Here's a dramatization [because we're dealing with war(s) here], here's my theatrics for you Ben. This reading was like having surgery: comfortably drugged where things are light and humorous, surgically removing disconnected tissues (issues), having a pit/void wide open, filling it back in with the tissues (issues) reconnected and connected in new ways, and finally comfortably walking away from the surgical table, groggy but energized, feeling like a million bucks, like waking up from a bizarre dream and asking yourself what just happened, but then it hits you: the eureka moment. And you realize the surgery went flawlessly and that you are a changed (better/healthier) person. [Reading Latour in general, is like surgery, sometimes there are complications though.]
As one could get from my little anecdote, I thoroughly enjoyed this article. Here's part of my war story. I should have read this many years ago when I was first exposed to post-modernism, science studies and even conspiracy theories where my own fabric of reality was shaken. Making me question everything. Once I got my fingers wrapped around what the notion of social construction meant, it was like a gun in my hand pointed backwards (I know better now because of Latour to grant the gun so much agency but for the sake of more of theatrics). Deconstructions and social constructions, threatened a critical part of my identity which lies in science and the empirical.
Today in a culture where Hollywood films with tag lines such as "Everything is suspect... Everyone is for sale... And nothing is what it seems" (p. 230) that pique the interest and sentiments of the people, it is ever so important to reclaim reality, facts, science and critique. Latour offers us a new arsenal: using critique that deals with "matters of concern". Believing in reality needs to be cool again.
"Whatever the words, what is presented here is an entirely different attitude than the critical one, not a flight into the conditions of possibility of a given matter of fact, not the addition of something more human that inhumane matters of fact would have missed, but, rather, a multifarious inquiry launched with the tools of anthropology, philosophy, metaphysics, history, sociology to detect how many participants are gathered in a thing to make it exist and to maintain its existence. Objects are simply a gathering that has failed-a fact that has not been assembled according to due process." (p. 245-246)
Again Latour is arguing here for a more connected science. In order to be realistic about science studies one must identify how and what some thing is connected and associated to. One can not take something out of context and analyze it as an individual entity. This is what Latour is talking about when he talking about objects. Objects (and facts) are taken out of their associations to other things and analyzed independently. How to analyze something as a thing, one can use the humanities to uncover the actors/participants in what makes up that thing. These participants define what a thing is, makes it real, and gives it context.
I'm thinking that I want to write a paper called Constructing Risk From the (De)Constructions of Risk. This paper would be about: in my developing field of repertoire and expertise - statistics and how it deals with uncertainty, risk and how it gets confused with uncertainty, and just in general how risk discourses pervades our culture (as someone said that we live in the "Risk Society") and how statistics is put holding hands with risk in these discourses. I think there's a lot of work to be done in making statistics more connected and "thingy" by gathering and explicating associations. Risk has everything to do with all of these conspiracies and mistrust in science. As Latour said some thing to the fact that there will always be a level of uncertainty in the scientific process, that is to be certain.
Here's a really interesting quote from a statistician dealing with matter of fact and matter of concern. Uncertainty seems to be an object in this quote. Not a thing. Uncertainty in this case is its own entity devoid how it is uncertain. I've stared at this quote for an hour and haven't come up with anything conclusive but something how this guy nuances statistics, is really interesting. So I open this up to you bloggers to give me a billion subtle thoughts about this quote!
"... it is only the manipulation of uncertainty that interests us. We are not concerned with the matter that is uncertain. Thus we do not study the mechanism of rain; only whether it will rain." - Dennis Lindley
Aaron, your quote is very intriguing. As I sit contemplating it, I continue to think about the manipulation as being a type of "filling in the blank" type mechanism. Where if there are parts, or in this case numbers missing, one can manipulate it in order to bring some type of interest into the area that was missing. When looking at statistics that has something missing, maybe the uncertainty is explained with some sort of conclusion that seems plausible and will stir up some kind of interest to hopefully find out more. Or at least allows the information to be presented in a more interesting way. I think this is like the question of whether or not it will rain in that we always look at the whether for chance of precipitation because it may affect our lives in someway. Whether it be the plans we make or the way we transport ourselves. Even when we do this, it is never certain that the meteorologist will be 100% accurate, but we bring an umbrella just in case because the meteorologist did a little "filling in the blanks" for us by providing a percentage of the chance of precipitation. This way, even though it is not certain, we have protection and are able to draw a partial conclusion of what the whether may be like.
ReplyDeleteMaybe I'm way off, but I wanted to take a shot at it. Thanks for the thought.