phenomenon that is in its turn quite banal. At the very moment when Descartes, sit-
ting all alone by his stove, formulates his“Ego cogito,”as we can see now, the scientific
community finally begins to work in concert. What is modern? The solitarycogito?
The common work of proof-workers? Or the strange relation between the invention of
thecogitoand the scientific community, at the very moment when that community is
inventing itself? Theretrospectivediscovery, by the new history of the sciences, of the
countless links between the sciences and public life, and between these linksand their
denial,offers the most spectacular proof that we have never been modern.
- On the reinterpretation of the myth and its illustration, see Latour 1996a.
11. I leave entirely aside here the possibility of historicizing nature by telling a more
lively story of its development (Gould 1987), since this new liveliness does not modify
the political use made of nature (Stengers 1997a). - The accusation of historicism appeared condemnable only in the Old Regime by
contrast with the assured certainties that could always be opposed to the world of the
Cave. It is no longer a matter here of entrusting everything to mere contingency, but of
modifying the meaning of that word through adequate institutions. “Contingent” be-
comes once again the result of a political reapportionment with regard to what may be
or may not be, what must be or must not be. - I am not reutilizing the distinction betweenexperimentumandexperientia,exper-
iment and experience (Licoppe 1996), since common sense*, caught up increasingly in
the science wars, needs experimentation as well as experienced people from now on. - These are the four conditions offered by Callicles for political action and re-
jected as irrelevant by Socrates in theGorgias. - Lovelock, the inventor of the Gaiahypothesis,is quite careful, moreover, not to
make this an already constituted totality. His books lay out the progressive composi-
tion of the links between scientific disciplines, each charged with a sector of the planet
and gradually discovering with surprise that they can define one another mutually
(Lovelock 1988). By forcing the issue, we can say that Lovelock’s Gaia is the complete
opposite of nature, and that it bears closer resemblance to a Parliament of disciplines. - The distinctions between procedural, substantial, and consequential moralities
become less important if we consider the collective in its experimental dynamics. If we
look at them more closely, we see that the different schools of moral philosophy do not
oppose one another, so much as each designates successive segments of this learning
curve, while making an effort to characterize its virtue. - That there is no reduced model of the collective is the origin of the chief misun-
derstanding between Socrates and thedemosinGorgias. - We can indeed measure the progressive disappearance of modernism as an in-
terpretation of itself, through the proliferation of colloquia, institutions, procedures
concerning risks and the principle of precaution. This is one of the best indications of
the presence in Europe at least of this new Constitution, whose dotted lines I am sim-
ply filling in with a black pencil (Barry 2001). - This is the great contribution of Ulrich Beck, to have been able to shift from
modernization to second or reflexive modernization without getting drawn off course
by the red herring of the postmoderns. - This is also the essential problem taken up by Dewey in response to Lippmann’s
NOTES TO PAGES 192–201
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