Latour and changing paradigms

The view that reality is only the construct of those who experience it. This notion has long been championed by our dear friend esteemed colleague Bruno Latour. In Monsieur Latour's recent article from Matters of Fact, Matters of Concern the constructs of how society deals with science is brought to the forefront with some concern. Latour himself admits he is concerned that the so called "critics of science" are ruining our chance of actually making scientific advances, which potentially could save lives.


"To indicate the direction of the argument, I want to show that while the
Enlightenment profited largely from the disposition of a very powerful descriptive tool, that of matters of fact, which were excellent for debunking
quite a lot of beliefs, powers, and illusions, it found itself totally disarmed
once matters of fact, in turn, were eaten up by the same debunking impetus.
After that, the lights of the Enlightenment were slowly turned off, and some
sort of darkness appears to have fallen on campuses. My question is thus:
Can we devise another powerful descriptive tool that deals this time with
matters of concern and whose import then will no longer be to debunk but
to protect and to care, as Donna Haraway would put it? Is it really possible
to transform the critical urge in the ethos of someone who adds reality to
matters of fact and not subtract reality? To put it another way, what’s the
difference between deconstruction and constructivism?" (Latour 232)

The rise of the intellect over the commoner's gullible-ness, seen in the Enlightenment, contributed to this reality full of facts or objects. Science thrived in this new age relative to the time the earth just exited. Enter Latour and his writings on reality. The concept of what reality actually was is now being questioned. Did cells exist before Hooke looked closely at that cork? Is science as objective, black, and white as we would like to think as science class teaches us? Or does society and the structures in it affect it to where it is now apart of the thing it is trying to analyze? Latour has helped the general public to all become critics of science. In a world where everyone is connected through nearly instantaneous transfer of information with Twitter and Facebook, and the rest of the Internet, a slight break of news can be took and twisted by anyone and distributed. Cue in endless conspiracy theories. When this is applied to scientific strides, sometimes the 'pseudo reviews come out of the wood work and munch the beautiful breakthrough down like a bunch of termites, meanwhile the actual, qualified critics do not have a chance to review it themselves before it is mutated beyond repair. This is what needs to be seen, that the general public can play the role of the deconstructionist termite, munching up and mutating the figure to be indistinguishable before the constructivists can get to it. Latour is now conflicted, he wants the general public to act as their own critics, but where does one draw the line and declare a naturalized fact?

So Latour not-too-long-ago just gave us these seeing devices to perceive reality in a different way which urges us to look at not only what is in front of us but what is in fact real. If looking solely at Latour and this philosophy (I'm sure he would disagree that we are doing this however), and look at recent events and conspiracy theories. There is a portion of the world's population that thinks the Holocaust never happened. These people Latour admits are taking his philosophy in forming this theory. Concerned he must rethink. What is correct? Do we allow theories to operate even though there is substantial evidence to the contrary? Or for the sake of progression must laboriously examine every half-witted theory that crosses our view, and in doing so we must completely discount any naturalized facts that directly prove to the contrary? In effect with the later I think we would be going backwards 99.999998% of the time. Latour seems to agree which is why now he wants the naturalized facts back, and a closer examination of everything as opposed to stepping back to observe the universe and its workings. A closing thought on my part: I no more enlightened by reading this article, in fact I could say I am more confused. It seems there are concurrent philosophies at work here, both cannot exist in the same time, both have flaws but one must be perfect and true. A paradox is at work here in my mind.