Review_Author: Joe Revelt
Book_Author: Bruno Latour
Book_Title: Science in Action
Reference: 1987 Harvard University Press - Cambridge, MA
Date: 5/10/00
Time: 11:32:46 AM
Remote Name: 166.66.16.28
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Bruno Latour published Science in Action in 1987, and most of his discourse is just as valid today. The book is divided into six chapters. The first chapter outlines his analysis of the nature of technical literature, that it must cite numerous other authorities and guide the reader to the same inevitable conclusions as his. That if one is successful in achieving this, he has created science, a black box or accepted norm that additional technical literature can be based upon without having to duplicate the original study’s arguments. That science is determined by whether one’s work is accepted by others at a later time.
Another topic dealt with was laboratories – that unique environment from which the scientific text was generated. If a science matures or evolves to a point where it can no longer be contested or challenged, it becomes truth, or nature. Consequently, nature cannot be used to resolve scientific controversy since it is the outcome of its resolution.
The third chapter dealt with machines. Not to be confused with a simple device for a single task, here a machine is a configuration, or stratagem, where “borrowed forces are kept in check” maintaining a semblance of order for this group. It is by this device that society achieves stability. Given this “design,” the book proceeded to outline the levels of R&D, etc. for our culture and the world. It equated technocience with the military and detailed the vast amount (relatively speaking) of resources that go into maintaining science.
The fifth chapter addressed the issue of the “Tribunal of Reason” or rationality. Via a multitude of examples, it was illustrated that rationality is largely a cultural entity. That any seemingly irrationality is merely a departure or displacement of a given vector (magnitude and direction).
The last chapter detailed some of the commonalties of the sciences. Most notably, that they can be reduced to paper , a two-dimensional analysis, and that the mapping of a science’s relationships has a great deal in common with other disciplinary mappings. It also described the fragile, narrow networks this disciplines constitute and the viability of the comparable administrative and social networks.
Much of this book is difficult to read – perhaps due to the fact that it was first written in another language then translated. Although not a requirement for comprehension, readers with strong science backgrounds will probably assimilate more of the author’s points of view. I would recommend this book to anyone with interests in science and education.