Bruno Latour Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
Bruno Latour (born 1947, Beaune, France) is a French anthropologist best known for his books We Have Never Been Modern, Laboratory Life, and Science in Action, describing the process of scientific research from the perspective of social construction based on field observations of working scientists. Latour's main contribution to the sociology of science was the observation that naïve descriptions of the scientific method, in which theories stand or fall on the outcome of a single experiment, are inconsistent with actual laboratory practice, in which a typical experiment produces only inconclusive data that is attributed to failure of the apparatus or experimental method, and that a large part of scientific training involves learning how to make the subjective decision of what data to keep and what data to throw out; a process that to an untrained outsider looks like a mechanism for ignoring data that contradicts scientific orthodoxy.Latour has taught at engineering schools in France for over 20 years, and is currently attached to the École des Mines in Paris. His newest theoretical contribution to social sciences is his work in actor network theory.
Originally trained in anthropology, Latour rose in importance following the 1979 publication of Laboratory Life: the Social Construction of Scientific Facts with co-author Steve Woolgar. In the book, the authors undertake an ethnographic study of a neuroendocrinology research laboratory at the Salk Institute. This book undertakes a self-consciously anthropological approach to scientific work, studying it as if he subject was an isolated tribe in some far off land. Latour and Woolgar try not to prejudge the content of what they were observing. The task is described through the eyes of a fictitious narrator who records his observations of the scientist and their activities without any previous knowledge of their purpose. This forced naïveté leads the fictional anthropologist to observations which seem highly counter-intuitive to those familiar with traditional understandings of science.
Past work in the philosophy of science generally focused on theories and truth conditions, while anthropology is far more concerned with practices. By treating the laboratory as a productive unit and considering its inputs, outputs, and the processes that take place therein, Latour and Woolgar produced a highly heterodox and extremely controversial picture of the sciences. Drawing on the work of Gaston Bachelard, they advance the notion that the objects of scientific study are socially constructed within the laboratory - that they can not be attributed with an existence outside of the instruments that measure them and the minds that interpret them. They view scientific activity as a system of beliefs, oral traditions and culturally specific practices - in short, science is reconstructed not as a procedure or as a set of principles but as a culture.
In 1984, Latour followed up the themes in Laboratory Life with Les Microbes: guerre et paix (published in English as The Pasteurization of France). In it, he reviews the life and career of one of France's most famous scientists Louis Pasteur, and his discovery of microbes, in the fashion of a political biography. Latour highlights the social forces at work in and around Pasteur's career and the uneven manner in which his theories were accepted. By providing more explicitly ideological explanations for the acceptance of Pasteur's work more easily in some quarters than in others, he seeks to undermine the notion that the acceptance and rejection of scientific theories is primarily, or even usually, a matter of experiment, evidence or reason.
The conclusions Latour draws from the life and work of Pasteur form the basis of his later work in actor network theory.
Latour's 1987 book Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers through Society contains the major elements of Latour's approach to science studies, and as such has become the lightning rod of much of the criticism directed against him.
Early work
Science in Action