I am slowly working my way through Latour’s We Have Never Been Modern – a very dense work that I will try to lighten up for you.
I have also wondered what the Modern World was, but didn’t get much help in understanding it. The thinkers of the world seem to have avoided the subject. Not Latour, he is perfectly willing to come up with his own theories – even though they are nothing like anyone else’s.
I want to give you a feel for his writing, and section 2.10 The Power of the Modern Critique does this:
The Laws of Nature allowed the first Enlightenment thinkers to demolish the ill-founded pretensions of human prejudice. Applying this new critical tool, they no longer saw anything but hybrids of old but illegitimate mixtures that they had to purify by separating natural mechanisms from human passions, interests, or ignorance. All the ideas of yesteryear, one after the other, became inept or approximate.
The obscurity of the olden days, which illegitimately blended together social needs and natural realilty, meanings and mechanisms, signs and things, gave way to a luminous dawn that clearly separated material causality from human fantasy. The natural sciences at last defined what Nature was, and each new emerging scientific discipline was experienced as a total revolution by means of which it was finally liberated from its prescientific past, from its Old Regime.
Anyone who has felt the beauty of this dawn and thrilled to its promises is modern.
People are no longer thrilled by this – and he goes on to explain why. His reasoning here is not as satisfying as mine. I see a flip into opposite social values – into a destruction of the Modern World, even as technology advanced at a rapid pace. This extremely pessimistic viewpoint is not attractive (to say the least) and I am the only one who has it.
But let us return to the beginning of the Modern World. From page 18:
Boyle and his colleagues abandoned the certainties of apodictic reasoning in favor of a doxa.
This send me to the Merriam-Webster Unabridged for apodictic:
expressing necessary truth : absolutely certain <categories of human action … are apodictic and absolute and do not admit of any gradation — Alfred Sherrard>
This type of reasoning goes back to Aristotle, and was the type of reasoning used in the Middle Ages. Modern science did not use this, it used a doxa.
The dictionary had no definition for doxa, but Wikipedia did:
Doxa (from ancient Greek δόξα from δοκεῖν dokein, “to expect”, “to seem”[1]) is a Greek word meaning common belief or popular opinion, from which are derived the modern terms of orthodoxy[2]and heterodoxy.[3]
You might want to read the rest of this definition, as it goes into its special meanings in the New Testament.
Latour:
Instead of seeking to ground his work in logic, mathematics or rhetoric, Boyle relied on a parajuridical metaphor: creditable, trustworthy, well-to-do witnesses gathered at the scene of the action can attest to the existence of a fact, even if they do not know its true nature.
Note his specification of well-to-do witnesses. Science, as well as politics, was still the domain of men of property – as it still is, for that matter.
Let me bring that up to date, with the latest discoveries of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). This technique – smashing particles together to break them apart and find out what they are made of – has a built-in problem. These subatomic particles come in bundles (such as hadrons) and when they break apart all hell breaks loose. Extremely sophisticated detectors are used in combinations to try to figure out what goes on in very short time periods. And the results are incredible amounts of data that have to be sorted through very quickly.
The first observers are a huge bank of computers that sort through the enormous data stream, looking for something significant. These computers have been programmed by teams of international experts to do just this.
After trillions of collisions a pattern begins to emerge from all the noise of everything else going on. The experts then have to examine these conclusions more carefully, and form a consensus among themselves. Finally, a press conference is called to announce the results to the public – who has paid for this extremely expensive experiment.
They are disappointed to find the scientists expressing themselves so carefully. Much more work will be necessary, they say, before anything useful may emerge.
This process is the same one developed by Robert Boyle in the 17th Century. Except that it takes much longer.
And instead of people being thrilled – they are disgusted.
Cause and Effect
This simple idea was one of the foundations of the Modern world. And one of the most important events in the formation of that World was the Reformation – and the Protestantism that resulted from it.
We cannot now imagine the fervor and violence of the civil and religious wars that followed. And how Science was formed by them. You heard me right – religion, politics, and science were formed from the same mold. From the same world-view. From Wikipedia:
In my mind’s eye I can see my Grandfather repeating ”Cause and Effect!” over and over in Prayer Meeting, back in the Fifties, while he rocked himself up on his toes to make himself taller. He knew how important it was – it was the foundation of his world – although he could not have explained it in the least. His was a world of powerful beliefs – and that was enough for him.
As it turned out, this particular belief had reached its peak, and would decline during my lifetime (long after he was dead) – but of course he did not know that. Few people have recognized this decline since then – and most absolutely refuse to recognize it.
In fact, I am having a hard time formulating the nature of what I am trying to say. How we came to believe in a world of separate chains of events. The key word here is separate. The belief that things could happen in one part of the world without effecting the rest of the world. The model is the billiard-table – where the original mover (a man holding a cue-stick) sets in motion a series of independent events on a perfectly level surface.
In remote parts of Latin America, where people can afford very little. You will find the people (men only, please) playing billiards – and playing it passionately.
The basic idea behind all this was a divide-and-conquer strategy – as Caesar clearly enunciated. And which was the downfall of the Roman Empire. It seemed to be the road to unlimited power – but in reality, it was the path to total collapse. A collapse we are also seeing in our own time – as Colonialism is collapsing.
The reason for this is simple enough. The world is not complicated (composed of many independent separate events) that can be broken apart and analyzed separately. It is complex (where everything effects everything else).
I am tempted to go into Complexity Theory (a very important discovery) but that would be too much of a digression. Take it from me – it is a big deal, and represents a break from the past. Just as the Computer represents a break with the past. But in both cases unacknowledged breaks.
It is possible to find things that can be analyzed and exploited separately (in the manner of a laboratory experiment). And this kind of exploitation is what made the Industrial Revolution such a success. The discovery of oil – and seemingly unlimited power – drove people completely crazy.
But, as we are finding out, there is no free lunch. And everything is linked to everything else.
I have relatives (distant relatives, it is true) who are in the oil business in Texas. All of their oil wells were running dry – until fracking was discovered. Now they are ecstatic - they are rich! A mad scramble is on to frack as much and as fast as possible.
No one – and I mean no one – is saying “What do we do when the oil runs out?” The answer seems to be “Who cares? We will solve that problem when we get to it!”
This assumes that the problem can be solved – and solved easily. When every indication is to the contrary. There are plenty of situations where there is no way out – and we seem to be in one of those.
Psychology
Religion
Science