only the stammerings of the orator Demosthenes but the complete gamut from silence
to logorrhea.
- The “bifurcation of nature,” to use Whitehead’s expression (Whitehead 1920),
has become, if I dare say so, unconstitutional... - See especially the role of “whistle blowers,” as described by Chateauraynaud and
Torny (1999), and Sheila Jasanoff ’s important book ( Jasanoff 1995). For the difference
between indoor and outdoor research, see Callon, Lascoumes, et al. 2001. - We recognize in the dislocation between the continuing movement of research
and the work of closure, the emergence of the principle of precaution, so important for
all these questions. See Godard 1997, Ewald 2001, Dratwa 2003, and Sadeleer 2002. - As we shall see in the following section and especially in Chapter 5, the only an-
swer to this question is an experimental answer that can serve as a serious substitute
for morality only after the introduction of the notion of collective experience*. - On the distinction between science and law, see Latour 2002d.
- In all the following diagrams, I will use the metaphor of lower and upper house
to designate these two assemblies that redissect the collective unified in the previous
chapter. The metaphor is a bit far-fetched, I know, but I want to retain as many of the
terms associated with our Western democratic tradition as possible. - Ulrich Beck has gone quite far in his exploration of the politics of risks with his
invention of a new form of bicameralism. He clearly connects laboratory experience
with that of the collective: “At this time there are two types of sciences that are in the
process of diverging within the civilization of danger: the old laboratory science, still
flourishing, that opens up the world through mathematics and technology but that has
no experience, and a new form of political discursivity that, thanks to experience,
makes the relation between ends and means, constraints and methods, visible in the
form of controversies” (Beck 1997, 123). He sees the solution in the invention of two
houses: “We must thus resort to two enclaves or forums, perhaps a sort of High Court
or Technology Court that would guarantee the separation of powers between technical
development and technical realization” (124). And his solution cannot be seen as anti-
scientific any more than mine can: “Contrary to a widespread prejudice, doubt once
again makes everything possible—science, knowledge, the critical spirit, and moral-
ity—but all this in a smaller size, more hesitant, more personal, more colorful, and
more capable of learning, and by the same token also more curious, more open to con-
tradictions, to incompatibilities, since that depends on the tolerance acquired thanks
to the ultimate certainty that one will be mistaken in any event” (126). - This is a way of doing justice to Hermitte’s requirements in order to produce a
“theory of decision making in a situation of uncertainty” (Hermitte 1996, 307) and to
accept all the consequences of the principle of precaution. - A number of recent writings constitute a veritable anthropology of formalism
that is profoundly modifying the theoretical description of theory work. See in particu-
lar Pickering 1995, MacKenzie 1996, Galison 1997, and Rosental 2000. - The contaminated blood scandal as well as the debates over the acceptance of
genetically modified organisms make it possible to grasp the intermediate stages be-
tween local uncertainty and global certainty. On this notion of relative existence, see
Latour 1999b, chapter 5. - The critique of expertise and its limits is capably analyzed in Jasanoff 1995, Lash,
NOTES TO PAGES 110–121
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