Bruno Latour, the Post-Truth Philosopher, Mounts a Defense of Science

It is extremely annoying when people present this is some kind of new groundbreaking idea, when it fact this is the exact observation that lead to creation of the scientific method.

The basis of the scientific method is the notion that human perception has quirks, therefore to learn about reality as it really is we need to design system that correct for those quirks. Alan Kay and Neil DeGrasse Tyson have good talks on this subject.

Big problems with modern science are not philosophical ones. They stem from institutional structures, incentives and the economy of modern science. Guess what? An institution distorting it own conclusions because of group biases bad economic incentives is not conceptually different from human brain distorting conclusions because of individual biases and instincts. It is something that should and can be handled through better process design.

Most scientists do not deny that these problems exist. There are plenty of them who analyze these issues, criticize the current state of affairs and propose actionable solution. Maybe we should listen to them before listening to post-modernists, eh? I am aware of exactly zero positive changes in science that ever resulted from post-modernist critique. Feel free to provide counter-examples.

“it has become clear that whether or not a statement is believed depends far less on its veracity than on the conditions of its “construction” — that is, who is making it, to whom it’s being addressed and from which institutions it emerges and is made visible.”

Not a critique, just an observation. This stuff is subtle.

Yes, the publication of Latour's new book in the US is undoubtedly the occasion of this extraordinarily well-written biopic and summary of Latour's work as the father of Actor-Actant Network Theory.

I've long been a fan of Latour, especially his short treatise _We Have Never Been Modern_ whose provocative title belies the clarity with which Latour explains that science is, above all, an overarching domain which brings together humans, social systems, manufacturing regimes, nonhuman actors, extraterrestrial matter, etc.

Most importantly (and as a summary for those of us who may be less familiar with Latour's very French and very poststructuralist way of looking at the world and human activity), Latour explains that what scientific traditionalists consider to be matters of strict empirical reality--the hole in the Ozone layer, global climate change, Boyle's Law, and even reproducibility itself--depends in very intimate ways on the messy social and political systems that allow such things as scientific facts to emerge into our consensus view of reality.

This is not simply saying "politics matter" though certainly also that.

Many who subscribe to Latour's precepts feel that science should acknowledge the way in which many ontological and phenomenological domains are imbricated in the production of scientific knowledge. By doing so, science stands a better chance not only of understanding how humans affect the world in which they live but, more crucially, may also more effectively fight the anti-scientific attacks that bury the truths which science reveals.

According to this line of thinking and in the context of (probably) runaway global climate change and the decreasing habitability of our planet for macroorganisms, scientific realists need to understand that facts do not speak for themselves and that the public will not change its opinion just because something is true. I know scientifically-minded people often do not like to be told this but non-scientific people don't require facts; they require convincing.

Of course, facts can help convince non-scientific people but those facts must come in the service of a larger coordinated effort to convince people to accept facts as the basis for changing what people decide to do. It's sort of like how engineering teams need marketers to convince customers to buy, though of course establishing consensus reality is much more complicated and higher risk than that. In a very real way, the fate of many of Earth's species depends on how effectively scientists can communicate with non-scientists.

I'm looking forward to reading _Down to Earth_. As a final plug for those of us who may not have time to read the linked article, here are some quotes which I think summarize what the author, Ava Kofman, distills from Latour's work.

> Science was “social,” then, not merely because it was performed by people (this, he thought, was a reductive misunderstanding of the word “social”); rather, science was social because it brought together a multitude of human and nonhuman entities and harnessed their collective power to act on and transform the world.

> Even though the evidence in support of global warming has long been overwhelming, some scientists continue to believe that the problem of denialism can be solved through ever more data and greater public education. Political scientists, meanwhile, have shown that so-called “irrational” individuals, especially those who are highly educated, in some cases actually hold onto their opinions more strongly when faced with facts that contradict them. Instead of accusing Trump supporters and climate denialists of irrationality, Latour argues that it is untenable to talk about scientific facts as though their rightness alone will be persuasive.

EDIT: treaties -> treatise; Add rhetorical context and qualify several claims. Clarity. Grammar.

Yes, definitely, however, so is accepting empirical evidence. And as much as claims have to be supported by evidence, so has skepticism of those claims.

We seriously have people running around claiming the world is flat. That is not skepticism, that is retardation.