I just finished reading Bruno Latour’s We Have Never Been Modern (1991/translation 1993), and I was struck by how similar his ideas about the interplay of Nature and Society–that they are not the poles, but orbit about the quasi-object and quasi-subject–that collectives and networks are definitive. However, I was more struck by how much his ideas seemed to reflect those of James Burke in his Connections (1978) and The Day the Universe Changed (1985) television series, albeit in much more philosophical terms. Burke’s demonstration that science, technology, culture, and society are all interconnected and construct one another. Or, to beat a dead cliche, nothing (but subatomic particles) are created in a vacuum. I do not know to what extent Burke’s work may have informed Latour’s theories, but I do know that Latour was a constant presence in my Georgia Tech literature and cultural studies classes. I am done for the evening, but I will think more about Latour tomorrow when I write up my notes.
