The article, by Stephen Shapin (another famous figure in the history of science / STS) is actually mostly about Latour’s Catholicism — something nobody in the f

The article, by Stephen Shapin (another famous figure in the history of science / STS) is actually mostly about Latour’s Catholicism — something nobody in the field remembers. (I had to read a lot of Latour back in the day, and I’d always assumed he was non religious like most late 20th century intellectuals.) According to Shapin, the Catholicism, together with the climate emergency, is at the heart of his “seriousness”, although apparently he didn’t really do “belief” per se: > in his own words, religion was not to do with “belief.” God was not an entity you believed in: God did not exist outside of the practices—what Bruno called “the processions and rituals” that make Him present. That is, God is made manifest in an actor-network of religiosity. The other interesting things you learn here is that Latour was from the famous Latour wine family, he was a youngest son so his family kind of expected him to enter the church, and they were apparently unimpressed and uninterested in his academic career.