tween perplexity and the certainty of instituted facts, it is only be-
cause Science claims it can leap directly from one to the other without
rule-governed procedures. There is no longer anything illegitimate in
the fact of using the competencies of scientists not only to obtaincon-
sensusbut also to shelter it right away in forms of life, instruments,
paradigms, teachings, bodily skills, black boxes. Here again, once the
state of law has been restored, all the defects of scientists become
strong points: yes, scientists know how tomake irreversiblewhat has
long been the object of a controversy and that has just become the ob-
ject of an agreement. Moreover, a collective that is not able to produce
a definitive and durable closure of the established positions would be
incapable of surviving. This attachment to paradigms, all those sins of
obstinacy, and closed-mindedness, the tendency (with which scien-
tists are so often reproached) to wear blinders, now become important
qualities, indispensable to public life, for it is through them that the
collective gains stability.^21 Thanks to the skill of scientists, habits be-
come essences, and causalities and responsibilities alike are durably
assigned.
It will be argued that researchers must not have a great deal to say
about the separation of the two new powers (no. 5), since they have
gotten so used to the conveniences of Science that they have only in-
fringed on the separation by passing without warning from taking into
account to putting in order.* This is to forget that researchers devote
much of their time to defending theirautonomy.Now, this combat
does not simply attest to their habitual corporatism. The capacity to
ask one’s own questions without being intimidated by any good sense,
however few people may understand them and however little impor-
tance may be attributed to the stakes, is a form of self-defense that is
indispensable to the maintenance of an uncrossable barrier between
the requirements of the first house and the wholly contrary ones of
the second. One must not forbid oneself to take a new being into ac-
count on the pretext that it does not appear on the current list of
members of the collective.
This demand for autonomy in questioning—mistakenly confused
for the moment with an indisputable right to knowledge, recognition,
and budgets—has for the time being only one weakness, that of being
a privilege reserved for scientists!^22 Apportioned out to all the mem-
bers of the collective (humans and nonhumans), this demand is going
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