Talk:Bruno Latour

message: whoever keeps removing the reference to latour - he is an anthropologist! not a sociologist. naturally, there are a lot of idios who claim the latter, and these idiots are often found in good referenceable newspapers, however, it doesn't change the fact that latour's method is the paradigm of anthropology - in depth fieldwork. the making of law, his new book, proclaims itself to be anthropology and is quite blatantly so. we must accept the sociology tag for that is what ignorant people wish to call him, however, do not remove the fact he is an anthropologist first and foremost.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.112.106.174 (talk) 20:58, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: what inference could you make from that information? --Buridan 12:07, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Deletion 

message: The criticism you want, I think, is from Epistemological Chicken by Collins and Yearly in Pickering, A. (1992). Science as practice and culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.  It has to do with the agency of non-human objects.
Also the criticism of Schaffer, 1991.
Sokal and Bricmont
RE: "their critics were most particularly directed against the concept of Strong Programme". I do not believe that Sokal's criticism was directed at the 'strong programme'. At no point does he or Bricmont refer to Barry Barnes, David Bloor or John Henry, or anything else that derives from the Edinburgh school of Science and Technology Studies. A closer reading of Sokal would show that he is actually critical of relativism, nominalism, constructivism, and in particular postmodernism - therefore not the 'strong programme'. If anybody would like to disagree with this I am happy to discuss the matter further when i have the time. --CJ 12:47, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I hope that the critizism-section will not put too much weight on the Sokal Bricmont critizism. As stated before here, their specific critizism of Latour is pretty poor, based probably in a lack of understanding (see eg Callon's "Whose imposture") of his work, and also their work is also more of a polemic in general (though I agree with many of their key points). I think, like the previous speaker argues that we should focus on critizism from his peers, meaning people with the knowledge and interest in his field. Note that Sokal and Bricmont explicitly state a lack of interest in the content of the research they criticise. Also: I do not mean that S&B are not relevant. They should be mentioned. But I know there are a lot of S&B fans out there in the internet-world, and I have a hunch that it will quickly gain undue prominence. pertn (talk) 18:47, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I concur on RedHouse18's recommendation that Olga Amsterdamska's "Surely you're joking, Mr. Latour" is worthy of note here (review of Science in Action)--a quote from her intro would be nice.  Another critic of Latour is John Searle, e.g., he makes passing criticism of one of Latour's more extreme claims in his review of Paul Boghossian's Fear of Knowledge, which some blogger has reposted at http://koneill41.typepad.com/my_weblog/2009/12/searle-and-relativism.html Lippard (talk) 01:02, 27 March 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Criticism

message: In fact, Latour was very critical of SSS.  I think he's actually an anthropologist, no?  (I have no argument that his work has contributed a great deal to SSS)
:Latour is a past President of Society for Social Studies of Science (4S).Untalker (talk) 05:16, 25 February 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Latour falsely called a sociologist 

message: User:Languagehat, I propose you put this..
:An example of his social constructivist approach is his reaction to research showing that the pharaoh Ramses II probably died of tuberculosis: "How could he pass away due to a bacillus discovered by Koch in 1882? ... Before Koch, the bacillus has no real existence." He says that it is as much of an anachronism as it would be to claim that the pharaoh died of machine-gun fire.Paul A. Boghossian, Fear of Knowledge: Against Relativism and Constructivism (Oxford University Press, 2006: ), p. 26.
..under a criticism section. I do not know the source you are using, but I propose you start the paragraph something like this: "The social constructivism of Latour's early works has been criticized by XX.... " and then include their argument of which this example is a part. We the WP users sadly aren't supposed to prove our own points by providing examples. I like Latour myself, but I think this entry needs a criticism section. pertn (talk) 20:04, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I do not understand your point or why the quote was removed.  It was provided with a verifiable citation, which as I understand it is what Wikipedia requires.  In particular, I do not understand "WP users sadly aren't supposed to prove our own points"; what do you suppose my point to be?  I was providing a quotation that I came across and that struck me as illuminating Latour's approach. I would have assumed the deletion was carried out in order to preserve Latour's image except that you say you think the quote should be in there, so I confess myself baffled.  If you indeed think it should be there, I can only suggest you add it yourself in whatever way you think best.  I am not about to attempt different formats only to have them deleted with a "try again!" on the talk page.  Languagehat (talk) 16:51, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Please do not assume bad intentions from my side here, Languagehat. I think the quote is noteable and the source is good. The policy which I refer to is that we need sources drawing the syntesis and not draw our own syntesis based on examples and evidence. It is a quite annoying policy, but it has its merits. See WP:SYNT I am not at all interested in removing the point that you are including. I think there is a point to the criticizm of Latour's view and that the qoute illustrates it well. What I asked you to include from your source is (and here you do not even have to qoute it directly) is a sentence referring to the point that your source is trying to prove with the quote. I would guess (though I haven't read the book) that it would look something like this. "Latour has been criticized for a constructivist stance towards scientific facts. One of these critics, Boghossian, refers to Latour's response to to research showing that the pharaoh Ramses II probably died of tuberculosis: "How could he pass away due to a bacillus discovered by Koch in 1882? ... Before Koch, the bacillus has no real existence." He says that it is as much of an anachronism as it would be to claim that the pharaoh died of machine-gun fire.Paul A. Boghossian, Fear of Knowledge: Against Relativism and Constructivism (Oxford University Press, 2006: ), p. 26. " .. and then maybe a sentence on why Boghossian think this is bad. And I would create a separate criticism section for it. Promise I won't delete it. SeeWP:FAITH PS: I know I seem like a geek with all these policy references.  pertn (talk) 22:14, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: OK, thanks for explaining and sorry I got my back up. --Languagehat (talk) 23:16, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Tubercholosis quote

message: In "Science in Action" Latour famously wrote his Second Principle as follows:
:Scientist and engineers speak in the name of new allies that they have shaped and enrolled; representatives among other representatives, they add these unexpected resources to tip the balance of force in their favor.
Untalker (talk) 16:07, 3 April 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Science in Action Quote 

message: this is innacurate. latour is an anthropologist, and he says this himself. he is not a sociologist, though, to avoid lengthy and unnecessary debate when i'm revising i'll leave it as sociologist. however, in his book 'making of law' he specifically states 'anthropology of science, my original field' (Latour 2010:Viii)  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.215.149.96 (talk) 14:06, 19 April 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Latour was previously President of Society for Social Studies of Science.  He is also an anthropologist.Untalker (talk) 23:22, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

text: If you look in the paper by Will Wheeler in Bruno Latour:  Documenting Human and Nonhuman Associations "Critical Theory for Library and Information Science" , you'll see that Wheeler lists Bruno Latour as a French sociologist of science.  It's also interesting that he cites wikipedia in his paper.  Interesting to see wikipedia actually being cited in a scholarly published piece of work. --Sarg123 (talk) 04:59, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

text: Furthermore, Wheeler explains in his paper that "Science (with a capital S) is not the process of discovering a reality "out there."  The true study of science (and society) shows a completely different picture:  a science that is made up of the successive constructions of relatively known states of affairs established through chains of circulating reference that are more or less well articulated" (Wheeler, 189).  Yes, Latour is a sociologist of science, but not science as is commonly understood.  Perhaps mentioning this would be good on the article?  --Sarg123 (talk) 05:10, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  sociologist of science 

message: I believe that a section on the book by Latour, We Have Never Been Modern, would benefit this article greatly.  I know that there is another wikipedia page that is on the book as well, but I find it does not help much if the section is not included in the article about Latour himself.  Therefore I've added a new section.  I tried to mention some of the very basic concepts and principles of Latour's work in this book.  I know there is a lot of scholarship on it and what I have is not enough or nearly as detailed.  But with the groundwork that has been established, it can be worked on further to better represent Latour's scholarship.  --Sarg123 (talk) 08:06, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  We Have Never Been Modern

message: I also added a section for Pandora's Hope. Does anyone have any comments/suggestions? I tried to give an overview of the book's structure, and give an idea of the critical reaction. It's one of Latour's lesser-known works - do I give enough of a summary? Conorechlin (talk) 12:46, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: I like how you've done your citations.  It makes the citations look a lot neater and organized.  One thing that we might want to work on is the references list.  The way it is now, and most likely its me from the citations I've done, the reference list has a lot of repeats.  I looked at the featured article, and the reference list is sorted by type of source (ie. print, web etc).  What do you suggest?  --Sarg123 (talk) 01:13, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

text: In addition, I would like to make a recommendation for the section 'Pandora's Hope'.  As the section is, it doesn't link to other wikipedia articles.  For example, 'we have never been modern' is actually another wikipedia page, so perhaps when its mentioned in the section, you could put  around it, and it'll link to the wiki page.  What do you think? --Sarg123 (talk) 01:18, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

text: Good comments, and glad you like the citations. I'll make the changes for the links in Wikipedia. Thanks for the input Sarg!Conorechlin (talk) 23:38, 31 October 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Pandora's Hope

message: * A Shift in Agency - with apologies to David Hume Sounds like a interesting topic ;) Serten II (talk) 14:29, 2 January 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Edinburgh Lectures 

message: If that is true, why is so little of the article about it? William M. Connolley (talk) 20:39, 5 March 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  He is best known for withdrawing from the subjective/objective division 

message: Should it be noted somewhere that he also wrote under the name Jim Johnson? 1988	"Mixing Humans and Nonhumans Together: The Sociology of a Door-Closer". Social Problems, 35,(3), pp. 298–310.Johundhar (talk) 00:41, 5 August 2021 (UTC)
thread_title: Pen Name