Science in Action: Latour, Conspiracies, and Laboratories
Copyright 1987 Bruno Latour, all rights reserved
0. Introduction
The discussion of the design of technological solutions has been put in a brighter light after the COVID-19 pandemic. Bio-technology is at the center, regarding matters such as the selected type of vaccines, drugs, Intensive Care Units technological set-up etc. In this climate, conspiracy theories and even genuine concerns are trying to make sense in contradicting decisions and course of actions — in science and in public policy.
It is fair to say, that the majority of states failed to conduct a thorough information campaign, and feelings of uncertainty are growing among citizens. For example, vaccines are treated as black boxes and people are motivated to choose vaccines for a set of contradicted reasons.
The faith in the solution, the inability to transfer and communicate the reasoning of its components, the required social status to participate in the discussion in equal terms, give the impression of an elite club deciding on the how and why. Is it possible to take the discussion to society, in terms that would offer answers and social awareness?
Bruno Latour in his book “Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers Through Society”. This book is iconic for a set of reason, so i will briefly copy the Wikipedia entry that mentions the two most evident:
a) Latour develops the methodological dictum that science and technology must be studied “in action”, or “in the making”. Because scientific discoveries turn esoteric and difficult to understand, it has to be studied where discoveries are made in practice.
b) The concept of the “black box” is introduced. A black box is a metaphor borrowed from cybernetics denoting a piece of machinery that “runs by itself”. That is, when a series of instructions are too complicated to be repeated all the time, a black box is drawn around it, allowing it to function only by giving it “input” and “output” data. For example, a CPU inside a computer is a black box. Its inner complexity doesn’t have to be known; one only needs to use it in his/her daily activities.
We are going to conduct a small preview of the second chapter of the book “Laboratories”, where the author proposes that we need to follow the scientists in their labs — to examine the role of scientific literature, the activities of laboratories, the institutional context of science in the modern world, and the means by which inventions and discoveries become accepted.
This perspective and methodology would be an important contribution to the global discussion regarding biotech, conspiracies, and even the political design of such solutions. A strong example is the global controversy and intransparency that was generated regarding the claim that COVID-19 was a lab-generated virus.
In this review, we are trying to highlight a part of another approach to scientific knowledge and science communication.
You can find the book: https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674792913
I.Reflection
Latour suggests that to follow the scientists it is important to follow the “cycles of accumulation.” He uses an example of cartography:
Τhe cycle starts with sending out an explorer, in his ship fully loaded with equipments, bearing a mission of drawing a complete map of the remote land.
The explorer arrives in a remote land, meets with native people, draws a map on notebooks and sketchbooks, leaves the remote land, and finally returns to the metropolitan center with a map in his hand.
The next explorer is sent out, this time not only with ships and equipment but also with maps drawn from the previous expedition. He comes back with another, arguably better, map. A new map is added to the existing piles of maps. Science is none other than these repeated cycles of accumulation, Latour argues.
Every part of this cycle matters, but Latour gives more emphasis on drawing a map than on other segments of the cycle. To Latour, a more general term for map-drawing is “inscription,” and scientific instruments are equated with “inscription devices.”
Τhis is why he tries to follow scientists in the labs, treating them as a veil of intransparency that helps build the hegemony of technoscience and networks of power. The author, in an interactive way, takes us to the laboratory to meet the Professor, and in doing so he portraits a long process with its end results (final images, texts, figures,s, and depictions) and also the setbacks and skillsets invested to reach them.
According to Latour, as visitors, we are not presented with natural evidence but with visual displays Inscriptions), connected with nature indirectly (at best). In this case, if we wanted to challenge an idea presented to us, we would face certain limitation it would: a) be expensive b) require the adoption of certain literary technologies c) require technoscientific skills for an equivalent level of visual display d) be asymmetric, because the Professor would be able to move further ahead.
With these elements, Latour shows the social construction of scientific knowledge. Later, he introduces the concept of the instrument with a broad definition as:
(being) what leads you from the paper to what supports the paper, from the many resources mobilized in the text to the many more resources mobilized to create the visual displays of the texts.
Latour notices a pattern:
1. Scientific knowledge is commonly accepted based on publication.
2.Publication follows a set of technologies and rules shown on scientific texts/papers.
3. Papers are based on inscriptions that are obtained by the set-up of instruments.
4. Instruments are being set up in the lab to form a visual display.
Instruments help construct scientific facts and display them as obvious statements and they are the invisible factor holding the process together. Disputing the factual production and the validity of instruments is a starting point in analyzing laboratory black-boxes.
Scientists (like the Professor in our paradigm) act as the spokespersons of what is inscribed on the display of the set of instruments. The main asset of the spokesperson is the quantity of like-minded and the unity of the representative that leads to solidarity amongst them and the creation of scientific communities but also allows subjective opinions to be hidden over layers of objectivity.
The chapter continues by showing how subjectivity and objectivity are related to trials of strength in the laboratory, meaning the power dynamics which suppress or allow negotiation and dissentance over matters of scientific knowledge. There have been cases of these trials ending in favor of the dissenter (for example Wood v Blondlot) but mainly they reconfirm the established perspective. Latour notices cleverly that the work of disbelieving the literature has now been turned into the difficult job of manipulating the hardware.
If the negotiation is going to be continued after the trials of strength, the author identifies that counter laboratories are the only option for the dissenters, meaning a set of “better” laboratories, aiming at different visual displays. Here Latour makes us see a paradox:
On the one hand, to disprove scientific knowledge, new knowledge and elements of fallibility are needed, such as showing the circumstance of something considered factual and examining it not as a single black box but to its structural nodes.
But to build the needed new scientific knowledge, facts are desired and black-boxes are needed to create the factual and visual framework for the necessary texts. A “good” counter-lab is one that borrows more black boxes and positions them earlier in the process.
Based on this paradoxical relationship when disputes are continued in the abovementioned framework, the roles of dissenters and supporters tend to change among scientists, and actors begin to change sides and spokespersons accordingly. Through a blend of historical-related scientific examples and logical social paradigms (Billy, the workers’ mouthpiece), Latour shows the materiality of his claims and how power dynamics and social relationships are expressed in scientific matters.
In order to understand science in the making, we have to see the competencies, the formation of new allies between scientists, and also the process of routinization that transforms new objects into “things”, inscribes new ideas to commonly accepted meanings. Latour’s reasoning about laboratories now reaches a full circle: from borrowing more black boxes to black-boxing more objects. To understand what happens inside the walls of a laboratory, for him, is interconnected to the understanding of its counter laboratories (social orders) in both time and space.
In the case of conspiracy theories regarding COVID and vaccines, we see how the most elegant and efficient counter-theories are based on scientific language, are claiming to be part of the accumulated knowledge (publications, books etc), are recruiting spokespersons from the “establishment”, are inscribing new tools and terms.
In the last part of the chapter, the author dismisses the idea of nature as both cause and end, as the only possible adjudication of disputes:
a) as long as they last, the scientific dispute is what determines/negotiates what we can consider as natural,
b) when they are concluded, nature is considered the final cause of the settlement.
Latour claims that we can never use the outcome-Nature- to explain how and why a controversy has been settled. The settlement could be concluded since different actants, technosocial orders, competencies, instruments, efforts (et al) challenge each other. Instead of solutions, we are receiving representations of a solution.
Latour argues that we need to understand how a representation is produced or manufactured through many stages of inscription. The books I discuss here are concerned with just that: how scientific inscriptions are produced, transported, distributed, tested, and contested.
II. Questions/Comments.
- Latour suggests that science has two faces: one that knows and one that does not know yet (p. 7). In order to understand scientific activity, we have to build a proper understanding of the social context and technical content.
By seeing literary technology and laboratories, we are analyzing the black boxes of science in the making.
- Latour uses dialogues, social examples, historical evidence in an attempt to demystify scientific work, so it can be widely understood as something inside the concepts of social construction.
He emphasizes demystification, associations, and affiliations and inserts a flexible and interconnected idea of the scientific community, aiming again to communicate science.
- Interesting questions come up about who actually does science, with the social status of scientists hinted in multiple references.
- The attempts of Latour could be also understood as a proposal for a new organizational model for science, based on networks of actors and their interaction. The dissemination and
- I have my reservations regarding the dismissal of nature. Nature in our selected paradigm could also be understood as a concept of truth/reality.
When we are talking about networks and associations, how can they be formed between actors without them sharing (among other commonalities) a common and credible idea of truth/nature that justifies their shared subjectivity?
Thanks for your time and hope you enjoy this reading!
