2

“Thou Shall Not

Freeze-Frame,” or, How Not

to Misunderstand the Science

and Religion Debate

Bruno Latour

I have no authority whatsoever to talk to you^1 about religion and ex-
perience because I am neither a predicator, nor a theologian, nor a
philosopher of religion—nor even an especially pious person. Fortu-
nately, religion might not be about authority and strength, but explo-
ration, hesitation, and weakness. If so, then I should begin by put-
ting myself in a position of most extreme weakness. William James,
at the end of his masterpiece,The Varieties of Religious Experience,^2
says his form of pragmatism possesses a “crass” label, that of plural-
ism. I should better state at the beginning of this talk that my label—
should I say my stigma?—is even crasser: I have been raised a Cath-
olic; and worse, I cannot even speak to my children of what I am
doing at church on Sunday. It is from this very impossibility of
speaking to my friends and to my own kin about a religion that mat-
ters to me, that I want to start tonight: I want to begin this essay by
this hesitation, this weakness, this stuttering, by this speech impair-
ment. Religion, in my tradition, in my corner of the world, has be-
come impossible to enunciate.^3
But I don’t think I could be allowed to talk only from such a
weakened and negative position. I have also a slightly firmer ground
that gives me some encouragement in addressing this most difficult
topic. If I have dared answering the invitation to speak, it is also be-
cause I have been working for many years on offering other inter-
pretations of scientific practice than common ones.^4 It is clear that
in an argument on “science and religion,” any change, however