Science in Action

Our term’s focus has thus far explored the writings of Bruno Latour, a trained philosopher of social science, in our reading of his books Science in Action and Politics of Nature and the discussion of the “doing” of science. I will keep a running post of my examination into the key issues that surround global warming, who the key players are that do the controversial talking, and the collective’s responsibility to do the right thing for future generations.

Bruno Latour, a trained philosopher of social science, reminds us of the late Rene Descartes who debated existentialism and rationalism in the 17th century. In his book Science in Action, Latour is powerfully persuasive. What is most interesting about his contextual argument is the “doing” of science and how he has brought about certain things that are well established, claims as he calls black boxes. How scientists have arrived at those claims and the actual instruments used to establish those claims help the non-scientist go beyond conventional thinking into the more post conventional and philosophic way of undoing science and opening the black box. He uses the black box as a metaphor 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 their everyday activities.

I find Latour’s portrayal of science interesting as he uses the black box analogy to make way through the interpretation of scientific claims. In our inquiry, we are trying to put ourselves beyond the course of fact-finding and get to the “how” facts came to be. Thus we anticipate future moves and counter moves in an attempt to understand moves of others while not always having control over what others say and this is what makes the ‘game’ interesting. In my interpretation of Latour’s argument he means to say that the fate of the claim you make is in the hands of others.

Conventional stories don’t tell us the insider info. For instance an introductory biology course taught at university is so many miles away from what biologists actually do. The intro courses don’t get at how the bold-faced definitions in our text books came to be. They just exist. I would ask Latour and others, why explore what is already known of science? Why not explore supporting evidence of unfounded science?

When we think of science, it is not as free from politics as one might think. Scientific experts practice ways to democratize politicoscientific controversy and the only players are not just the experts who come to understand the dispute. It is how we reevaluate past events to understand current events that we can reaffirm and further solidify our claims. Furthermore, there are things that are well established in science and we are interested in how we arrive at the well established. Even though the conventional way of understanding things is a lot easier to debate, what is inside the black box is the object of our inquiry. Latour’s aim is to penetrate science from the outside by following controversies. When we no longer dispute the content, the dispute is over and it becomes true. It’s true because that’s the way the world “is.”

There is a great distinction between the understanding of science and the undoing of science. How do we begin to untangle such claims and tease out the theories to back up the dam? We move through time, up and downstream and within boundaries of what is real. Science is an account of things we can’t see in terms of things we can. We don’t want to get carried along in our dissention. We want to tear the claims apart so we can continue our journey through the construction of facts.