taking the average advice from all the books about scientific method, and they are extreme banalities

there is no Earth corresponding to the infinite horizon of the Global, but at the same time the Local is much too narrow, too shrunken, to accommodate the multiplicity of beings belonging to the terrestrial world.

Pasteur had no sooner injected an anti-rabies vaccine into Joseph Meister than the hygienists were already declaring the 'end of infectious diseases'; Sony gets the heads of two anthropomorphic robots to nod, and voilà, posthumanism is already declared to have arrived! The Moderns could never check a fact or promote a technique except by combining the ideal of objective knowledge with magic. They were always looking for a magic bullet.

Politics is not about freshly dead people, but about the living ; not about ghoulish stories of the afterworld, but about gory stories of this world.

And yet, it is true that the third attractor doesn't look very attractive. It requires too much care, too much attention, too much time, too much diplomacy. Even today it is the Global that shines, that liberates, that arouses enthusiasm, that makes it possible to remain so unaware, that emancipates, that gives the impression of eternal youth. Only it does not exist. It is the Local that reassures, that calms, that offers an identity. But it does not exist either.

But then is no one at home any longer?" No, as a matter of fact. Neither state sovereignty nor inviolable borders can take the place of politics any longer.

We always misunderstand the strength of the strong. Though people attribute it to the purity of an actant, it is invariably due to a tiered array of weaknesses

Si esas personas mantienen la calma es porque están seguros de que los datos de los científicos han sido manipulados por fuerzas oscuras, y en todo caso son tan exagerados que hay que resistir valientemente las opiniones de aquellos que se llaman "catastrofistas" y aprender, como dicen, "a conservar la cordura" viviendo como antes, sin preocuparse demasiado.

Si la ecología enloquece, es porque en efecto es una alteración de la alteración de las relaciones con el mundo.

No hay otro modo de sanarse sin esperar curar: hay que ir hasta el fondo de la situación de desamparo en la que todos nos encontramos, cualquiera sea el matiz que adquieran nuestras angustias.[18]

cultura y naturaleza, en tanto categorías parejamente codificadas.

Readers may recall that Empire, a book by Michael Hardt and Tony Negri ended curiously by praising St. Francis.

Scientific achievements held to be correct should be just as amenable to sociological analysis as those thought to be wrong. Thirdly, emphasis on the "social" has led commentators to argue for some redress of an imbalance: not enough attention is thought to have been paid to the "technical." For example, Whitley has argued that sociological interest in science is in danger of turning into a sociology of scientists rather than a fully fledged sociology of science:

In sum, then, our discussion is informed by the conviction that a body of practices widely regarded by outsiders as well organised, logical, and coherent, in fact consists of a disordered array of observations with which scientists struggle to produce order.

Como si hubiésemos pasado, justamente, de un Antiguo Régimen a uno Nuevo, marcado por la irrupción multiforme de la cuestión de los climas y, cosa aún más extraña, de su vínculo con el gobierno.

Man macht sich gar nicht klar genug, dass die gesamte Politik der Gegenwart auf das Problem der Klimaleugnung fokussiert ist.

Pour se repérer dans l'incertitude, il faut d'abord se perdre dans la complexité.

My interest is that there is a disconnect between the science and the size of the threat that people mention about nature, the planet and the climate, and the emotion that this triggers. So we are supposed to be extremely frightened people, but despite that we appear to sleep pretty well.

Scientists are very much entangled in their culture and this culture is not pristine, untouched by other cultures and practices.

India is a reservoir of alternative interpretations of what the global is, and these ways of viewing the world need to be exposed.