Re: <nettime> parliament of things

[Felix Stalder <felix@openflows.org>]

"Kermit Snelson" <ksnelson@subjectivity.com>:

>Translation:  because science is simply politics by other means, it needs
>to be brought under the rule of law.  That was also C.S. Lewis's agenda.
>Of course, by law he meant "natural law" and by "natural law" he meant
>"religion".  Latour's concept of law may be different in form, but not in
>substance.  When he talks about a "politics of nature", he doesn't really
>mean that bacteria and rocks should be elected to parliament.  What he's
>really saying is that science should be brought under political control.

I tried to make it clear that I (and Latour, I assume) do NOT think that
science is nothing but politics by other means. Science deals, indeed, with
natural objects -- which makes it different from politics. But that's not
the only thing science does. Science not only describes, it also
perscribes. In other words, it also creates reality. In fact, science
creates a hybrid discursive-natural-social reality. You cannot separate
these different dimensions.

There are very few scientific facts that can hold up against 100 clever
lawyers. Take smoking for example. Everyone knows that it's bad for your
health, that it causes cancer.  Yet, for decades, lawyers have been able to
deny the link, question the reliability of the scientific facts that
establish -- or do not establish -- the link between smoking and lung
cancer.  It has been extraordinary difficult to establish this link in a
way that the link becomes socially relevant, for example, that it can be
relied upon in a court of law -- and smoking is a simple, well-understood
problem with relatively few variables.

The question is not whether or not sciences has political dimensions -- it
clearly has.  Science not only describes reality, but that it creates it.
Not arbitrarily, but it the same way that architects create buildings,
which, even though they are designed, still must conform to the basics of
physics. Take cloning, genetic engineering, global warming etc. etc. as
examples, there is no way we can speak of a nature that is beyond the
social.

Extending political voice to natural object does not mean that they become
suddenly dominated by politics, the same way than extending voting rights
to women in the early 20th century did not mean that they were suddenly
brought under political control (or that they were free from politics
before).


>But it is a fallacy to say that because we communicate through physical
>objects, it is the those objects that create our societies.

Why does there need to be an either  - or? Of course it's not the physical
object ALONE that create society, but it's also not people ALONE that
create it. Take this conversation for example. Would it be different if we
weren't communicating over email? You bet. Did  computers write the posts?
Certainly not. At least I hope you, Kermit, are not a bot!

Felix


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