Last week the death of one of the most famous and controversial philosophers made the headlines. Bruno Latour passed away at the age of 75. His intellectual legacy consists of uncountable papers, dozens of books and hundreds of talks. Latour is one of these French philosophers – such as Derrida, late Deleuze, Lyotard and Sartre— studied everywhere in the world but in France. The reason is perhaps that these authors are labeled under the name of postmoderns which fits into the academic landscape in the US but not in a more conservative France. In any case Latour created lovers and haters. He is the hero of climate activists (with his late Gaïa project) and the dumb of scientists (with his Laboratory Life: The Social Construction of Scientific Facts). His enemies accuse him to be a social constructivist of science, reducing scientific facts to ersatz of social interactions within the scientific community. He would be a defender of the antirealist motto: “Science is a social construction.” A salient proof of his thesis is said to be found in his text Jusqu’où faut-il mener l’histoire des découvertes scientifiques ? [Until where do one have to lead history of scientific discoveries?] published in 1998 in French magazine La Recherche. After publication of this text, he was accused (and still is) to defend that it is impossible that Ramses II died due to tuberculosis three millennials ago because this bacteria was only discovered 1882 by Koch. I am not the biggest fan of postmodernism but I have to admit the critique again Latour’s text are unjust. This text is mostly misunderstood by many. I will try to shed light on it.
It is true that Latour starts his text with this very provocative statement (i.e. it is impossible that Ramses II died because of tuberculosis because this bacteria has been discovered after his death). However he admits that the radicalness of this utterance is only an illusion. In the rest of his text, he will try to explain and nuance it. I think many scientists stayed stuck to this early thesis. Latour wants simply to say that scientific facts are not what scientific dis-cover (remove cover). There is nothing covered or hidden waiting for someone to shed light on. Scientists produce, build and craft. It does not mean by any way that the bacteria is an artifact or a social construction. Latour does believe that Ramses II is dead because of tuberculosis. He just stresses the fact that when we refer to past scientific fact (the contagion of Ramses by a tuberculosis stems) we do not just designate this event as a point in the timeline located at 1000 BC. Each point of the timeline load a ton of historical sedimentation within it. With a very obscure analogy, Latour says that time has to be understood in a two-dimensional space. The horizontal dimension of time is the classical timeline as we learned at school. The vertical dimension is the one at stake here. This extra dimension pertains to all the sedimentations that came a posteriori to describe more comprehensively this event. More concretely, the death of Ramses II has not only to be understood, as intuitively, as an event occurred in 1000 BC (horizontal dimension) but also with all posterior events or discoveries connected to this event (vertical dimension): the discovery of the virus in 1882 by Koch, the transportation of the mummy from Cairo to Paris in 1976 and the X-ray analysis demonstrating the presence of Koch bacteria. In that respect saying simply that “Ramses II died because of tuberculosis in 1000 BC” is, according to Latour, an anachronism. We should instead say, “Ramses II died because of tuberculosis at 1000 BC given the sedimentation from this time to nowadays.” Latour implicitly stresses the central role of the actors in the scientific discoveries. A scientific discovery is not just a brute rational fact conceived in abstracto, but the result of a (temporal) interaction between actors: the mummy, the scientists of 1976, the trip from Cairo to Paris, Koch… It is only under some specific configuration that a scientific discovery can emerge.
Latour is not fool and anticipates some critiques. He states clearly that his position in not a form of idealism consisting in arbitrary constructing the past from our present. There is no retroactive causality. In his perspective, the discoveries proceded in 1888 and 1976 changed forever the sedimentation related to the death of Ramses II in 1000 BC. This is not reversible. Time endlessly increases in the horizontal and vertical dimensions with no way back.
His article is quite short and sometimes confusing. I think that is the reason why many saw in Latour a strong constructivist and relativist toward science. His position is in fact a position that many scientists could endorse: our scientific knowledge concerning past events cannot be conceived in abstracto but always in regard of our position in time and the facts that contribute to our accumulated knowledge about this event. Were Ramses II not transported in Paris in 1976, the sedimentary knowledge associated to his death in 1000 BC would have been stayed at the same level as in 1000 BC. Once we acquire a further knowledge, the point in history inflates and gain (vertical) density. This mass is won forever, there is not retroactive causality. This is in fact a quite trivial thesis that many scientists could endorse. One cannot speak abstractly about an event: there is an indeterminacy, an ambiguity, we need another (vertical) coordinate to speak about it in a sound way. This vertical coordinate is simply the amount of knowledge gained until today. That is a far softer thesis.
Maybe I achieved to nuance the antirealist accusation against Bruno Latour. To quote another disputed French philosopher, Michel Onfray: “the reputation of an individual is nothing but the sum of misunderstandings on their account.”