Georgina Kilborn- Entry no. 3

Entitled “War and Peace of Microbes”, Bruno Latour’s first section of The Pasteurization of France offers a historical philosophy of science and an incisive exploration of power relations in the laboratory. He analyses Pasteur’s scientific revolution and it’s engineering as a key social transformation in France. Latour conceptualises force and reason, society and science, and human and natural science and argues against the mere reduction of these elements. In this section, Latour draws on Tolstoy’s writing as the foundation for an extended analogy between war and science. Nevertheless, this predominantly insightful account on the social nature of scientific innovation can itself be criticised for being reductive.

Whole movements cannot be reduced to individuals. Latour concurs with Tolstoy to the extent that, in the context of the Pasteurian revolution, ‘great men’ were not the sole actors in history. Where Tolstoy merits the aspirations and actions of many individuals in the development of the 1812 campaign, Latour furthers this idea, asserting Pasteur conquered France as a result of innumerable actors and their interactions. So, as Napolean is not the central figure in Tolstoy’s work on Russian society, nor is Pasteur the central character in his masterpiece. As pronounced by Latour, in Pasteur's science, the relation between science and society is found by following the man and his networks. So, he claims, there exists no boundary between science and society. Nonetheless, critique can be found in the addition of little new material and a direct development from the writings of Tolstoy. The obscure and dense style of his account is also reminiscent of Tolstoy’s, rendering it difficult to follow in parts.

Nevertheless, there do exist novel aspects in his account, one being the concept of “actants”. Actants, according to Latour are those who play a role in history, but they are not merely humans. It is an all-encompassing term, attributing even microbes to the progression of history. Actants associate with other actants to increase their power and in doing so, define their own interests as well as establish relationships and associations with others. Latour contends that as a result of not recognising the microbe as an actor, the sociology of science has failed to satisfactorily explain Pasteurism from a social or political perspective.

Moreover, Latour reasons that the hygiene movement was a necessary precondition for Pasteur’s success. And as such, the microbiological revolution of the nineteenth century was not the creation of Pasteur, instead; Pasteur was a product of it. Latour is particularly interested in understanding the associations between these agents or forces. He refutes the notion that Pasteur conquered France as a result of sheer brilliance of his scientific ideas, instead proclaiming Pasteur’s genius to be the result of a military or political quality due to his skill in making alliances with people who could advance his interests while furthering their own. So, science and history must be taken together.

While Latour offers an insightful analysis of how Pasteur transformed social relations in France through his introduction of a new actor, the microbe, critique can also be found in his abstract perspective of society and science.  According to him, self-interest is the force behind actions, power relations are the only form of relations and, war is intrinsically linked to science. All of which are reductive ideas. What’s more, in negating reductionism as a means to understanding science, he paradoxically reduces both society and science to the establishment of networks and trials of power. Moreover, he refers to a mere three journals in his writing, all of which are from the nineteenth century.

So, rather than the genius or virtue of a single man, a whole network of forces and the operation of these forces produced, according to Latour, the Pasteurian revolution. Yet, his account can be criticised for being inconsistent, in initially eschewing reductionism, Latour subsequently reduces society and science to ‘trials of strength’ and the creation of associations.

Matias Koch - Entry no.3 (Latour)

The article starts by saying that we are divided. Not only are we divided among different parties or ideologies; but also that each of us is divided inside ourselves.
This makes him believe that we cannot hide behind the verdict of the “scientific community” taken as a whole. We have to choose, inside the disciplines and specialties, which part of the population we will trust more than the other and behind whom we will thrust our future. This means that we have to get used to a strange type of geo-politics — that is, the geo-politics of science in action — by learning to navigate the various maps of conflicting disciplines, paradigms, instruments, theories and reports. So we can get our own say.
In his text “The Pasteurization of France” he established this false trust in the scientists. They all need a kind of lobby in order to get their self heard. So this can mean that only those researches that have the sufficient support can see the light. We can imagine what happens when the research hurts the interest of the majority group and how the information on science can be manipulate by the “authority”.
The subject he treats in this paper is the “climate change” as an analysis of the scientific community regarding that issue. He says that even if we follow the I.P.C.C.’s last report, we still don’t do much about it. In that sense, even if most of us follow the report we are nonetheless all climate skeptics since this knowledge, even if widely shared, does not trigger as much action as is necessary. Because to know and not to act, is not to know.
He talks about the destruction of the laws of nature as an authority like a catastrophe, which is needed in order to evolve. Now, we don’t have any authority that tells us what is right or wrong. We have finally grown up and we can take our destiny in our own hands.
About this lack of action, he establishes that the usual solution when a group of people encounters a new and dangerous issue — an epidemic, for example — is to try to get the facts right first and only then to formulate a policy about it. The problem he wants to show us here is that if everything has to be checked and proved, the ones that are waiting for help are suffering rather than benefiting themselves from the dispute.
Every year, while the facts have accumulated really fast, the general doubt about the urgency and nature of acting on the basis of them has constantly decreased. What concerns us about this rationalist theory of action is that in reality, it is a fantasy. We are all aware that acting means taking risks and making bets.
And this does not mean that you took your decisions without any knowledge either. Rather, it means that they had not been made after a full knowledge had been obtained and consensus reached. The idea of the author is to show that all our decisions are made without waiting for complete closure.
Finally, he says that it is traditional in political philosophy to contrast war with what could be called peace-making operations. If a burglar is breaking into your neighbor’s house, there is no controversy over values and procedures. You call the police. The overall situation has been settled by a referee, an arbiter, in this case the State. Things are entirely different in the case of war — for instance civil war. Then the decision on who is the legitimate authority is precisely what is to be tried out through some decisive encounter, it is defined depending whether you win or lose. War means the absence of a referee to settle the matter.
He criticized the idea in believing that everything unfolds as if there existed somewhere some instance with the capacity and authority of a quasi State — what could be called a State of Nature! — To settle the disputes. Ecology has always suffered from a lack and not from an excess of politicization. Only those who have enemies do politics. Only those who are not treating their adversaries as irrational or mad or archaic may begin to equip themselves to win in a battle.
So if science isn’t a really reliable source, because it has not one response to the problem but several ones that don’t have similarities to each other, maybe there is no higher authority and it is time to take the matter in our own hands…

Clio Frigoli - Entry 3 - (Latour)

In The Pasteurization of France, Bruno Latour analyses the paradigm shift in the 19th century attributed to Louis Pasteur. Latour rejects this “great man” theory, in which an entire scientific revolution is attributed to Pasteur. Pasteur is recognized for his contribution in the science of microbes that have affected the causes and preventions of diseases. At the time of this shift, there was a great deal of confidence in Pasteur, and Latour is questioning the source of this confidence, and how an entire movement was credited to solely one person. In reference to Tolstoy’s War and Peace, Latour agrees that “a crowd may move a mountain. A single man does not” (Latour, 22). He is thus arguing that for an idea to take force, it requires a society to seize it and move it. Pasteur inserted himself into a social movement that was put into action by hygienists, and was able to take credit for what became this scientific revolution.

Through the example of this scientific revolution, Latour is examining how politics and science cannot be separated. He argues that they are inevitably linked to one another, and further, that science can revolutionize the concept of society. For example with Pasteurians, microbes redefined society as it made individuals interdependent on one another, given that individual hygiene is dependent on public hygiene. These agents, the microbes, created new sources of power and of legitimacy. I would argue that this concept complements Foucault’s analysis of the micromechanics of power. Latour’s examination of the different sources of power within society can be considered a decentralized understanding of power relations. It therefore adheres to Foucault’s bottom up approach to power. Power is therefore an example of one way in which politics and science are intertwined.

In War and Peace in an Age of Ecological Conflict, Latour continues this examination of the extension of politics into science. Latour examines different climate controversies, one in which being: “are we at war with one another, or just in the usual normal disagreement that can be settled by appealing to some Universal State?” (Latour, 12) This is one of the most important divisions, as it asks us to question whether or not we believe in Science, or in scientific institutions that we must choose to align behind. He argues that Science can now be understood as multiple sciences that are indefinitely divisible. His conclusion was therefore arguing for the inevitability of this division. Science has evolved into a field in which there are no longer natural laws to fall back on; but is it possible that agreements within Science can exist, regardless of this void? Can compromise exist within Science or are we necessarily at war with one another if we align behind different scientific institutions? Latour is suggesting that an agreement cannot be found by appealing to a “universal human interest” (Latour, 12); I am internally conflicted at this point, because although I see the rationale behind Latour’s argument, I do not want to accept the cynicism of his conclusion.

Collin Poirot, Entry No. 3 (Latour)

Bruno Latour’s 1988 book The Pasteurization of France seeks to reorient and reframe the contemporary discussion of the life and influence of one of the most important scientists of the late 19^th century: Louis Pasteur. Latour begins by criticizing the traditional ‘hagiography’ of Pasteur, and argues that the dominant narrative which posits Pasteur as a kind of revolutionary figure mistakenly conflates Pasteur the individual with the influence and scope of Pasteurian ideas and the Pasteurian method. Whereas most people would assign Pasteur the responsibility for the rapid and total revision of hygienic sciences and public health in the last decades of the nineteenth century, Latour argues that the influence of bacteriology is due not to Pasteur the man, but to the powerful association of Pasteurian hygienists, microbes, and other socio-economic forces. Latour argues that the rapid adoption of Pasteur’s ideas was only possible thanks to the earlier work of Villermé and others, who established the scientific link between wealth and public health. According to their work, a prosperous industrial society required a healthy population, capable of surviving and thriving in the conditions of modern economic production. The widespread desire for the “regeneration” of society after the Franco-Prussian war of 1870 meant that society was desperate for a means of creating this new, healthy workforce. Latour argues that widespread perception of an unmet industrial potential (ie. the workforce was not as healthy or productive as it could have been) created a reservoir of energy and enthusiasm that was eventually channeled into the diffusion of Pasteurian ideas. Latour’s treatment of Pasteur is also intended to mirror Tolstoy’s appraisal of Napoleon, insofar as both analyses show that the great revolutions or movements in history are never the result of any singular will, but can only be explained by an appeal to mass social movements lead by a multitude of individuals.

Although Latour does not mention Foucault, his ideas seem to be heavily influenced by Foucault’s understanding of power. First, Latour’s depiction of the tension between traditional public health and Pasteurian bacteriology as a war between Pasteurians, on one team, and Hygienists, on the other, is a clear instance of the war discourse Foucault discusses in Society Must be Defended. Latour further explains that the Pasteurians ‘won’ the war, and thus spread their ideology, due largely to the fact that Hygienists were unable to focus their attention and energy on any single explanation of contagion; “by its very scope and ambition this movement remained weak, like an army trying to defend a long frontier by spreading its forces thin” (22). The truth claims of the Pasteurians had more explanatory power, since they focused on a single, universally applicable explanation for disease. The victory of Pasteurian science did not come on the wave of some incontrovertible mass of scientific studies, but on the enthusiasm and support of the population, who desperately wanted an explanation for their diseases.

Latour’s discussion of sociology also strikes me as very Foucaultian. First, neither Foucault nor Latour understand society as an assemblage of fixed identities and subjects, and both call our attention to the ways in which subjects are created. Latour is particularly interesting here because he takes Foucault’s insights into subjectification (subject-creation) and applies them to post-human or trans-human social sciences; “We do not know who are the agents who make up our world. We must begin with this uncertainty if we are to understand how, little by little, the agents defined one another, summoning other agents and attributing to them intentions and strategies… The exact sciences elude social analysis not because they are distant or separated from society, but because they revolutionize the very conception of society and of what it comprises” (35-8). Latour also echoes Foucault’s critique of structural Marxism in his analysis of Armaingaud; “Armaingaud, a rather paternalistic reformist, uses the microbe to redefine that celebrated ‘self-interest,’ and to link everybody together through fear of disease. This unexpected strengthening is not in itself ‘reactionary,’ as suggested by some authors who are used to speaking only of power and who see hygiene as a ‘means of social control.’ The allies of the microbe are to be found on the left as well as on the right” (36). Here it seems like Latour is discounting the Foucaultian tradition, but if that was his intention then he seems to misunderstand Foucault! Although Foucault is critical of hygiene and public health, insofar as he considers them micromechanics of power and subjugation, he does not think that they are a means of ‘reactionary social control’ imposed by some dominant class. Instead, he thinks that medicalization is spread not through bourgeoisie machinations, but through the strong explanatory power of its own truth claims – which is very similar to Latour’s own explanation of how Pasteurian thought conquered the vagueries of ‘Hygiene,’ as it existed before the 1880s. In other words, I think that Latour and Foucault share a similar understanding of how particular ideologies are spread, even if Latour seems less concerned about the violent subjugation inherent in public health’s “fantasy of mastery and control” (to borrow a phrase from Judith Butler) over the human being.

Dea Closson, Entry 3. (Latour)

            Bruno Latour is one of the foremost voices on scientific philosophy of our time.  In his book “The Pasteurization of France,” specifically in the first chapter, he redefines the way we look at science. He uses the great Louis Pasteur as a method for this new way of thinking.  He argues that the method in which we approach science, especially in cases of great scientific triumph, like Pasteurization, falls under the same presumptions and inconsistencies that Tolstoy writes in regards to “great men.”

            He beings by comparing scientific breakthroughs to war, saying that, like Napoleon on the battlefield, Pasteur’s discoveries in microbiology are the same as a war on microbes. Just like wars in politics and on battlefields, the war in science has the same false accounts of “great men” and that in reality science only becomes important due to many people who are involved. He asks the question why, if people so readily take Tolstoy’s view on war to be correct, do we have a hard time differentiating between the “actual” causers of scientific discoveries and the great men who seem to head the movement.  He says that, like in war, there has to be multiple actors in science in order for a theory to be proven effective and successful.

            He answers this question by first setting the stage for pasteurization by explaining the history of hygiene.  He says that Pasteur could not have been so successful without the world already essentially practicing the methods he recommended. Latour says that hygiene, which had been in practice since before the 1870, was the social movement for which Pasteur could build his credibility. Latour says that if Pasteur had never discovered microbes that society would most likely have moved on in the same direction, as the practice of Hygiene would have maybe solved the problems that microbes presented, without knowing the direct cause. Latour emphasizes the idea that without the previously existing social movement, that he says was hygiene, Pasteur’s ideas would have been found as just another idea. 

            In the end Latour takes this theory that science is, just like war, a product of the will of the masses and seeks to establish a basis for humans to take personal action to fight for the planet.

Danièle Saint-Ville-Leplé, entry no. 2 (Latour)

Bruno Latour’s approach is in itself a harsh criticism addressed to social sciences, especially to sociology and history. In an earlier piece of work, he initiated a new field of inquiry called “laboratory studies”.

The social body is not – as so many historians seem to think – unmoving. It is an immense reservoir of energy. Social actors are moved collectively by this source of energy. The more important those collective efforts are, the bigger the effect on history[1]. Latour has a Tolstoyan view of history: forces have to be commensurate. One has to admit Pasteur did not revolutionize the society by the power of his mind alone.

In reality, this huge transformation of the French society happened only because a consequent number of actors in the social body had already been pushing for it. Truth is Pasteurians were a minority. Bacteriology was not mature. Hygienists – that is to say, the numerous and influent spokesmen of huge social movement – needed such discoveries to make the task easier for them. Their project was to sanitize the cities, to regenerate a society they found in decay. But their discourse was tangent and uncertain, not convincing at all for public authorities.

The Hygienists movement needed certainty. And Science was a perfect ally to provide certainty. This process in which Hygiene and Pasteurism united is what Latour calls primary mechanism. Once reassured on some key-points[2], Hygienists started to generalize and defend Pasteur’s thesis. They made good use of their influence to make Pasteur’s work indisputable. Being united in the scientific hygienism movement made both of them more powerful. It also legitimated their desire to have a voice on public policies.

This first process led logically to a second mechanism. The actors wanted Pasteur to become as powerful as possible. As a consequence, they did not hesitate to praise him continually. Crediting him with the whole movement was not a problem as long as it benefitted their project for sure. To give him authority was a mean to pursue their project of regeneration. Actors are those who make history!

From a completely different angle, there is another interesting aspect of Latour’s text. A group of people seems to be able to create a new source of power by appropriating a field of knowledge. Pasteurians and Hygienists have gained power – as well as psychoanalyst could have done[3] – by adopting the posture of the experts. By setting themselves up  “as exclusive interpreters of populations to which no one else had access”. It reminds me of the Foucauldian concept of power: to put it in very simple words, mastering knowledge means gaining power.

---

[1] “A crowd may move a mountain; a single man cannot. If, therefore, we say of a man that he has moved a mountain, it is because he has been credited with (or has appropriated) the work of the crowd that he claimed to command but that he also followed”. (p.22)

[2] Hygienists had doubts about the doctrine of contagiousness before Pasteurians convinced them with the concept of variation of the virulence.

[3] see p.40

Hannah Berwian, entry no. 3 (Latour)

According to Latour, just like Tolstoy’s “great man” have unduly received the praise for big victories in history, so are individual scientist singled out to stand for scientific revolutions that have only been enabled, achieved its prominence and credibility, through a complex interplay of social and scientific forces and agents. In the first part of “The Pasteurization of France” from 1993, Bruno Latour offers a thorough critique of constructivist sociology that tries to explain scientific facts merely in terms of their social construction. Instead, he emphasis that sciences can neither be reduced to its technical content nor to its social context. Relinquishing any a priori ontological assumptions, it has to be understood in conjunction of the two aspects that constitute and define each other as well as the relevant actors. Through the semiotic inspection of scientific literature Latour illustrates his thesis by means of the seemingly indisputable achievements of French hygienist at the end of the 19. century, a victory that has come to be incarnated by one single name: ”Pasteur”. However, given Latour’s expressed desire to avoid the predefinition of actors it is striking that the inspection of three academic journals already presupposes a vision of which actors may be important and where they can be found and who is to define them.

Latour argues that the hygienist as a social movement provided the necessary space, motivation and a receptive and uncritical audience for Pasteur’s endeavour in the laboratory. Offering the infrastructure, they acted as a kind of translator. Especially the discourse connecting the health of the poor with the wealth of the rich was designed to find support in left and right circles.

The Pasteurian’s work offered a long sought solution to the mysteries of contagiousness by shedding light on the role of a hitherto invisible but highly influential group of social agents, the microbes. The microbes could explain for the unintended consequences beyond human understanding such as the import of cholera through pilgrims. It seems that Tolstoy would use this example as a proof that things we attribute to chance, genius or free will are simply due to our limited understanding and proposes sciences as the means to reveal mysteries, as the new God so to say. However, Latour shows that the adaption of sciences leads to similar unjustified glorification of “geniuses” that Tolstoy had criticised in Napoleon.

Moreover, he argues that the ubiquity of the microbes required and thus justified the ubiquity health agents to take care of them. This shows how the explanatory power of the microbes is harnessed to reconstruct public power and social relations. In other words, they offered to their representatives, the Pasteurians, a new source of power and authority. As Foucault may argue the phenomena of the microbe was not purposely created to establish certain forms of social control and domination. Rather, it emerged more or less arbitrarily as a potential source of power and was consequently appropriated for biopolitical purposes. What is interesting in terms of Latour’s conception of war is that he includes non-human agents, such as the microbes as possible wagers and enemies in war.

In this piece it remains unclear whether Latour disagrees fundamentally with Tolstoy’s demand to submit to sciences as the new authority. His emphasis lies on showing that from a methodological point of view, neither social relations nor sciences can be analysed in isolation from or reduced to the other by revealing that a variety of social forces were paramount to give Pasteur’s findings and name the meaning and impact that is associated with them today. At the same time, Latour does not explicitly put the merit or objectivity of scientific findings itself into questions.

In his more recent lecture “War and peace in an age of ecological conflict” Latour doesn’t display how certain scientific facts have gained their prominence through particular ideological constellations. He is more worried about how the means of constructivist critique are abused by contemporary climate change sceptics to discredit what he considers to be important scientific findings about the threatening progression of global warming. In terms of the climate change debate the God of sciences cannot be appealed to to settle the dispute as the sciences act as the very ground on which the battle is fought out. Indeed, in absence of a common authority Latour describes the current state as a state of war.

He organizes his argument around three dividing lines: Firstly, the rationalist claim that presupposes a scientific consensus before decisions on policy responses can follow. The climate change debate exposes the fundamental flaw of the rationalist model that assumes science to be capable to unify in light of objective, dispassionate, scientific evidence.  Rather, subjectivity, biases and passion define the agenda when the scientific research is so inextricably linked to human activities that can have themselves immediate impact on the findings and vice versa. This point constitutes the second division: the “anthropocene” accepting the inseparability of social and natural factors versus the “Holocene” disposing ecological conflicts as distant and outside of the human realm.

The last cleavage reflects the preceding ones and puts the capacity of natural sciences to act as a unifying authority into question. Are the disagreeing parties in a state of war or is there a neutral referee to decide upon our disagreement? Are we in need of politics or policies? Latour takes a clear stands on all the three division allying with the I.P.C.C. and the urgent need to act upon it. However, as long as we find ourselves trapped in a war about the overarching legitimating authority it seems the necessary policy action that is so urgent is postponed till the victory is gained. As Latour concedes there is no “masterplan without a master”. The framework of politics needs to be reconstituted but until this projects is realized against the powerful capitalist interest that are willing to invest enormous amounts of money to establish contradictory scientific data it may as well be too late. Latour’s appeal to, step by step composition of a “common world” resembles the call of French blogger and author Thierry Crouzet for “commonism”[1] as an ethics of sharing. However, Couzet argues that “commonism” is to be to be realized in a capitalist framework. Yet, maintaining the institution of private property seems to represent a contradiction to the principle of the “commons” themselves. The Slovenian philosopher Slavoy Zizek faces this incompatibility. Accordingly, the fundamental issue of the capitalist system is that it is unable to deal with not only the commons of external nature but similar those of human culture and internal nature, such as biogenetics. What he hence proposes is a “new kind of communism”[2] (unlike Couzet with a traditional “u”), communist in the sense that “we care about the commons”. Hence, what Latour does leave open is how this war is meant to be fought and how the fundamental changes he demands in the conception of politics can be realized. Ecological utopians, as Zizek would say, are not those who asks for a radical change in human lifestyle and organization. Utopians are those who sustain the illusion that we can face the issue of the commons through gradual adaption paired with scientific progress nourishing the enlightenment idea of nature as an object of human domination.

---

[1] http://blog.tcrouzet.com/2013/11/25/suis-je-commoniste/

[2] http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/article/new-communism-resurrecting-utopian-delusion