Bruno Latour writes about the « popularizer…gauping at the multiplicity of worlds of quantum physics » (ENQUÊTE SUR LES MODES D’EXISTENCE, p127, my translation) believing that the common sense world has the simplicity of Euclidean space filled with familiar solid objects. We are faced with the « two tables » of Eddington and the impression of the complexity and strangeness of the scientific table compared to the simplicity and familiarity of the common sense table. A strange sense of « cognitive dissonance », as Philip of Circling Squares puts it, sets in. We live in the familiar world where everything seems simple, though the actual simplicities vary from culture to culture, and we believe in one unique, though complex, scientific framework and have adapted much of our behaviour (and increasingly the behaviour of people belonging to other traditions) to its products and precepts.
Latour’s resolution of this conflict is not to invent some ghostly withdrawing third table that would be the only real one, and relegate the two other tables to the status of « utter shams ». He does not allow himself the facility of such a traditional metaphysical move, which costs nothing to advance, a labour-saving philosophy for the intellectually indigent. No, he claims that the « popularizer » of quantum complexity believed in the simplicity of our common-sense world because « it cost him nothing to believe that the microphone into which he speaks, the chair from which he pontificates, his own body, his genes, the walls of the room, the assembly that he inducts into his vertigo, all this too is immersed in Euclidean space ». It costs him nothing to believe this simple fable because he does not do the work necessary to explore the contours of the commonsense world, to investigate its multiple dimensions.
All the « popularizer » has to do, remarks Latour, is « begin a little seriously to take the measure of what he is saying…take out of his pocket a carpenters’ rule, set square, paper and pencil…draw the piece of furniture in perspective…get hold of a colour chart to decide on the colour and another set of samples to decide on the quality of the wood » (EME, 127). The « popularizer », and we are in fact all to some extent scientistic popularizers or credulous victims thereof, will soon realise the multitude of dimensions that are necessary for the description of even such a simple object as a table. Latour « hopes…that after interrupting his talk for several minutes to take some measures, he will have modified his conclusion and admitted that the quantum world is childs’ play in relation to the multiplicity and the complexity of dimensions simultaneously accessible to the smallest experience of commonsense » (EME, 127). This world, the world of commonsense is unknown to us. The « familiar » world is unfamiliar to our thought and to our descriptions.
Paul Feyerabend gave a similar analysis. In FAREWELL TO REASON he tells us that « Commonsense views…contain subtly articulated ontologies including spirits, dreams, battles, ideas, gods, rainbows, pains, minerals, planets, animals, festivities, justice, fate, sickness, divorces, the sky, sickness, death, fear – and so on » (FTR, 64). These « subtly articulated ontologies » of commonsense come with their own standards and measures and dimensions. Problems of knowledge or reality « arise when the ingredients of complex worlds of this kind are subsumed under abstract concepts and are then evaluated » (FTR, 64). This evaluation of the complex worlds of commonsense in terms of the abstract concepts of the philosopher is too often to the detriment of commonsense. Graham Harman calls the commonsense table an « utter sham » (THE THIRD TABLE, 6) because he has replaced it with a simplified caricature. Feyerabend condemns such judgements explaining: « They are not fruits of more refined ways of thinking; they arise because delicate matters are compared to crude ideas and found to be lacking in crudeness » (FTR, 64).
Finally, I think that this gives the beginnings of a reply to Philip’s dilemma: « am I not quite naively scientistic in my everyday practices? Do I believe in evolution, global warming, atoms? Of course I do. When I get sick do I follow medical science or voodoo? The former, of course. Do I accept the claims of geocentrism just because it’s just one cosmology among others? Of course not, I accept whatever I understand of the prevailing scientific consensus is, however complex and processual I understand such consensus to be. Insofar as science has a widely accepted answer for a question of fact I basically accept it (this probably isn’t absolutely true but it’s true enough).
So, I actually feel slightly dishonest when I repeat the Latourian/Foucauldian, etc. slogans about science . I preach these lessons and I hold them to be true but don’t I practice a whole different kind of truth, generally? »
Here Philip contrasts his acceptance of science and its prescriptions in the commonsense world with his Latourian pluralism about science in his philosophical moments. But Latour extends his pluralism to the commonsense world and we can no longer be so sure that we conform our acts mainly to scientific norms. For example, he says that when he gets sick he follows medical science. I do too. But perhaps this is already weighting the scales. I do yoga so as not to get sick. When I get sick I go to a homeopath (in France this is covered by social security). I do so not out of any belief in homeopathic remedies: when she prescribes me medicine her prescriptions often contain both allopathic and homeopathic medecine. I don’t even take the homeopathic stuff! I go to her because she takes the time to talk to me and establish a whole context, and she aims for the minimalest intervention necessary to re-establish health. It’s a whole attitude that is more conducive to well-being than the technocratic approach of much scientific medicine. In my case, the theoretical pluralism that I espouse is all around me: in the country I live in (I was born in Australia, I migrated to France for the love of philosophy), in the language I speak and think in most of the time (I taught myself French to read Deleuze and Guattari and Lyotard etc.), in relation to my body and my choice of sports (I chose tai chi and yoga because of my reading of Deleuze and Guattari), in my relation to my psyche (because of my reading of Deleuze and Guattari I undertook a Jungian analysis over 7 years, but go explain that to the Lacano-Deleuzian confusionists!), in my writing (I spend a huge amount of my free time working on my blog), in my whole process of individuation. I am not trying to boast that I « live » my philosophy, but it is is very strongly present in my everyday life and not some detached abstract speculation. These are my specifics, but I would argue with Feyerabend and Latour that we are far less in scientific obediences in our everyday life than Philip seems so think. So Philip I really think your present life now is far less scientistic than you imagine and you should stop feeling guilty. Cognitive dissonance is often a preliminary perception of pluralities straining at their dualistic cognitive containers.
AGENT SWARM 
Ben Brucato commented on facebook: » I don’t understand the hand-wringing over « not practicing a different kind of truth. » But, then again, I’m not a philosopher, someone whose existence seems predicated upon believing oneself an autonomous subject with the capabilities endowed by reason to transcend history, social and cognitive conditioning, and so on ».
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I think Philip’s concern was a Foucauldian one of making saying and doing cohere in some way, so I think that he is well beyond this autonomous philosophical subject transcending history gig, which seems to me a good descrition of Harman, who does not exactly experience it as a quandary. The message of Latour, who often I find very superficial but here I agree with, is that we are practicing different kinds of truths all the time. My own « bearing witness » to my state of philosopher is just meant as one example, along the lines of Foucault’s recommendation to « speak from a singular practice » (to be clear, I’m very critical of Foucault too, but I like this precept if we interpret it as a non-binding rule of thumb, despite the fact that it is too monist to my taste). I have no idea what your singular practice is, but I would be surprisedif it leads to no conflict and to no dissonance, but maybe you are not concerned by this sort of problem. I think many aren’t aware of this dilemma, so I praise Philip for his perception and articulation of it. As he is a self-confessed Latourian i wanted to suggest that Latour not only provokes the dilemma but also gives him the means to resolve it.
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Posted as a comment on Circling Squares blog:
Hello Philip, I try to propose a resolution of your cognitive dissonance based on a couple of fragments from Latour’s new book: ENQUÊTE SUR LES MODES D’EXISTENCE. I think you may be less scientistic than you think in your daily life, which Latour maintains is « infinitely less explored » than the quantum world, but at least as complicated. While, contrary to some of your interlocutors, I think that science and rationalism have been imposed via colonisation and exploitation on other cultures, I also think that their presence in our own culture is not as advertised, but only as Andrew Pickering says « hegemonic ». That is to say, not even a statistical majority but majoritarian in Deleuze’s sense. Science and rationalism count themselves twice, both as part of the practices and as their norm or ideal standard, and it is only in this way, by stacking the numbers, that they can seem to be the majority situation in our society.
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I spent a fair amount of time a week ago making a Halloween costume. It was of a ‘super hero’ I invented, Trash Master. Accordingly, my costume was made of trash I collected in the neighborhood. The costume consisted of a hat, a cape, and a staff–all of which I wore with whatever clothes I chose (except that, in my neighborhood, Halloween was canceled on account of hurricane Sandy). To make this costume I had to solve dozens of little problems involving ordinary physical things.
I made my cape of some 30 or 40 discarded snack bags; you know, those brightly colored plastic bags in which potato chips, cookies, etc. are packaged. Problem: How do I form them into a cape? That has at least two aspects: What pattern, given that they’re different sizes and colors? And how do I get them to hang together? On the second one, I chose to use duct tape. But not plain old silverish duct tape. No, I found red, yellow, and green duct tape. As for the pattern problem, what I did is a bit hard to describe, but let’s just say I was very tolerant of gaps and imperfections. I wasn’t making this cape so I could cut a dashing figure at the opera.
Another problme: Now that the cape ‘body’ is done, how do I attech it? What kind of ties or clasp do I improvise and how do I attach it to the cape itself. These plastic bags aren’t like fabric, where I could sew some ties on, though my sewing skills are rudimentary. Well, I came up with a solution, again, the describing the solution is a bit complex, though the soloution itself is rather simple, so I won’t bother. Suffice it to say that it worked.
But it didn’t work very well; which I didn’t learn until I actually wore the costume and walked around in it. For one thing, it involved tieing knots in string, and I don’t know the proper knot for this application. For, as you may know, and as any sailor will tell you, there are lots of different kinds of knots, and they’re good for different things.
So, I’m going to revist that particular problem and come up with a different solution.
Another example. My neighborhood in Jersey City was hit hard by hurricane Sandy. I’m fine, but some of my neighbors were flooded, and a nearby marina was devastated. Lots of boats lifted out of the water and deposited on land. And boats already stored on land for the winter were thrown about. I spent a fascinating 20 minutes watching a half-dozen men use a crane to lift a boat from the ground and deposit it on a carrier so that it could be moved.
The boat wasn’t a large one. It appeared to be a 25 or 30 foot sloop with a 40 or 50 foot mast. Two men put two slings under the boat and attached them to a crane. A third operated the crane while the rest watched to boat and maneuvered it into place. This required a fine intuitive sense of Newtonian physics. I doubt that any of these men went to college. But there were obviously experienced at the job of lifting and moving large awkward objects with this crane.
So, here we have two tasks, making a Halloween costume, and moving a boat, neither of which is, as they say, « rocket science. » But neither are they simple and obvious. The skills involved in the two tasks are somewhat different, but both required a fair amount of experience in dealing with ordinary physical reality in ordinary ‘terms.’ A deep and thorough knowledge of quantum physics, however, would contribute nothing to solving either problem.
Or tens of thousands of other problems ordinary people solve every day in ordinary physical reality. Which is not at all simple.
Thanks for a provocative and interstin post, Terry.
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Thanks for your comments and your continuing support.
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You’re welcome, Terry. Let me add that artificial intelligence (AI) had its initial successes in modeling scientific knowledge (e.g. chemistry, medicine). What sent AI to the showers was trying to model the common sense world, you know, that one that kid’s are conversant in by 7 or 8 years old.
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The commonsense world is the big one.
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Yes, large, various and richly constructed. Much more so than the subatomic world of quarks or, for that matter, the huge world of galaxies.
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Hi Terence,
Thanks for the comments. I’ve not yet read the Enquête but am looking forward to it. Sadly my French is nowhere near good enough to tackle a complex work of philosophy! I’m waiting for the translation.
I like the idea of extending science into the world. That’s pretty much what educational systems do, after all. At school we’re given enough of a grounding in science that the world qua scientific world becomes basically comfortable and understandable. We become able to imagine tables as blocks of atoms, stars as distant balls of gas and forests as ecosystems and so on. What we’re not told, however, is how scientific concepts come about, how they depend on scientific infrastructures, how they are contested, how they’re overturned — or, indeed, how the basic, common sense metaphors with which we get a grasp of scientific concepts are themselves gross oversimplifications or even outright errors! We’re trained in scientism in terms of ‘seeing’ the world around us in a scientific. So powerful is the training we might be lured into experiencing this as a direct connection — if I imagine the table in front of me as a mostly empty block of atoms it can seem as though I am really seeing it like this, as if there’s a direct connection between myself and the atomic substrate of the sensible object — but actually this impression is only possible due to trajectories that stretch back through my childhood, my schooling, scientific discoveries, textbooks, etc. It doesn’t mean that the table isn’t composed of atoms and empty space — that it’s ‘all in my head’ –, it’s just that this impression has to be ‘escorted back inside its network’ as Latour might put it.
I suppose where the ‘dissonance’ comes in is in that while science is ‘one discourse among others’ it is the *dominant* discourse in a whole variety of ways. Because we’re also trained (those of us in the social sciences/humanities at least) to be ‘critical thinkers’ we’re usually sceptical of ‘dominant discourses’. Rightly so, science is not exempt from this, but the scepticism can get carried away, ending up with polarisation which lose sight of the fact that there is probably *no* Western discourse (and perhaps few non-Western ones) untouched by scientific knowledge. For example, Nietzsche’s philosophy wasn’t ‘scientific’ in any way, shape or form but it was hardly untouched by scientific discoveries. He tears into Darwin as fiercely as anyone but there are deeply Darwinian resonances with his criss-crossing fields of forces, becoming without any telos.
That is to say, it’s impossible to be ‘anti-scientistic’ from a purely non-scientific point of view. So there isn’t science on the one hand and non-science on the other — science is imbued in everything, it’s been insinuated and folded into every part of our existence. This is what gets lost in the scientism/anti-scientism dichotomy. When people criticise science it can often seem as though they are doing so from a position outside of science — this cannot be the case. One has to be deeply imbricated in the networks of scientific knowledge in order to even raise the question. It isn’t a question of ‘to science or not to science?’ — it’s a question of ‘which science and how?’
I think this is the source of my dissonance: anti-scientism presupposes and accepts scientific knowledge. It has to, since such knowledge is enfolded into every aspect of our being (without ever consuming it or standing alone; while always being partial, a minority). The key thing about this is that *there’s no problem with this*! I wouldn’t say I feel ‘guilty’ in my more scientistic moments. That’s just it — I don’t, really. I like science. I think it’s great! I much prefer it to other forms of knowledge in many and perhaps even most situations.
If I’m not scien-tistic I’m at least scien-philic. Perhaps it’s best put this way: scien-philia isn’t incompatible with pluralism, scien-tism is. For scien-tism there is science on the one hand and other forms of knowledge on the other — a duality; for scien-philia science is one form of knowledge among others — a plurality — but it still holds a privileged role in treating ill-health, creating technology, giving us our cosmology, etc. It’s just privilege *within* plurality, which necessarily means that science, while socially omnipresent, is not omniscient or omnipotent, that it has limits, flaws, cons as well as pros — and, importantly, that it could be improved.
Science is the dominant discourse and as such must be treated with critical scepticism but without losing sight of the fact that we’re always criticising it from *within* in some respect or that, for all its flaws, science is actually pretty bloody fantastic at what it does and we need more of it, not less — but science within networks; science as pluralities; science without its habitual imperialism.
I think the dissonance comes when we criticise scien-tism while pretending that we’re not scien-philic or that we’re not always already at least a little bit scientific in our assumptions and experience of the world.
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I’ve put up a post at New Savanna where I quote this one and post a bunch of photos of a boat being lifted with a crane:
http://new-savanna.blogspot.com/2012/11/the-flood-of-phenomena-in-common-sense.html
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