amondyyl

amondyyl OP t1_irwmtdm wrote

Reply to comment by mdebellis in Bruno Latour Tracks Down Gaia: "Such a world has nothing to do with ecology, but quite simply with a politics of living things". An essay by Latour in which he discusses the work of the Gaia theorist James Lovelock. Bruno Latour (1947-2022) was a French philosopher and sociologist of science. by amondyyl

Thanks for the tip about the Shannon paper by J M Smith. His Theory of Evolution was already in my reading list. I have to say that I am a bit sceptical if most of his ideas are actually falsifiable in a testable way, but maybe you know better. Evolutionary theorist tend sometimes to make big statements that actually can't be proven, especially when discussing social and moral evolution of humans (think about the criticism by Gould etc.).

I think pseudoscience about Latour is a bit harsh, you can also call it philosophy (this is a philosophy sub). In general, I share your sentiment that science itself is much more interesting than sociology of science. I also think that Latour would be first to admit this.

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amondyyl OP t1_irr1x7z wrote

Reply to comment by Fatesurge in Bruno Latour Tracks Down Gaia: "Such a world has nothing to do with ecology, but quite simply with a politics of living things". An essay by Latour in which he discusses the work of the Gaia theorist James Lovelock. Bruno Latour (1947-2022) was a French philosopher and sociologist of science. by amondyyl

I can give you just a short and partial answer (maybe someone else can continue or you can check some of the articles that I linked).

One basic point of Latour is that we should think about social relations, artificial objects and natural things as a part of the same network. He thinks that this insight should have concrete political consequences. Nature should be represented in the political process. I believe he proposes a different way of thinking about relations between humans and their environment, and also new political arrangements in which scientific knowledge of nature and climate change would play a bigger role.

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amondyyl OP t1_irqrij8 wrote

Reply to Bruno Latour Tracks Down Gaia: "Such a world has nothing to do with ecology, but quite simply with a politics of living things". An essay by Latour in which he discusses the work of the Gaia theorist James Lovelock. Bruno Latour (1947-2022) was a French philosopher and sociologist of science. by amondyyl

The essay is from 2018, I saw the link in Graham Harman's blog:

https://doctorzamalek2.wordpress.com/2022/10/10/latour-and-lovelock/

Latour tries to find a way between New Age ecology and scientism towards proper political ecology.

Some tributes:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/09/bruno-latour-french-philosopher-anthropologist-dies

https://twitter.com/AimeTim/status/1579071935295549440

And two discussions/ interviews from 2018:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/25/magazine/bruno-latour-post-truth-philosopher-science.html

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00141844.2018.1457703

And from the Guardian, 2020:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/06/bruno-latour-coronavirus-gaia-hypothesis-climate-crisis

All discuss the "politics of living things", the main theme of his last works. Hi died aged 75, the news came yesterday.

RIP

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