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It's interesting they've started this médialab in Science Po, which is (as the name implies) a social sciences university [0] in Paris [1]. Looking at the team

by carlob 14y ago

It's interesting they've started this médialab in Science Po, which is (as the name implies) a social sciences university [0] in Paris [1]. Looking at the team [2] the name of Bruno Latour as a director seems a bit out of place. After his controversial views on the social construction of science [3] I find it astonishing that he is put at the head of the department that is in charge of bridging the world of the social scientists with that of the quantitative methods and hard sciences. [1] Grande école actually. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sciences_Po http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sciences_Po [2] http://www.medialab.sciences-po.fr/en/team/ http://www.medialab.sciences-po.fr/en/team/ [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruno_Latour#Laboratory_Life http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruno_Latour#Laboratory_Life

_delirium 14y ago
I don't see Latour as a particularly bad choice for bridging those worlds. One of his main points is paying close empirical attention to both how scientists actually work, and how non-human things work. Unlike a lot of humanities theorists of science, he actually went into laboratories and wrote down what seem like pretty honest accounts of what he found there. He's fairly controversial among pure social constructionists partly as a result. For example, he had a dispute with David Bloor some years ago [1] over Latour's insistence on including nonhuman objects in his explanation of how science works (rather than treating science as a purely social process). More recently, he's been attacking the tendency, born of the legacy of critical theory, to treat intellectual activity as a series of de-maskings of something the scholar will always find to be "naive" [2]. I mean, the last thing we should want, as scientists, is to have blind faith in a quasi-religious, idealized view of how science works, rather than empirically investigating how it actually works. Plus he seems pretty interested lately in tying in some philosophical ideas with quantitative network-analysis methods: http://www.bruno-latour.fr/sites/default/files/123-WHOLE-PART-FINAL.pdf http://www.bruno-latour.fr/sites/default/files/123-WHOLE-PAR... [1] Bloor's attack on Latour, http://reclus.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/bloor-anti-latour.pdf http://reclus.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/bloor-anti-latour...., and a reply, http://www.melissa.ens-cachan.fr/IMG/pdf/latour_-_reponse_a_bloor.pdf http://www.melissa.ens-cachan.fr/IMG/pdf/latour_-_reponse_a_... [2] http://www.pathguy.com/Latour.pdf http://www.pathguy.com/Latour.pdf
- mtraven 14y ago
  I agree, Latour has always been about bridging those worlds, in his own unique way. Here's his reply to those who misunderstand him as somehow denying reality: http://www.bruno-latour.fr/sites/default/files/70-DO-YOU-BELIEVE-IN-REALITY-GB.pdf http://www.bruno-latour.fr/sites/default/files/70-DO-YOU-BEL... And, next week he is delivering the Gifford Lectures, which should be fun. There is a webcast: http://www.ed.ac.uk/news/2013/gifford-080213 http://www.ed.ac.uk/news/2013/gifford-080213
- slurgfest 14y ago
  I don't agree. The last thing we should want, as scientists, is to do bad science: to be actually dishonest or credulous, to get it wrong due to sloppy methods and reasoning, etc. But this doesn't particularly correlate with agreement with or even attention to attempts to 'deconstruct' science from an ostensibly privileged and less-naive position. Nor does critical theory typically offer much useful advice for scientists to do the job better by the lights of anyone who is serious about doing good science. What comes is more in the vein of context-independent, pretentious negativity about the goal and the current state of knowledge, aimed at some academic-political end rather than improvements in understanding of the world. Observing this and carrying on with one's careful work is not 'quasi-religious' or 'blind faith,' it is the application of a simple relevance filter. If you want to critique physics experiments, you should find an actual concrete scientific basis: a problem in their reasoning, a fishy thing in their data or in their procedure. Otherwise, you are really not talking about physics and what you have is more of a posture than an actual falsification or revision of scientific value. Doing anthropology on scientists is something you can do, but no guarantees that the result will be accurate (unless you 'quasi-religiously' attend to scientific rigor and data, as if they really mattered and weren't just pointless masturbatory constructions which might as well be made up). And certainly no reason to think that scientists in other fields are obligated to care on pain of being bad scientists.
- carlob 14y ago
  For the critique from the other end of the social constructionism spectrum, I strongly suggest you read the chapter devoted to him in Sokal and Bricmont's Impostures intellectuelles (I think it was translated as Fashionable nonsense). It's a little hard to find in print, even in libraries. But I'm sure one could source a digital copy from a less reputable source.
robert-wallis 14y ago
This makes me think of a "degree, in fashion, from France" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZFOab0Ar4M http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZFOab0Ar4M #portal2

by carlob 14y ago

_delirium 14y ago

I don't see Latour as a particularly bad choice for bridging those worlds. One of his main points is paying close empirical attention to both how scientists actually work, and how non-human things work. Unlike a lot of humanities theorists of science, he actually went into laboratories and wrote down what seem like pretty honest accounts of what he found there. He's fairly controversial among pure social constructionists partly as a result. For example, he had a dispute with David Bloor some years ago [1] over Latour's insistence on including nonhuman objects in his explanation of how science works (rather than treating science as a purely social process). More recently, he's been attacking the tendency, born of the legacy of critical theory, to treat intellectual activity as a series of de-maskings of something the scholar will always find to be "naive" [2]. I mean, the last thing we should want, as scientists, is to have blind faith in a quasi-religious, idealized view of how science works, rather than empirically investigating how it actually works. Plus he seems pretty interested lately in tying in some philosophical ideas with quantitative network-analysis methods: http://www.bruno-latour.fr/sites/default/files/123-WHOLE-PART-FINAL.pdf http://www.bruno-latour.fr/sites/default/files/123-WHOLE-PAR... [1] Bloor's attack on Latour, http://reclus.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/bloor-anti-latour.pdf http://reclus.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/bloor-anti-latour...., and a reply, http://www.melissa.ens-cachan.fr/IMG/pdf/latour_-_reponse_a_bloor.pdf http://www.melissa.ens-cachan.fr/IMG/pdf/latour_-_reponse_a_... [2] http://www.pathguy.com/Latour.pdf http://www.pathguy.com/Latour.pdf

mtraven 14y ago
I agree, Latour has always been about bridging those worlds, in his own unique way. Here's his reply to those who misunderstand him as somehow denying reality: http://www.bruno-latour.fr/sites/default/files/70-DO-YOU-BELIEVE-IN-REALITY-GB.pdf http://www.bruno-latour.fr/sites/default/files/70-DO-YOU-BEL... And, next week he is delivering the Gifford Lectures, which should be fun. There is a webcast: http://www.ed.ac.uk/news/2013/gifford-080213 http://www.ed.ac.uk/news/2013/gifford-080213
slurgfest 14y ago
I don't agree. The last thing we should want, as scientists, is to do bad science: to be actually dishonest or credulous, to get it wrong due to sloppy methods and reasoning, etc. But this doesn't particularly correlate with agreement with or even attention to attempts to 'deconstruct' science from an ostensibly privileged and less-naive position. Nor does critical theory typically offer much useful advice for scientists to do the job better by the lights of anyone who is serious about doing good science. What comes is more in the vein of context-independent, pretentious negativity about the goal and the current state of knowledge, aimed at some academic-political end rather than improvements in understanding of the world. Observing this and carrying on with one's careful work is not 'quasi-religious' or 'blind faith,' it is the application of a simple relevance filter. If you want to critique physics experiments, you should find an actual concrete scientific basis: a problem in their reasoning, a fishy thing in their data or in their procedure. Otherwise, you are really not talking about physics and what you have is more of a posture than an actual falsification or revision of scientific value. Doing anthropology on scientists is something you can do, but no guarantees that the result will be accurate (unless you 'quasi-religiously' attend to scientific rigor and data, as if they really mattered and weren't just pointless masturbatory constructions which might as well be made up). And certainly no reason to think that scientists in other fields are obligated to care on pain of being bad scientists.
carlob 14y ago
For the critique from the other end of the social constructionism spectrum, I strongly suggest you read the chapter devoted to him in Sokal and Bricmont's Impostures intellectuelles (I think it was translated as Fashionable nonsense). It's a little hard to find in print, even in libraries. But I'm sure one could source a digital copy from a less reputable source.

robert-wallis 14y ago

This makes me think of a "degree, in fashion, from France" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZFOab0Ar4M http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZFOab0Ar4M #portal2