are implicated in a great number ofspeech impedimenta*.^11 This obser-
vation will allow us to modify the meaning of the word “discussion,”
shifting it away from the political tradition toward what will become
the future ecological tradition, even as the word retains for speech, for
thelogos,the central place it has always held in political philosophy.
The first speech impediment is manifested by the multiplication of
controversies: the end of nature is also the end of a certain type of
scientific certainty about nature. As has often been noted, every eco-
logical crisis opens up a controversy among experts, and these contro-
versies generally preclude the establishment of a common front of in-
dubitable matters of fact that politicians could subsequently use in
support of their decisions.^12 In the face of this familiar situation, which
can be found in the argument over global warming as well as in the
role of Amazonian earthworms, the disappearance of the batrachians,
and the contaminated blood scandal, two attitudes are possible: we
can wait for the sciences to come up with additional proofs that will
put an end to the uncertainties, or we can consider uncertainty as
the inevitable ingredient of crises in the environment and in public
health.^13 The second attitude has the advantage of replacing something
that is not open to discussion with something that can be debated, and
of binding together the two notions of objective science and contro-
versy: the more realities there are, the more arguments there are. Mat-
ters of concern have replaced matters of fact.
Here, too, we cannot renew political ecology without benefiting
from the contribution of science studies. The irruption of scientific
controversies on the public stage does not prove that we have moved
from established facts to baseless fictions, but that the distinction be-
tween what is internal to scientific disciplines and what is external has
to some extent disappeared. Today as before, arguments take place
among researchers inside laboratories.^14 Let us note right away that
the meaning of the words “discussion” and “argument” is modified as
soon as we evoke scientists in lab coats. It is surely no longer possi-
ble to oppose the scientific world of indubitable facts to the political
world of endless discussion. There are more and more common arenas
in which discussion is nourished both by controversies among re-
searchers and by squabbling in assemblies.^15 Scientists argue among
themselves about things that they cause to speak, and they add their
own debates to those of the politicians. If this addition has rarely been
HOW TO BRING THE COLLECTIVE TOGETHER
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