would have the philosophy to which it aspires. Unfortunately, this is not the case. An
article with such a flamboyant title as “La nature est morte, vive la nature!” seeks to
demonstrate that, after the mechanistic view of nature, another “more organic” vision
is going to take its place. “The new conception of nature is more organic...andin-
cludes man as, in [Aldo] Leopold’s words, ‘a plain member and citizen of the biotic
community’” (inHastings Center Report[September–October 1992]: 23). One might ex-
pect some measure of doubt from John Baird Callicott about the political usefulness of
the notion of nature. But no: in passing, and without even noting the fact, he has short-
circuited the work of unification. We have thus moved from the presumed dualism of
the past to a comprehensive unity, without noticing that nature plays the same role
twice!
- It is no accident that I am using the term “secularization.” If naturalization has
played such an important role in the antireligious struggle, it is because it has always
used the object of nature, the causal object, the smooth matters of fact, as a battering
ram to knock down the door of powers and of obscurantism. Nature remains fully per-
meated by the ancient notion of religion that it has fought. - We shall see later on, and especially in Chapter 5, that this collective cannot
identify itself in the singular without a new work of political composition—unlike na-
ture, whose unity seems always achieved in advance without anyone’s lifting a finger
(Latour 2002e). - The effort to reconcile these two positions, as artificial as they are extreme, pro-
vides all the dramatic interest of Soper 1995, one of the best books written for height-
ening the tension between the social construction of reality on the one hand and the
feminist and political themes of ecology—which need a solid realism to maintain the
critical tension—on the other. - A long and rich tradition can be traced from the very early Barnes and Shapin
1979 to Schama 1996 through, for instance, Thomas 1983. - The dialectical interpretation changes nothing, for it maintains the two poles,
contenting itself with setting them in motion through the dynamics of contradiction. - In a book that is very well informed about the English ecology movements, Phil
Macnaghten and John Urry (1998) do not succeed in breaking the attachment of these
movements to nature, except by showing that it is “socially constructed” in the form of
landscape and wilderness. Criticism is thus exercised through therefusalto recognize
in any of the actors engaged in the environment any hold whatsoever on reality (which
is thus left, though the authors do not acknowledge this, to the scientists capable of
speaking about nature in the singular). - I am using the metaphor of secularization for the time being, but in the conclu-
sion I will have to note that this metaphor is clearly inadequate, since one cannot con-
sign sciences to the inner subjective self, as had been thought possible for ending reli-
gious wars. - This is the theme of Moscovici’s premonitory book (Moscovici 1977 [1968]).
- See Ian Hacking’s useful presentation (Hacking 1999) of the various shades of so-
cial constructivism. - Fleck (1935) long ago offered an example of a realist version of science, simply by
digging further and deeper into what empiricism had to offer. For a realist version of
NOTES TO PAGES 30–38
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