Bruno Latour

Bruno Latour is a philosopher of science and sympathetic critic of Deep Ecology, which he seeks to replace with a Political Ecology. I sometimes blog about these things over at parliamentofthings.org .

Bruno Latour is a French philosopher, anthropologist and sociologist of science. He is especially known for his work in the field of Science and Technology Studies.

Although his studies of scientific practice were at one time associated with social constructionist approaches to the philosophy of science, Latour has diverged significantly from such approaches.

He is best known for withdrawing from the subjective/objective division and re-developing the approach to work in practice. Latour is one of the primary developers of Actor Network Theory.

What equipment is necessary to render us sensitive to the New Climatic Regime? There is science, of course, without which we would not have become aware of the change. There is also politics, the only way to assemble the relevant stake holders. But since we don’t seem naturally endowed with the right sensitivity to absorb the magnitude of the ecological mutations we confront, there is also the arts.

The lecture reviews the overlap between these three forms of aesthetics (defined as what makes us sensitive to hitherto unknown phenomena) by using various performances in which the author has been involved: theatre, exhibitions, simulations, as well as interventions in social science and philosophy.

Latour is best known for his books We Have Never Been Modern, Laboratory Life, Science in Action and Politics of Nature.

Some notes on Description and Explanation

French sociologist of science Bruno Latour, 70, has long been a thorn in the side of science. But in the age of “alternative facts,” he’s coming to its defense. science

Here is the table of contents for a set of postings that, together, are a transcript of an OOPSLA talk on Bruno Latour and Actor-Network Theory. post