Pandora's Hope

An Essay on the Reality of Science Studies by Bruno Latour

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by Bruno LaTour

Harvard University Press

Due/Published June 1999, 352 pages, paper

ISBN 067465336X

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. A scientist friend asked him point-blank: Do you believe in reality? Taken aback by this strange query, Latour offers his meticulous response in Pandora's Hope, and an argument for understanding the reality of science in practical terms.

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, pointing 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.

Review

Bruno Latour, one of the foremost figure in the field of science studies, redefines many of his positions regarding science, the nature of reality, and the ongoing “science wars.” Part of the task set before Latour is to clear up many of the misperceptions surrounding science studies as merely a threat and challenge to the objectivity of Science. While, Latour is certainly skeptical of many of the discipline’s claims, he is not a hostile force and argues that science studies can only help Science. More precisely science studies urges Science to be more engaged and cognizant of social factors. Latour writes, “the more connected a science is to the rest of the collective, the better it is, the more accurate, , the more verifiable, the more solid.” Latour resists many of the cliches that have unfortunately dominated the science wars and provides original looks at the practice of science through case studies of scientists in the Amazon studying soil. In his essay on Pasteur’s work on fermentation, Latour demonstrates the myriad steps by which events in the material world are transformed into items of scientific knowledge. Latour also examines the history behind the idea of an independent reality, free of human interaction. He looks back to Plato’s Gorgias and and its pointing to the real stakes of the science wars, namely the warring claimants (scientists, humanists) to the ultimate truth who often leave the rest of us behind and in a kind of perplexed submission. With a theoretical originality that is balanced by Latour’s straight-forward but very unique approach to the issues in the science wars, we have another classic on our hands.