the sciences. We can get a good idea of this way of proceeding from a paragraph in
Hegel’sLogicwhere Hegel criticizes Kant for having limited contradiction to thought
instead of assigning it to things: “The blemish of contradiction, it seems, could not be
allowed to mar the essence of the world [for Kant]; but there could be no objection to
attach it to the thinking Reason, to the essence of mind...Butifacomparison is insti-
tuted between the essence of the world and the essence of the mind, it does seem
strange to hear how calmly and confidently the modest dogma has been advanced by
one, and repeated by others, that thought or Reason, and not the World, is the seat of
contradiction” (Hegel 1817, 77 [§48]). Kant may be wrong in assigning to thought a con-
tradiction that derives, as we have just seen, from the fact that the moderns are incapa-
ble of conceptualizing the political order, but at least he is wise enough not to drag the
world into his own delirium. Hegel is unfortunately not so restrained, and, thanks to
him, the universe is starting to become agitated under the totally improbable forms of
objectivity, subjectivity, and the history of the mind. Who is the more naive? Let us
have the civility not to drag the associations of humans and nonhumans into such
wars. Unfortunately, a large part of the philosophy of ecology retains in a popularized
form this ambition to “get beyond the contradiction between man and nature” (see
Chapter 1).
- Collins and Kusch (1998) go further than anyone else in science studies toward
the analysis of this dichotomy between human action and human behavior and present
the most carefully argued version of it. - For an anthropology of fists pounding tables, see the witty article by Ashmore,
Edwards, et al. (1994) and the detailed description of Herrstein-Smith 1997. Many fists
were bruised and many desks pounded during the “science war” episodes. - This minimal definition of action was offered some time ago by the semiotics of
A.-J. Greimas (1976) and brought to science studies by Latour 1988. It has proven very
useful for the analysis of the emergence of new actors whose performances (what they
do in trials) always precede their competences (what they are). See numerous examples
in Latour 1999b. For an astonishing analysis of the ontologies proper to the new labora-
tory actors, see Rheinberger 1997. - For a very early and magnificent description of all the agencies necessary for the
accompaniment and stabilization of a fact, see Fleck 1935. - For the use of those notions of actor and actant to erase the distinction between
social and nonsocial elements, see the case of a technical project in Latour 1996a. - The notion of presentation comes from Stengers 1996; it will play an essential
role in Chapter 5 as we exit from the solution of mononaturalism and multiculturalism
thanks to the role of diplomacy*. - Let us not forget that the social as association, invented by Tarde, bears no
relation to the social of Durkheim. On the difference between the two, see Latour
2002c. - Isabelle Stengers has suggested using the expression “the ecology of practices” to
characterize her project (Stengers 1996), but one can also speak of risk, as Beck does
(Beck 1995), or of the public, as Dewey does, defining it as follows: “Those indirectly
and seriously affected for good or for evil form a group distinctive enough to require
recognition and a name” (Dewey 1954 [1927], 35).
NOTES TO PAGES 72–77
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