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http://sth.sagepub.com/content/15/4/495The online version of this article can be found at:

 DOI: 10.1177/016224399001500407

1990 15: 495Science Technology Human ValuesOlga Amsterdamska

University Press, $12.951987, 274 pp. $25.00. Also available in paper from Harvard

Action, by Bruno Latour. Milton Keynes: Open University Press: Book Review : Surely You Are Joking, Monsieur Latour!Science in

  

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BOOK REVIEW

Surely You Are Joking, Monsieur Latour!

Science in Action, by Bruno Latour. Milton Keynes: Open University Press:1987, 274 pp. $25.00. Also available in paper from Harvard UniversityPress, $12.95.

In reviewing his book, if I were to adopt Bruno Latour’s ideas about science, Iwould certainly ignore its contents and avoid interpreting it. Instead, I would have toconsider what he does in order to &dquo;weaken [his] enemies, paralyse those [he] cannotweaken, help [his] allies if they are attacked, ensure safe communications with thosewho supply [him] with indisputable instruments, oblige [his] enemies to fight oneanother&dquo; (p. 37). To write a science in action review of Science in Action would meanthat instead of asking what this book teaches us about science, about the productionof scientific knowledge, or about the organization of the scientific community, I wouldhave to examine how this book is being used by others. I would have to assume thatuntil it is read, it does not even exist and that the issue of whether it is correct or not

depends entirely on how it is read. Reviewing Latour’s book in his own terms wouldmean that I would never ask whether his questions are pertinent or his problems wellposed; instead, I would have to consider whose spokesperson he is, whose &dquo;obligatorytranslation passage&dquo; he has become, and how many allies he has already enrolled.But, although the responsibility to review this book is worrisome, I will not try toexamine the strength, length, or composition of his network but will focus instead onhis arguments, his problems, and his solutions. In doing so, I will assume that Latourhimself is trying to understand what science is and how it works rather than trying towin a war or to control and dominate others. Moreover, I will try to interpret Sciencein Action as accurately as I can, even though its author gives me his permission tomake it say whatever I want and assures me that &dquo;all deformations are fair&dquo; (p. 40).

Science in Action is ostensibly written as a guide for nonscientists. In an attemptto demystify science, Latour employs a naive, lay observer who encounters scientifictexts, follows scientists to their laboratories and into the field, and accompanies themin their attempts to secure the support of others. In the Cartesian tradition of funda-mental doubt, the bewildered layman becomes a rhetorical anthropologist whosequestioning, undistorted by received views and prejudices, will allow us, the readers,to grasp the underlying principles of science.

Science, Technology, & Human Values, Vol.15 No. 4, Fall

C 1990 Sage Publications, Inc.

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History has taught us, of course, that no one has ever succeeded in creating a trulynaive &dquo;naive outsider,&dquo; and Latour’s &dquo;dissenter&dquo; is no exception. Even though he hashad to &dquo;abandon knowledge about knowledge&dquo; (p. 7), he certainly has not forgottenwhat war and politics are all about; and equipped with this Machiavellian view of theworld around him, he attempts to interpret science in the only terms he knows. So,where others see reasoned arguments or evidence or interpretation or experiments,Latour’s outsider sees only attempts to dominate, strategies for winning battles, meansof attack, trials of strength, and other forms of violence. Moreover, in his attempts torepresent science, he is also quite willing to employ some very peculiar means andarguments in order to try to enroll us in his vision of science.

The travels of the &dquo;naive outsider&dquo; begin when, in his effort to understand &dquo;sciencein the making,&dquo; he attempts to follow some controversies. Selecting bits of arguments,the outsider notices that as people disagree with one another, they surround thestatements they make with either positive or negative modalities and that when theyagree, these modalities disappear. This allows him to define facts as those statementsthat are stripped of all modalities, that is, those &dquo;devoid of any trace of ownership,construction, time and place&dquo; (p. 23). Since in any debate -scientific or not-state-ments made by others are either surrounded with modalities or not, the outsiderconcludes, &dquo;A sentence may be made more of a fact or more of an artefact dependingon how it is inserted into other sentences&dquo; (p. 25). Latour’s first principle is a directconsequence of this observation; it states, &dquo;The fate of facts and machines is in laterusers’ hands; their qualities are thus a consequence, not a cause, of a collective action&dquo;(p. 259). Since this appears to be one of the most direct proofs of social constructivism,let us examine it more closely.

The argument about facts has the following structure:

1. A fact is a statement that is devoid of any modalities.2. When a statement is collectively treated as a fact, it is stripped of modalities.3. Treating a statement as a fact causes it to be a fact.

This is an impeccable argument as long as we remember Latour’s initial definition ofa fact. When we do remember this initial definition, the conclusion states only thatdeleting modalities from a statement causes it to be a nonmodalized statement. Theproblem is that in the book, the definition of a fact and the interesting conclusionLatour is able to draw from it are separated by examples of various scientific andpolitical debates about hormones, MX weapons, and fuel cells, and by discussionsabout the construction of machines. Trying to disentangle Latour’s byzantine num-bered sentences from three different controversies, and encouraged along by Latour’spassing references to the truth values of statements that are being either believed ordisbelieved, most of us, I suspect, by the time we encounter Latour’s ingeniousconclusion, no longer consider a fact to be any unmodalized statement, but insteaddefine a fact commonsensically as a statement that is believed to be true of the world.And, while I am quite willing to agree with Latour that the removal of modalitiescauses the removal of modalities, I am much less eager to accede to his claim that the

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removal of modalities-even a collective removal of modalities-is a cause and not

a consequence of either a statement’s being true of the world or of anybody’s beliefthat a statement is true of the world. I would not like to exclude the possibility thatone of these days Latour will be able to convince me that nothing is either fact orfiction but talking makes it so, but for the moment I am afraid his demonstration ofthe extraordinary powers of language leaves much to be desired.

There are two reasons why I have tried to reconstruct Latour’s argument aboutfacts in such detail. First, the principle that &dquo;the fate of facts is in later users’ hands&dquo;is so fundamental to Latour’s study that the entire book could be considered itselaboration; second, the method of argumentation used in this case is used by Latourrepeatedly throughout the book.

The most fundamental assumption underlying Latour’s first principle is that weare unable to make any distinctions between things and their representations: Thingsare what we collectively represent them to be, nothing more and nothing less.Accordingly, a true statement is a statement we express as true, nature is what wecollectively represent as nature, a fact is what we collectively express as a factualproposition. No other conditions need to be met.’

I

These statements serve as undeclared premises for many of Latour’s most provoc-ative propositions. It is from such premises that Latour manages to derive statementsthat appear revolutionary and innovative because of our linguistic habit of distinguish-ing between things and ideas about things but that, on closer inspection, turn out tobe merely tautologies. In fact, Latour is so adept at this procedure that he quite oftensucceeds in deriving two tautologies from the same premise in a way that makes themappear contradictory.

Many examples of this are easy to track down because they are uttered by atwo-faced Janus representing the old &dquo;ready-made science&dquo; and the young &dquo;sciencein the making.&dquo; For example, the two mouths of Janus make the following twostatements, which Latour presents as contradictory: The old Janus says, &dquo;When thingsare true they hold,&dquo; while the young Janus counters with, &dquo;When things hold they startbecoming true&dquo; (p. 12). Latour maintains that &dquo;things hold&dquo; when controversies are

closed and people no longer question the facts. But, if things are true when peoplestate they are true, and things hold when people no longer question them, then the oldJanus is simply stating that &dquo;when people state that something is true, they no longerquestion it,&dquo; while the young Janus bravely contradicts him by declaring that &dquo;whenpeople no longer question something, they start believing it to be true.&dquo; The appear-ance of a contradiction between the two statements, and our impression that the youngJanus is saying something rather new and daring, both stem from the fact that wegenerally do not think that true statements are simply and exclusively those statementswe state as being true (or those we do not argue about).

The last example of this reasoning that I will discuss here -though many morecan be found- is contained in Latour’s discussion of relativism and realism. First, asa careful reading of his third rule of method makes clear, Latour assumes that thereis no difference between Nature and the representation of Nature. The principle states,&dquo;Since the settlement of a controversy is the cause of Nature’s representation, not the

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consequence, we can never use the outcome-Nature-to explain how and why acontroversy has been settled&dquo; (p. 99, italics added; also note the subtle shift here fromrepresentation to the thing itself, Nature). Latour repeatedly uses the terms Nature’svoice or Nature (pp. 94-100), as if nature were &dquo;something out there, independent ofour representations.&dquo; Finally, he presents us with the double-faced Janus. The old faceasserts conventionally that &dquo;Nature is the cause that allowed controversies to be

settled,&dquo; while the young face makes the more radical claim that &dquo;Nature will be the

consequence of the settlement&dquo; (p. 99). But if nature is what we collectively representnature to be, then, of course, it is the case that &dquo;a shared representation of Nature isthe cause that allowed controversies to be settled,&dquo; and that &dquo;a shared representationof nature will be the consequence of the settlement of a controversy (about thatrepresentation).&dquo; Not only is there nothing contradictory between these two state-ments, but all they manage to say is that the egg is the cause of the chicken, and thechicken is the cause of the egg. The causal terminology in this old riddle is no morepeculiar than Latour’s use of causal terminology. Parenthetically, let me remark thatin a recent publication on reflexivity, Latour rejects all causal explanations and assertsthat &dquo;the belief in causes and effect is always, in some sense, the admiration for achain of command or the hatred of a mob looking for someone to stone.&dquo; 2 ratherfrom the same article that being self-contradictory is something to be admired, butstill I would like to ask whether the omnipresence of a causal vocabulary in Sciencein Action is a sign of Latour’s admiration for chains of command, or is it only areflection of his desire to stone someone?

Latour’s mode of argument succeeds only because he shifts deftly back and forthfrom the language of representation to the language of &dquo;reality.&dquo; This shifting alsoallows him to make statements that are not concealed tautologies but that make-asfar as I can see-precious little sense. For example, Latour argues that by makingdecisions to proceed with the building of a machine on the basis of certain arguments,we not only make it more likely that the machine will be built, but we also make thearguments we used &dquo;more right.&dquo; The problem with Latour’s formulation is that itmakes it impossible for anyone ever to proceed on wrong premises. If you manageto convince others that we should be building fuel cells because they are moreefficient, then by that very act you have not only increased the chances that fuel cellswill be built and that their efficiency will eventually be tested, but you have also bysome mysterious power made the statement, &dquo;fuel cells are more efficient,&dquo; &dquo;more

right.&dquo; Now there is obviously a sense in which we often test propositions byexamining whether or not their consequences hold. But it is by no means the case thatevery action based on a given premise increases the correctness of this premise.Testing the validity of a statement is not a matter of discovering whether people haveadopted this statement as the basis for their behavior. For example, when, on theassumption that trams are faster than buses, I decide that going home on a tram willbe faster than taking a bus, I do not believe even for a moment that by making sucha decision I have made my initial assumption more likely to have been right; and I donot see why, when scientists decide to build a particular kind of computer on theassumption that such a computer could be faster, more efficient, or cheaper, they

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necessarily make these assumptions &dquo;more right,&dquo; even if, at the end of their work,they have managed to redefine what they consider to be efficient, fast, or inexpensive.(Let me add that this is a very pernicious sort of logic, for it allows us to say that whenthe South African government’s belief that Blacks are inferior serves as the basis forthe policy of apartheid, by this very fact it somehow becomes &dquo;more right&dquo;). Actingon the basis of certain assumptions does not necessarily influence our evaluation ofthese assumptions as either true or false, even if the action thus performed issuccessful. Incidentally, it should be clear that this problem has nothing to do withhow far we are willing to go in relativizing to particular groups or cultures the validityof statements or methods. It does, however, have a lot to do with our usual ways of

using such words as right, correct, or true, and with our general ideas, howeverchanging and culturally specific they may be, about testing or ascertaining the validityof statements.

Deciphering Latour’s logical and verbal pyrotechnics might be fun, because he isindeed an adept rhetorician. But rather than continuing to follow this maze, I wouldlike to turn to one of his genuinely and not just apparently innovative propositions,and to ask what kind of understanding of science we attain when we adopt hissuggestion to, as he puts it, &dquo;consider symmetrically the efforts to enroll human andnon-human resources&dquo; (p. 258). Latour entreats us to consider science and technologyas a heterogeneous network and to abandon all distinctions between humans andnonhumans; between nature, culture, and society; between science and technology;between what used to be called the knowing subject and the various objects ofscientific inquiry; between science as a body of knowledge and science as thecollective practice of a group; and, of course, between science and its context. Brieflysummarized, Latour’s network theory of science and technology treats research as akind of war whose only objective is domination. Winning the &dquo;proof race&dquo; consistsof establishing networks consisting of a large number of allies whose behavior onecan control so as to &dquo;make dissent impossible&dquo; (p. 103). Networks emerge when both&dquo;human and non-human resources&dquo; are enrolled and the scientist becomes an &dquo;oblig-atory translation passage&dquo; for a heterogeneous group of allies. The more allies onehas managed to enroll, and the stronger the links one has established among them,the more difficult it becomes for others to challenge one’s domination.

Latour argues that in order to enroll &dquo;non-human&dquo; resources so as to make them

part of a network, scientists generate new objects in their laboratories, submit themto &dquo;trials of strength,&dquo; and by winning these confrontations become their spokesper-sons. Similarly, to enroll &dquo;human allies&dquo; one has to make them interested and to controltheir behavior. These people one has enrolled may be industrialists who commitresources for a particular project, government officials who fund research, socialgroups who are convinced to act on the basis of scientists’ findings or inventions, orscientists’ colleagues who use a claim or machine for purposes of further research;but these differences are irrelevant to Latour as long as all these actors -human andnonhuman-are caught in the network, making it longer and stronger In fact, Latourargues that it is unimportant to examine either the characteristics of the nodes of thenetwork or the nature of the alliances; &dquo;the only question that really matters,&dquo;

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according to Latour, is &dquo;is this new association weaker or stronger than that one&dquo;

(p. 127).It is not easy to reconcile Latour’s realism with his constructivism. The essentially

realist idea that scientists are engaged in a kind of war with natural objects, in whichthey can either succeed or fail in the trial of strength with a particular object ofresearch, is not easily compatible with his constructivist and relativist notion that thefate of claims (or objects or machines) is in the hands of later users. But even if itwere possible to reconcile these two notions by formulating some moderate versionof constructivism (which I am pretty sure would be unacceptable to Latour), what-ifanything-do we gain by denying all the traditional distinctions, treating both peopleand the objects of research as &dquo;actors,&dquo; and replacing all conceivable relations amongpeople and things by the single concept of enrollment?

Let us look at some of Latour’s own examples. Why did Watson and Crick succeedwhere Pauling failed? Because Watson and Crick created a stronger network byenrolling more people who were unable to break the links between DNA and Watsonand Crick. Pauling’s strategy for enrolling others obviously failed when Watson andCrick discovered that despite his reputation and his powerful friends, they could breakthe links between the three strands of his DNA model with a bit of &dquo;freshmen

chemistry.&dquo; Latour cannot even address the question of why the links between Watsonand Crick and their DNA model resisted all attempts to sever them, while &dquo;freshman

chemistry&dquo; was stronger than a Nobel Prize winner, because we are not supposed tobe interested in the nature of alliances but only in their strength and because, in anycase, these alliances have no intrinsic qualities at all.

Why did Rontgen manage to establish the existence of X rays while Blondlot failedto establish the existence of N rays? Because Rontgen built a strong and lengthynetwork and nobody was able to sever the links between him and his rays. On theother hand, Blondlot’s network was destroyed by Robert Wood when he, as Latourputs it, &dquo;severed the solid links that attached Blondlot to the N-rays.&dquo; Obviously, sinceWood was able to sever these links, they must not have been very strong; but thequestion of what made them weak is out of order.

Why did Koch fail to develop a vaccine against tuberculosis while Pasteursucceeded in developing a vaccine against anthrax? Well, we know about Pasteur’sskill in shaping and enrolling allies-microbes, farmers, hygienists, even doctors-and it is clear that Koch simply did not succeed in his enrollment drive or, in the wordsof Latour, &dquo;could not deliver on his ostensible promise&dquo; (p. 111).

I think these examples make it rather clear that with the network model and theconcept of enrollment we can easily account for anything, no matter what happens.Pauling’s model might have been accepted; Rontgen shown to be a fraud, and Blondlota great physicist; Koch might have been hailed as the inventor of the treatment fortuberculosis, and Pasteur might have been totally forgotten; but Latour’s explanatoryframework would need no adjustment at all. But perhaps this is unfair. After all,Latour’s network model shares its foolproof character with a number of other socialtheories, and if that were its only flaw, perhaps it could still be of service in describingand interpreting science.

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In what way, however, does the network model throw any light on the nature ofthe processes by which Pasteur, Rontgen, and Watson and Crick succeeded, whileKoch, Blondlot and Pauling failed? We know that Pasteur, Rontgen, and Watson andCrick managed to create strong networks by linking together a number of heteroge-neous allies. Even if we were able to list all these allies, we could not-if we followLatour- know how any one of them contributed to the success or failure of thescientist. Since we are not to inquire into the character of the relationships among theelements of a network, we have no means of knowing which allies count and whatmade the links forged by these scientists strong; the only sign of their strength is thatthey have not been severed. In other words, since Latour’s idea of a heterogeneousnetwork makes it impossible to inquire into the characteristics of different kinds ofalliances, all that he is finally able to say about the strength of any particular allianceis that it is strong only when it cannot be severed, and that it cannot be severed onlyif it is strong. Latour could probably derive from this yet another pseudoparadox,arguing with the voice of one Janus that the strength of an alliance is a consequenceof enrollment and with the voice of the other that enrollment is a consequence of the

strength of an alliance. Yet this does not make his account of networks any moreenlightening than his earlier accounts of how facts are constructed, representations ofnature established, and machines made to work.

But what does it mean to enroll a microbe or an electron, let alone to be enrolled

by one? In what way is enrolling the microbe the same as enrolling a group ofinterested farmers or enrolling someone to finance a given project equivalent to theenrollment of a group of colleagues? Does each actant contribute to success or failurein the same way? Do scientists enroll electrons for the same reasons they enrollindustrialists? Is the recruitment of a police force or an army equivalent to theenrollment of a group of other scientists? Does enrollment really mean the same thingin all these cases? It seems to me that the goals, the means, and the results of enrollingsuch different kinds of &dquo;allies&dquo; are hardly comparable, and that the elimination ofdifferences among them leads only to confusion. It would be absurd to use argumentsto try to convince a microbe to give a scientist some extra funding for further research.Making the laboratory an &dquo;obligatory translation passage&dquo; for a farmer will notimpress on a microbe its obligation to behave as the scientist desires. Even if we wereto go along with Latour’s idea that the exercise of control over things and people isthe only goal of scientist research, we would still be unable to understand how thisauthority is achieved and used, without making distinctions among the kinds ofcontrol to which the different categories of actors and actants can be subjected, andamong the various means by which domination can be exercised over different kindsof actors and actants.

Latour’s insistence that winning is the only thing that matters in science has somevery pernicious implications, especially when combined with his attempt to obliterateall distinctions between the various means and methods that can be used to exercise

control over people and objects. To put it bluntly, Latour’s epistemology insists onthe idea that might makes right, while his sociology eliminates all distinctions betweenthe various means that can be used to achieve control over things or people. Latour’s

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notion of examining only the strength and not the character of alliances means that itno longer matters whether the scientist’s victory is assured by the use of argumentsor by success in eliminating opponents physically, whether enrollment takes place byperforming experiments that convince others or by fraud, whether allies are convincedthat a particular course of action is of benefit or whether they are being intimidatedor simply bought.

Using Latour’s logic and his vocabulary, it appears not only that Lysenko was agreat scientist but also that the methods he used to assure his victory over Sovietgenetics and agriculture are a superb example of sound scientific strategy. After all,Lysenko managed to build a long and strong network by enlisting Stalin, who &dquo;arrayedand drilled its troops&dquo; (p. 56) from the Narodnyi Komissariat Vnutrennikh Del(NKVD), and the network thus constructed clearly made all &dquo;dissent impossible&dquo;(p. 103). Lysenko knew exactly how to &dquo;intimidate or to force most people out&dquo;(p. 44), how to &dquo;force them into accepting a claim as a fact&dquo; (p. 62), how to ensurethat any &dquo;dissident [is] driven into isolation&dquo; (p. 62), and &dquo;how to be 2000 againstone&dquo; (p. 50). Latour’s terminology fits Lysenko’s activities better than those of anyother scientist I can think of. And the fact that he accomplished his goal of controland domination by making sure that his opponents were sent off to die in the Gulag,by literally &dquo;displacing&dquo; the peasants against their will, and by winning trials ofstrength with grain thanks to fake data, would not-if we were to accept Latour’smodel -make his achievement any less scientific.

3

Lysenko’s status as a scientist can be fully appreciated only if it is compared tothat of a failure, such as Galileo. Galileo, as Latour points out, deluded himself bythinking that science can be weak and that &dquo;a thousand Demosthenes and a thousandAristotles would be left in the lurch by any average man who happened to hit on thetruth for himself (p. 32). As a result of his lack of appreciation for power, strength,allies, tactics, enlistment-not to mention his compatriot Machiavelli-Galileoshowed himself to be a poor scientist by failing to enroll the church. We know whatthis failure cost him: house arrest and isolation. But as Latour reminds us, &dquo;an isolated

person builds only dreams, claims and feelings, not facts&dquo; (p. 41).Latour’s indifference to the means and methods of enrollment and control,

combined with his constant vocabulary of war and his assurance that the &dquo;similaritybetween the proof race and the arms race is not a metaphor&dquo; (p. 172), undermines notonly science or technology but also our own traditions of discourse tout court. Wemay well be unable to provide an unequivocal demarcation between science andnonscience, to formulate an ahistorical definition of rationality, or to ensure a firmfoundation for knowledge; but it does not follow from this that all methods of gainingassent or reaching consensus are equivalent. Do we really want to believe that thereis no difference between the power of arms, of dictators and policemen, and of whatwe in our culturally specific way call rational argument? Are we prepared to agreewith the conclusion that it matters not at all what we say and how we justify what weare saying as long as we make others believe us and manage to enroll them, no matterby what means and for what purpose? And if winning is the only thing that matters,if being right is nothing else than being strong, if the means by which various goals

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are accomplished are a matter of indifference, then should we not ask ourselves whatwe are after and what methods we are prepared to use?

Latour is perfectly aware of these consequences of his position for our ownenterprise. In the work on reflexivity I mentioned earlier, he asks, &dquo;If the work of

explaining something is that of empire-building, should we explain something? Dowe really want to participate in network-building? ... Do we lust for power andrecognition? Do we want to imitate the ethos and styles of science?&dquo; His answer tothese questions is a &dquo;qualified no.&dquo; But to reject power and empire building it is alsonecessary to reject the ideal of explanation. Accordingly, Latour asserts that &dquo;the idealof explanation ... is not a desirable goal&dquo; and that rather than aiming at explanationswe should strive to be &dquo;telling stories&dquo; (p. 164). Apart from the fact that in this mannerwe can pretty much abandon all responsibility for what we are saying, I wonder whatsort of nonexplanatory stories we could be telling one another if we were seriouslytrying to avoid the charge of network building? Are there any stories so &dquo;innocent&dquo;that they could not be regarded as stratagems in a struggle for power and control?First, such powerless stories would have to be inconsistent and incoherent, since tomake them either consistent or coherent would mean that we are trying to make itimpossible for others to &dquo;sever the links between the elements of a network.&dquo; Second,we would have to make sure our stories could not possibly be acceptable as accurateor true, since both truth and accuracy might increase the danger of our inadvertentenrollment of some well-meaning readers. Third, our stories would have to be aboutnothing at all, for if they were about people or things or ideas, we would becomespokespersons for other actors and again find ourselves building a network. Fourth,we would have to abandon all attempts to reach an audience, since an audience mightcome to like our stories and find itself enrolled. Fifth, we would have to stop discussingour stories with others or disagreeing with other people’s stories, since arguments areonly a means of increasing our own control and domination. Somehow, the ideal ofa social science whose only goal is to tell inconsistent, false, and incoherent storiesabout nothing in particular does not strike me as very appealing or sufficientlyambitious.

Olga AmsterdamskaUniversity of Amsterdam

Notes

1. This identification of things and representations goes far beyond any consensus theoryof truth, for it eliminates from consideration shared belief and shared reasons for holdingparticular beliefs. A statement is not a fact when people (collectively) believe it and formulatereasons for believing it, but when they state it as a fact, removing the modalities. For Tarski’s

"the statement ’snow is white’ is true if snow is white," Latour would substitute something like"the statement ’snow is white’ is true if we say ’snow is white’." Even Latour himself, however,is unable to remain consistently within this semiological universe, and in his own language hemakes constant references to the distinction between things and their representations, exploitingit for his own argumentative purposes.

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2. Latour (1988).3. Lysenko’s case is a favorite example cited in antirelativist arguments, but I am not

referring to this case here in order to argue against epistemological relativism. My point is notthat there are some absolute and historically unchanging criteria according to which Lysenko’sversion of genetics can be judged inadequate but that the methods to which Lysenko resorted inorder to ensure his victory are generally not considered to be either acceptable or usual meansof settling scientific controversies or achieving consensus in science. Latour’s refusal to makedistinctions between various kinds of enrollment eliminates the possibility of seeing some ofthese means of settling controversies or reaching consensus as either typical of scientificdiscourse or, alternatively, unacceptable within its conventions. And the impression that it makesno difference how consensus is achieved is supported stylistically by the constant recourse to awarlike vocabulary that, indeed, fits cases such as that of Lysenko much better than it fits themore typical instances of scientific controversy.

Reference

Latour, B. 1988. The politics of explanation: An alternative. In Knowledge and reflexivity, editedby S. Woolgar, 162. London: Sage.

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