> Since the settlement of a controversy is the cause of Nature's representation, not its consequence, we can never use this consequence, Nature, to explain how

> Since the settlement of a controversy is the cause of Nature's representation, not its consequence, we can never use this consequence, Nature, to explain how and why a controversy has been settled. I don't understand why you find this so objectionable. If I grasp Latour's point, the settlement of a controversy fixes an understanding of nature at a particular point (the causal effect). It seems sensible then to forbid that understanding of nature to be used as an explanation for why the controversy was settled. Doing that would affix an absoluteness to the understanding that's unjustified, given the empirical approach. At some point in the future some new anomaly in the understanding (Nature) will be discovered, leading to a controversy, empirical science will resolve it, and a new understanding will be synthesized; handing us a representation. It's probably better than the earlier representation, but it's still not all of Nature. I think Latour's view is a humble view.