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…