Do Scientific Objects Have a History? - Bruno Latour

Spring 1996 V) Nl 

COAAfNON KNOWLEDGE 

Cor-uuNs 

Prague Spring, Much Later 

: . , , -.. 

nrpaa uqncz 

I 

Die Marken besagen alles! 

Colin Richmond 

3 

ARrrcres 

The Abuses of Memory 

Tzaetan Todorop 

Translated by Mei Lin Chang 

6 

On Memory and Horror 

A Response to Tzvetan Todorov 

G. M. Tamâs 

27 

Heroes and Guinea Pigs 

Daniel S. Milo 

Translated by Stephen E. Lewis 

33 

The Death Drive Does Not Think 

Robat Snith 

,9 

Do Scientifrc Objects Have a History? 

Pasteur and \Thitehead in a Bath of 

Lactic Acid 

Bruno Lataar 

Translated by Lydia Davis 

-/ 

/o 

Rousseau in the Restaurant 

Rebecca L. Spang 

9) 

Oakeshott, Berlin, and Enlightenment 

John Gral 

109 

SrRrarrv Sylrposruu 

Countertransference and 

the Humanities 

Countertransference and Artistic 

Appreciation 

Joseph Sandler 

r34 

Porrny/FrcrroN 

from Bad History 

Banett lilatten 

r46 

The Long View 

Cbarles O. Hartman 

r49 

In Loveland 

Gilbert Sonentino 

119 

Revlrws 

The Kariakin Phenomenon 

Caryl Emerson 

t6r 

Little Reviews 

Rath Morse 

Daaid Bromwich 

Colin Richnond 

Anne Higonnet 

Robert C. Euans 

AndrEu Delbanco 

Howard Hampton 

Jobn Bayley 

Larissa Taylor 

Susan Reynolds 

Jake Milgran tYien 

AnnJessie Van Sant

Do ScrnNTrFrc Oslncrs Havn a Hrsronv? 

PASTEUR AND \qHITEHEAD IN A BATH OF 

LÂCTIC ACID 

Bruno Lafour 

Translated by Lydia Davis 

But in the rcal world it is more important that a propotition be interesting than it be true. 

The importance ol truth is, that it adds t0 interest. 

It must be remembered that tbe phrase actual world is /ike yesterday and totnorrma, in tbat it 

alters its neaning according t0 standpzint. 

-Alfred N. Whitehead, Prccess and Reality 

f n ^ ....n, issue o[ Comnon Knowledge,'I followed in some detail the progressive 

I 

I transformation of a tiny piece of Amazonian forest into scienti6c knowledge. To 

do so, I multiplied mediations, replacing the huge vertical gap between words and 

world with a horizontal set oftiny translations from one representational medium to 

anorher. In that article, the main activity was from the human side, from the scientists 

and their instruments, from maps and diagrams and collections. No matrer how many 

intermediary steps I unfolded, those steps were still portrayed by me as a way to gain 

access to the forest "out there." More exactly, even though the forest "out there" was 

reformatted in my paper as a thing circulating "inside" the network of science, this 

circulating thing could not be imagined otherwise rhan passiue. The Boa Vista forest, 

in itself, was doing nothing. 

It is this passivity that I want to try to overcome in this essay. At the risk of taxing 

the patience of the readers of Common Knowledge, I will consider another piece of hard 

science-borrowed this time, in honor of the cenrenary of his death, from the story of 

Pasteur and the history of fermentation. \What has made so many modern philosophers 

and theorists shun realism is rhe impoverished role assigned by realist philosophers to 

objects ofscientifrc discovery which apparently had no other function, no other onto- 

logical life, than to wait silently in the dark before shutting the mouths of the human 

agents discussing them. This silent and silencing function was what irritated, and 

'"The 'Pédolil' of Boa Vista: A Photo-Philosophical Montage," Common Knruhdge 4 (SPring 1995): 

144-t1 / .

DO SCIENTIFIC OBJECTS HAVE A HISTORYI 71 

with good reason, those who could not believe in unmediated access to rruth. In rheir 

eyes, science is interesting not because it offers unmediated access ro tl-re world, but 

rather another form of mediation, of transcendence, of truth warmly clothed. 

The question I wanc to ask is whether it is possible to develop a sort o[realism rhat 

would offer the agents of the world a more inceresting role than that of passive objecr. 

Strangely, not many philosophers are interested in this metaphysical quesrion. No 

matter whether they worship or hate science, most rhinkers take for granted that scien- 

tilic objects, accessible or not, behave as realisrs believe them to [shavs-1h21 i5, In a 

passive and indifferent manner, wholly impervious to human history. The only alrerna- 

tives that most philosophers can imagine are animism and arnthropomorphism, horrors 

to which they always prefer the canonical version of objects seen sub specie scientiae. 

A. N. Whitehead is one of the interestingl exceptions, and it is his "historical realism," 

though largely out of fashion, that I want to use as my guide or goad for this explora- 

cion. But since I am only half a philosopher, I need an empirical site in order not ro 

lose myself in questions that quickly become too deep for me: my project, then, will 

be to imagine how \Whitehead would have accounred for Pasteur's understanding o[ 

the discovery of lactic-acid fermentation in 1858. 

Sollr REcpNT CoNTRovERsTES rN ScTENCE Sruorrs 

The sintple nltilil 0f an endaring sultstance sastaining persistent qtalities. either essen- 

tia/ly or accidenta/ly, expresses a asefa/ abstract for many pn'poses af /{e. Bnt ubetteuer 

u,e try t0 urc it at a fundamental statentent af tl.te nature of things, it prorcs itself mistaken. 

It arose fron a nistake and has nn,er sucreeded in any af its applications.2 

This critique of substantialism. so important for Whitehead, could be shared by nu- 

merous historians and sociologists of science, but ior very different reasons. In an ac- 

count ofa discovery, one should nat, ^ccording to students ofscience, refer ro a sub- 

stance external to the human work involved in order to explain its genesis.r Of course, 

like Kant, most contemporary historians, in order to avoid the extremes of idealism, 

do not deny the existence ofsuch a subsrance, but rhey wish to emphasize the concrete 

attributes only of the mind that knows or, in more recent hisroriography, only o[ che 

practice of the scientific group rhat man.iiulares and demonsrraces che subscance 

within the closed and local precinct ol the laboratory.l According; ro them, in order to 

fo 

'Alfred N. Whitehead, Procer anl Rea/it1:.\u Essal tnCosrtulogl lNew York: Free Press, lIc)29) l9l8), 

rThe canonical description of this principle qan be t-ound in Harry M. Collins.ChangingOrdu: Repl)catiat 

and Induction in Scientif;c Practice (London: Sage, l!85). 

'The 

most developed examples can be firund in Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer, LtLiatban and the Air, 

PmQ: Hobbes, Bayte and tbe Experinental Ly'i (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), and, more re- 

cenrly, Christian Licoppe, Zz Forrtttnn J, /,t ptttiqrc rLrtrrQqre (Paris: La Découverre, 1 996).

18 COMMON KNO\flLEDGE 

criticise substantialism, one must quite simply abstain from giaing a role to nonhamans in 

the story ofa discovery and instead consrrucr the account exclusively with reference to 

rhe praccices, the places, rhe insrrumenrs, rhe auchorities, rhe insr.irurions, and rhe 

historical events furnished by the conrext. Such historians hope that a multitude of 

small determinations when added to one anorher will count for as much as rhe always- 

already-there substance of the old-fashioned accounts o[ discoveries. However, as Isa- 

belle Stengers has clearly shown in a recenr book,5 there is something unlikely for rhe 

practicing scientist in this approach, something unrealistic, nor only in the philosophi- 

cal sense of the word but also in the common meaning of improbable. Someching 

essential seems missing from the account. Is it precisely essence that is lacking? No, 

and it is $/hitehead's interest to imagine a realism without substance, a raàical hisrori- 

cai realism ("The Castle Rock of Edinburgh exists from momenr co momenc, and from 

century to century, by reason ofthe decision effected by its own historic route ofante- 

cedent occasions.")6 

It has seemed necessary to some of us to devise what we call in our jargon "prin- 

ciples of symmetry" in order to do justice-without falling back on essenrialism-ro 

the feeling scientists and common sense share that somerhing is missing from accounrs 

of science that consider only the human side. The first principie of symmetry de- 

manded that historians judge accounrs of discovery fairly by rrearing on terms of 

equality scientists who have been wrong and those who have been right.' This prin- 

ciple, which is opposed ro rhe French episremological tradition rhat demands one dis- 

tinguish "out-of date science" from "sanctioned science,"8 permitred nice effects of 

historical drama. The victories of Boyle over Hobbes, of Newton over Descarres, or of 

Pasteur over Pouchet, no longer differed from rhe provisional victories of Napoleon 

over Tsar Alexander, or ofClinton over Bush. The history ofscience ceased to be distin- 

guished from history plain and simple. 

The price paid for this reuni6cation was very high. The principle of iimired symme- 

try does not equalize the possibilities of the victors (rationaliry) and the vanquished 

(irrationality) except in that the principle forbids borh protagonists access ro rhe very 

phenomena that they both consider their only reason for being. There is something 

heroic in this: nature, the symmetrical historians all say with a yogi's ascericism, does 

noc intervene in the interpreracions we make with respect to it. 

tlsabelle 

Stengers, L'lu'ention dzs scieues modunes (Paris: La Découverte, 1993). 

6\Thitehead. 41. 

'See 

David Bloor, Krcu'ledge and Soiial lnagery lChicago: Universiry ofChicago Press, [1976] l99l). For 

a more recent justi6cation, see rhe preface to rhe second edition 

sSee 

Georges Can guilhem,ldeolag'and Rationalitl, in tbe History of tbe Life Sciene:, trans. Arthur Goldhammer 

(Cambridge: MIT Press, I19681 1988), tbr an exrreme example. See also, more recenrly, G. Canghuilhem, 

A Vital Rationalist: Selected Vrittngs. rraos. A. Goldhammer, ed. François Delaporre (New York: Zone 

Books,1994).

DO SCIENTIFIC OBJECTS HAVE A HISTORY? 19 

one can understand the motives of historians who are pâfrisans of symmetry-they 

are reacting againsr the abuses ofsubstantialists who are content to exPlain that vlctors 

in the history of science won because they were more rational or had better access to 

rhe nature of things. By insisting, for the first time, on the difficulties of the experi- 

menr, on the uncerrainties of the instruments, on the irremediable localization of the 

merhods, on rhe ambiguity of interpretations, on the importance of a community of 

more or less credible colleagues, the constructivist historians find it easy to ridicule 

those who believe they benefit from immediate access to the real and who take social 

of cognitive habits that date only from yesterday to be the permanent essence ofthings. 

It is imporrant, however, to avoid pressing ascericism ro rhe poinr ofanorexia, and 

this is where another, more general, principle of symmetry becomes necessary.e No 

longer is it a matter of equalizing the possibilities for success of the victors and the 

vanquished by evenhandedly forbidding both groups access to the real but rather of 

equalizing by allowing all groups to construct simultaneously and symmetrically both 

their natural reality and their social reality. Like yogis who have been without food too 

long and forced to sleep too many nights on beds of nails, one Ênally allows victors 

and vanquished alike to gorge themselves on reality and sleeP in featherbeds. This 

shift enables recovery from Kantianism since one no longer has to choose, in order to 

explain a discovery, between privileged access to the real and determination through 

thousands ofsmall social or practical causes. One sees in effect that the real as a reserve 

or anchor against idealism had meaning only by contrast with the knowing mind (or 

the laboratory, or the paradigm). For every Copernican revolution, there is a countef- 

revolution and a half. Discoverers establish at once what they afe, the world in which 

rhey are situated, and the numerous social, practical, and historical causaiities comPat- 

ible with rhe type of phenomena with which they are populating the collective. The 

differences among ontological, epistemological, and sociologicai questions become in- 

distinct. The question becomes: In which socionatural world do we agfee to live? The 

principle of generalized symmerfy does not abolish the principle of limited symmerfy, 

bur extends it to questions about nature and about society, and thus allows a new 

object to appear-the co/lectiae of humans and nonhumans.r0 

This solution, however, does not have the meraphysics of its ambirions. while no 

longer anthropomorphic, it remains as fragile as the meaning given to the wotd collec- 

tiae. If one means by that word the demiurgic activity of researchers in engendering 

not only nacure but also society and the history in which they are situated, one comes 

dangerously close to the tales of the absolute idealists that believed they couid go 

,,beyond Kanr." \Thereas if ir is semioric proliferation thar endows humans, nonhu- 

eSee Bruno Latour.rYe Hat,e Neter Beer Ilodern, trans. Catherine Porter (Cambridge: Harvard University 

Press, 1991), for a presentation of this principlc and its consequences for anthropology. 

'oSee B. Larour. "On Technical N{ediation,' Courron Knouledge 1 $aII 1994):29-61.

80 COMMON KNOITLEDGE 

mans (i.e., objects in circulation), enunciative positions, and the contexts inscribed in 

texts with certain properties, then we are awash in discourse, in a sea of positions 

without subjects, and we drift farther from the realism that we were aiming for. The 

"superman" of the 6rst (the demiurgic) account is abruptly followed by the "death of 

man" in the second. In a third account the activity of researchers is a matter of allowing 

nonhumans to proliferate in society as subjects, in which case we run the risk o[ natu- 

raliztng the whole of history without any longer being able to endow obiects with 

their uncertainty, their transcendence, their "tremolo." This third account relies on a 

will to power to anchor discourse and action in biology or in physics. 

In order to be sure of escaping these three perils-being trapped in society. in 

language, 61 In n4gu1g-we must leave behind for a momenc the ambiguity of the 

word co//ectitte and abandon the notions of actors, actions, subjects, objects, humans, 

and nonhumans that have provisionally served to enabie our escape from Kantianism. 

Thus we must dare, Iike rùThitehead, 

to have commerce with metaphysics despite the 

embargo declared against it by analytic philosophy as well as by constructivism. 

How PasrruR STAGES HIS o\rN DtscoveRv or 

THE LACTIC ACTO FENUEN-r 

In 18)8, sometime after having discovered the fermentation of brewer's yeast, Pasceur 

relates, in a celebrated report to the Académie des sciences, the discovery of a yeast 

peculiar to lactic acid.lt Today, Iactic fermentation is no longer an obiect ofdiscussion, 

and one can order by mail any quantities of yeast for dairies, creameries, and cheese 

manufacturers the world over. But one has only to "place oneself in the conditions of 

the period" to measure the originality of Pasteur's report, and chus the reward he can 

claim for his pains. In the middle ofthe nineteenth century, in scientiÊc circles influ- 

enced by Liebig's chemistry, the claim that a speciÊc microorganism could explain 

fermentation amounted ro a srep backward, since it was through ridding itself of ob- 

scure vitalist explanations that chemistry had only just won its laurels.r2 Fermentatton 

could and had been explained, without the intervention of any living thing what- 

soever, in a purely chemical way by the degradation of inert substances. In any case, 

specialists in lactic fermentation had never seen microorganisms inseparably associated 

with the rransformation of susar: 

ttThe English rext is "Pasteur's Study of Fermenrarion" in HaruatdCaseHistuies it Exprimental Science. 

vol. 2, ed. James B. Conant (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1957), 453-60. A fuller semiotic analysis 

of Pæteur's repon can be found in my "Pasteur on Lactic Acid Yeast: A Partial Semiotic Analysis," 

Confgurations 1 (January 199)): \27-42. For a general presentation ofPasteur's career, the besr source rs 

now Gerald Geison,Tbe Priuate Science of Louis Pasteur (Prrnceron: Princeton University Press, 1991). In this 

article, I am concentrating on the text in order to extract from it its various ontologies, and not concerning 

myself with other material (æ I did fbr the Boa Vista tbrest; Conman Knou'ledge 4:1,1{4-87) that would 

connect me more securely to Pasreur's Iaboratory and method. 

"For a descriprion of the chemists and their professional ideologies at the time, see Bernadette 

Bensaude-Vincent and L Stengers, Hi:toire de la chiilie (Paris: La Découverte, 1 991).

DO SCIENTIFIC OBJECTS HAVE A HISTORY2 81 

lJntil nou minate ruearcbes baue beenunable to discover the dnelopment of organized 

life. Obsen,ers u,ho hate idcntifud some organisms haue at tbe sane time fotmd that rhry 

u,ere acciàental and detrimental to ilse process. 

Tbe faas Tl:en seem very favorable to the ideas of Liebig or to tbote of Berzelias. In the 

eya of the former d ferment is an anstable substance that decomposes and therebl excites 

fennentation in consequence of its a/teration u'bich commmicdrer d disinte&rating distar- 

l)ance t0 the nolecular grotp of the fernentable matter According to Liebig, silch is the 

primary cause of all fernentations and the origin of nost contagious diseases. Bazelias 

be/ia,es that the cbenical act offermentation is to be referted to the action ofcontact. These 

lpinilns gain more credit daily. . . . These worhs all agree in rejecting the idea of 

some sorr of influence frcm organization and life as a caase 0f the phenlnena that 

ue are considerizg. (Emphasis added.) 

And Pasteur quietly adds: "I have been led to an enrirely different point ofview"!1r 

The discoverer will appear all the more involved in the process because he will have 

everyone againsr him, the unanimous opinion of the chemists as well as rhe scrupulous 

research ofthe specialists. The discoverer does not lift rhe veil behind which the yeast 

in lacric fermenration has always been hiding. Like the srory of General de Gaulle 

rising from obscurity to triumph, the discoverer's srory can be rold as a tale of victory. 

But Pasteur's acr was not rhe imposition o[a framework or vision on powerless mat- 

ter-though he later posed the problem to himself in these terms (as we shall see). He 

states, in fact, rhat he has been led to a poinr of view. His activity consists in allowing 

himself to be carried along by the "propensity of things," to adopr François Jullien's 

beautiful expression.Ia Even when Pasteur acts to cause the yeast to emerge, in opposi- 

tion to the convictions of the rest of the world, he srill allows himself to be led by 

things-thus mingling once again the fate of a subject and an object. 

For politicai and military history resources exist that allow one to weigh the respec- 

tive roles of longae durée, opportrtnrry, circumstances, chance, individual genius, and 

Ênally the arrribution of responsibility to a few individual geniuses. However, when it 

is a matter ofaccounting for beings who have been invented or discovered, the histo- 

rian of science becomes more rimid, more hesiranr than his colleagues. The hisrorian 

of science accosrs one monscer more than che hiscorian plain and simple: however greac 

may be the heterogony of factors that history summons, it is never as grear as in the 

history ofscience, where one must inregrare rhe short life ofPasreur, the longer span 

of the Second Empire or of chem.istry, the even longer existence of alcoholic or lactic 

fermentations (which go back ro Neolithic times), and rhe existence, infrnitely longer, 

'J. B. Conant, 455. 

'aSurprising resonances exist between \Thitehead, op. cit., and. this admirable book on Chinese philoso- 

phy: François Jullien, Tbe Propensity oJ'Tbings: Tou'ard a H istory of Effvary in China (New York: Zone Books, 

r99t).

82 COMMON KNO'i/LEDGE 

absolutely longer, of lactic acid yeast, always already presenr. Once discnered by Pasteur 

in 1857,lactic acid yeast has always already been there, from Neolirhic times in the 

gourds of homo sapiens to the presenr in che whey rhat is souring in all rhe dairies on 

earth. How should one go about historicizing the creation of a being that seems to 

overflow its historical framework immediately, to go back through rhe whole of time 

and spread through the whole of spaceT Historians are used to dealing wichche /angae 

durée, l:ut how to deal with timelessness? 

The only solution consists in bestowing historicity on all elements that enrer inro 

an account. Young Louis Pasteur of Lille counrs as an episode in the destiny, in the 

essence, in the trajectory of lactic yeast: The absurdity ofa premise like this, the scan- 

dal it may provoke, is broughr home if, instead of to yeast, srill close to rhe agirated 

history of living things, rhe premise is applied co gravitation or cosmoiogy. Newton 

happened ro universal gravitarion? The European Cenrer for Nuclear Research hap- 

pened to the Big Bang? 

If, once again seeking refuge in rhe cozy Kantian framework, one were to speak 

only of represewarion, there would be no difficulry here. Pasteur would be said to trans- 

form the ideas that chemists and dairymen have formed "about" lactic fermenrarion, 

much as Newton modified our ideas about the action of disrant celestial bodies. One 

would return more easily ro history if one remained exclusively among humans wirh 

their representations, their visions ofthe world, their more or less passionate interests. 

The history ofscience, social or intellectual, could be deployed, like most ofanthropoi- 

ogy, with a boldness all the greater because it would be limited ro representarrons 

alone, leaving the phenomena rhemselves out of reach. But, given generalized symme- 

try we want to reach rhe phenomena, ro emerge from the childhood home of ideaiism 

and rediscover, with realism, the risks of ontology wirhout losing the uncertainties of 

history or the localizarion of methods.tt \7e musr rherefore explore this path, however 

bizarre it may appear, and speak of Pasreur as an euent that occars to lactic acid. 

Snvrnal ONror-ocrss \?rrH VaRtngLr Gsol{stRrrs 

What seemed absurd in a metaphysics of essence and attributes can become child's 

play for "an ontology of evenrs and relacions."t6 In \Whitehead's vocabulary, Pasteur's 

laboratory appears to us an occasion offered to trdjectlries ofentities that inberit preceàing 

"S7hat is involved, in fàct, is atrributing to rhe following passage in Kuhn an ontology, where, in his 

understanding o[ it, it hæ a psychosocial meaning: "[T]hough rhe world does not change with a change of 

paradigm," he writes, "tbe scientist aftmtard umhs in a diffrent uorld, Nevertheless, I am convinced that we 

must Iearn to make sense of statements that at least resemble these. \ùfhat occurs during a scientifrc revolution 

is not fully reducible to a reinrerpretation of individual and srable dara." Thomas S. Kuhn, Tbe Strrctare 

ofScient$cRaolations(Chiczgo: UniversityofChicagoPress, t1962]1970),121. 

L6I am borrowing these terms from the excellent article byJohn B. Cobb, "Alfred North !7hitehead," 

in Famdtrs of Con$ructiue Plrtîtzdern Philuopby, ed. David Ray Grif6n (Albany: State University of New York 

Press,1993).

DO SCIENTIFIC OBJECTS HAVE Â HISTORY2 83 

circumstances by deciding to persevere in a new w^y of being. Certain entiries will 

travel through the laboratory as stabilized practices. This is the case oflactic acid itself: 

LacticacidwasdiscoueredbyScbeelein 1780 insotredu,bey. Hriprocedure forremouing 

it from the u'bey is still today tbe best one can follou. 

In a footnote, Pasteur adds: 

First he reduced the whey to an eigbth of its uolume by euaporation. He frkered it and 

sarurared it uith line t0 precipirare tbe phoQhate of line. The liqaid was then filtered 

and àiluted u,ith three times its weight of uater; into tbit be potred oxalic acid drop by 

drop to precipitare all the lime. He evaporated the Iiquid to the consistency ofhoney. . . . 

(Emphasis added.) 

Even here, the acid is not presented as a substance durable in time and defined by 

its attributes but rather by a collection ofverbs referring to laboratory gestures. Acid 

is ultimately aprocedure, a recipe, and is coextensive with a course of acrion. The fact 

that the list of operations is long hardly matters, since each of rhem is parr of rhe 

routine of a well-equipped chemistry laboratory. The interlocking of che subprograms 

does not make the essence fragile because skillful chemists have no trouble understand- 

ing the gestures for frltering, evaporating, precipitating, and because they take their 

arrangement as monoiithrc. 

The same is not crue for the yeast thar the entire scientific communiry found so 

dubious in 1817: 

If one examines carefully an ordinary lactic fumentation, there are cases wltere one can 

Ênd on top of the dcposit of the cbalk and nitrogenoas nataial spo:s 0f d gray substance 

uhich sometines form a layer on the sarface of the deposit. At othu tines, this sabttance is 

fomd 

adhering t0 the t/p\er sides of the uesre/, uhere it has been canied fu effewescence. 

Undu the microscope, wben one is notforeuarned, it is hardly possible to distinguish it 

from casein, disaggregated ghten, etc,; in sltort, nothing indicates tbat it is d sepa.rdte 

material or that it originated during thefumentation, lts apparent weight aluays rentains 

very little dr clmpared to that of the nitrogenoas nnterial originally necessary for the 

carrying out of the pracess. F inally, very often it r so mixed witb tbe mass of cdrein and 

chalhtbattbaewou/dbenorearznt0suspect itsexiitence. ltisnnerthelessthissubstance 

that plays the principal role. (Emphasis added.) 

The very existence ofthe yeast is in question, as rhar oflactic acid is not. There are 

no routinized gestures that would allow one to assure the regular presence of yeast. 

The entity is defrned only by a "degree zero" ofexistence, appearing as "spots o( a gray 

substance which sometimes form a layer on the surface of the deposit." One could 

scarcely exist less! The contrast appears all the stronger in the act of defiance with 

which the quotation above concludes. In opposition to Liebig and Berzelius, as we 

have seen, Pasteur was "led to an entirely different point of view." This thought process

84 COMMON KNOVLEDGE 

depends on a conversion by which a creature of whom one does not have "reason to 

suspect its existence" "nevertheless 

plays the principal role"! 

In order to follow how the yeast-criticized by everyone, invisible, a poor spot at 

the bottom of a glass vessel-will soon become the "only thing responsible" for lactic 

fermentation, the expressions "subject" and "object" must become, as one may imag- 

ine, of litcle use. Pasteur plays his large part in this affair, as do the yeast, Liebig, and 

the dairymen. \7e do not observe a man endowed with faculties discovering a creature 

defined by attributes. \7e see a body with multiple and partial members seeking to 

bring about in its laboratory, through a series oftrials, a regular succession ofactions: 

I am going to shou, f.rst of all, hc,u, to isalate it and prepare it in a pare state. 

I extract the solable part fron breu'er\ yeast, bl trea.ting the yeast for some time wirb 

fifteen to tu)entJ timer its weight 0f uater at the temperatare of boiling uater. The /iquid, 

a clmplex szlution of albuminous and mineral material. is carefully filtered. Altout ffty 

to one handred granx ofsugar are then dissolaed in each liter, some chalk is added, and a 

trace of the gray materia/ I haue just mentilned extracted frlm a good, ordinary lactic 

fermentation ri sprinkled in; then one raises the temperatare to 30 or 35 degræs Centi- 

grade. It is also good to introduce a carrent of carbonic acid )n order to expel the air 

fron the flask, which is Jitted u,ith a bent exit tube immersed ander u,ater. On the aery next 

day a liaely and regularfermentatizn is manifest. (Emphasis added.) 

In the laboratory, the body ofPasteur, careful and skilled, serves as the occasion, the 

circumstance, the concrescence of the enduring establishment of lactic fermentatron. 

Through gestures (filtering, dissolving, adding), ingredients (brewer's yeast, solution, 

chalk), hxtures (faucets, receptacles, ovens, tubes), instruments for measuring (ther- 

mometers, scales, thermostars), and little tricks of the profession, fermentation be- 

comes visible and stable. At this stage of variation, the essenc€ of fermentation rs coex- 

tensive with the deployment of practical and locai circumstances. 

Granting historicity to the yeast, in this instance, goes much further than a simple 

return to the contingencies of the period in question. It is no longer a matter simply 

of going back to Pasteur, trembling in his laborarory with fear that he might lose his 

fermentation and that his yeast might not be a "correlative to life." The lactic fermenta- 

tion is also trembling. This controlled manifestation, "lively and regular," has never 

happened before, since the world began, to yeast, anywhere. The small iaboratory of 

the dean of the faculty of science at Lilie also constitutes a decisive juncture in the 

trajectory of this fermentation since here it becomes visible and pure. It is no longer 

only Pasteur who alters his "representation" of the fermentation, but the fermenrarion 

itself(in its being, in its history, in its ascents and descents) that modifies irs manifesta- 

tions. 

If Pasteur hesitates, the fermencation is also hesitating. Ambivalence, ambiguity, 

uncertainty, and plasticity bother humans groping their way toward phenomena that

DO SCIENTIFIC OBJECTS HAVE A HISTORY/ 8' 

are in themselves secure.li But ambivalence (etc.) also accompanies creacures to which 

the laboratory offers the possibility ofexistence, a historic opportunity. Fermenrarion 

has experienced other lives before now (1817) and eisewhere, but its new concrescence 

is a unique, dated, localized life made up in part sf p256sru-himself transformed by 

his second great discovery-and in part of the laboratory. By speaking of events de- 

fined in terms of their relations, I am sketching here the history of Pasteur and his 

yeast, ofthe yeast and l/s Pasteur. 

FRolr rsn EveNr ro rHE SussraNcs 

By describing in this way the shared history ofa researcher, a discipline, a laboratory, 

a lixture, a yeast, and a theory, one does not for all that lose the substance and its 

attribuces, but the meaning of the word substance changes profoundly and becomes the 

gradual attribution ofstable properties attached by an instirution to a name lastingly 

linked to a practice, the whole circulating in a relatively standardized network. This 

transition from the event to the newly defrned substance poses a formidable problem 

of description and interpretation from which Pasteur extricates himself through two 

apparent contradictions. 

At the beginning of his report, the author does not yet know which properties to 

attribute to which essences. By the end, the yeast possesses the same solidity as rhar of 

brewer's yeastr recently discovered. The substance endowed with attributes offers a 

parricular case of the event deÊned by its relations, a manner of summarizing, of rou- 

tinizing, of stabilizing, of institutionalizing events. It is as though one began with 

attributes before coming to an essence. Let us take this transition, rarely studied, be- 

cween two completely different ontological states summed up in two paragraphs of 

Pasteur's report: 

Ler us consider nlu ahat are the characteristics of this stbstance, rhe prldactizn 0f 

u,bich goes band in band u,ith tbose phenomena that, taken T0getber, we call lacticfernren- 

tation. Yiewed as a mass lr looks exactl like ordinary pressed ttr drained yeast. lt is 

sligbtly uiscous, and gray in color Under the microscope, it appears to be formeà af 

litt/e globul,es oruery sbort segmentedfi/aments, isolated or in clusters, u,hichform irregu- 

lar faku 

resembling those of certain antorpboas precipitates. lt can be co\Iected and 

transported for great distances withoat losing lrs actiuity, u,hich is weakened only 

tahen the material ls dried or u,hen lr ls boiled in u,ater. Very lictle of tbis yast is 

nece:sdry /a transform a nnsiderable weight of sagar. . . . 

t-It 

is the mistake ofsocial constructivists to accord inwpretiufexibilil_y only ro researchers acrively 

engaged with the data. To introduce nonhumans would always amount, according to him, to silencing 

controversies. Inversely, Hacking has no difliculty giving a constructivist reading of social facts since it is 

understood, once and for all, that they can correspond to norhing but arbitrary, self-realizing prophecies. 

Ian Hacking, "Vorld-Making by Kind-Making: Child Abuse for Example," in Hau. ClassiJiation tYorks: 

Nelson Goodntan Amang the Sodal Sùencr, ed. Nelson Goodman, Mary Douglæ, and David L. Hull (Edin- 

burgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1992), 180-231.

86 COMMON KNOWLEDGE 

,'Hae ue fnd 

all the general characteristics of breuer's \east, and these substances 

probablT hate organic sftuctales that, in a nataral classiÊcation, place then in neigh- 

boring species or in tut connected hmilies " (Emphasis added') 

In rhe frrst patagraph, rhe essence is defrned only by various trials to which one 

submits the anonymous "special substance," recording resPonses that have fecently 

become stable thanks ro rhe care and skill ofthe scienrist and to the laboratory's genius 

loci. Each trial brings a new surprise: "x" can be transported without weakening! so 

litrle "x" is needed to transform so much sugar! Still, attributes float without being 

able to attach themselves ro a substratum. one senses in the text Pasteur's hesitarions, 

scruples, shilly-shallying before a viscous, Sray matter that resists dryness and boiling' 

The trial defines it in all its freshness, as though, to use the vocabulary of semiotics, 

one could induce competences only on the bâsis of troublingperformances. 

But in the nexr paragfaph, the coalescence has taken place. The "special substance" 

no longer merely fesembles brewer's yeast, it is no longer merely composed of globules, 

ofirregular flakes. The yeasr, now named, becomes a substance and occupies a clearly 

locatable position in a classification by family and by species. The attributes that 

floated randomly become rhe marks of an enduring essence-not simply of a stabilized 

routine like the iactic acid with which we began' 

How can we explain the transition from a long series of hesitant trials to a being 

summed up in a name? The answer of those historians o[science who are inspired by 

the firsc principle of symmetry leaves no doubt..\Tithout PresuPPosrn8 an organtsm' 

Pasteur never could have reduced up the long list of trials into a single yeasc' Ac- 

cording to hisrorians of science since Duhem, one has in fact always needed a theory a 

prejudice, a PresuPposition' a concepcual framework, a paradigm' in order to organize 

data that one can never encounter face to face: the inevitable return to Kant and his 

sociologisr followers. curiously, Pasteur asks himself the same question and seems to 

espouse the constructivist thesis before contradicting himselfa second time: 

All throagh this menoir, I haue teæoted on the basis of the hypothuis that the rygu yedrt 

is organized, that it is a liuing organism, and That its chemical action on sagar corresponds 

to itt deuelopment and organization. If someone weft t0 tell ne that in these conclasions I 

am going beyond that which the facts prot,e, I uould answa that this is quite ffae' in the 

sense that the scand I am taking is in a framework of ideas that in rigorots terms 

cannot be in{utab\ demonstrated. Hae is the way I see it; u'bern'er a chemist makes 

a stady of these nysterioas pbenomena and has tl:e goodfortune to bring aboat an intp|rtant 

deuelopment, he uill instinctively be inclined t0 asriSn its primary cal'/re t0 a t\pe of 

reaction consistent sttth the genaal resalts of his oun reseatclt. It is the logical course of 

tbe human ntind in all controtasial questions' (Emphasis added ) 

In rhe purest (French) rarionalisr tradition, Pasteur insrsts on the necessity of a 

theory in order to make facts speak and, in the same breath, brings rnto play practical

DO SCIENTIFIC OBTECTS HAVE A HISTORYT 87 

training in chemistry, instinctive inclinations, the "logical course" of the human mind, 

and personal perspective. He knows that one must follow reason to find the facts. But, 

in spite of the superÊcial resemblance to social constructivists, there is nothing in 

Pasteur's rhetoric to enchant them because, without fear of contradicting himself, 

Pasteur goes on to the most traditional realism, and tranquilly afÊrms: 

And it is ny opinion, at this point in tlse deuelopnent of my knowledge of the sabject, tbat 

whoever jadges impartially the resalx of this u,ork and that which I shall shortly pab- 

lish wrI\ recognize with me that fermentatizn appears to lte correlatiue to life and to 

the organization of globulu, and noT to their death or putrefaction. Any contention that 

fetmentation is a phenomenon due to contact in which the transformation of vgar takes 

place in the presence of tbe ferment without giuing up arything to it or taking dryTbing 

from it, is contradicted by experiment as will be soon seen. (Emphasis added.) 

Give me impartial colleagues, he says, and they will recognize what the experiment 

incontestably affirms-the same experiment that had required after-the-fact presup- 

positions without which the presence of microorganisms couid not be demonstrared. 

Pasteur ignores this flagrant contradiction and moves from a realist to a construcrionisc 

epistemology in much the way that the yeast smoothly moves from event to substance. 

Before reading Whitehead, I could not extricate myself from this dilemma. It 

seemed that we always had to choose between two evils: S7hitehead opens a new possi- 

biliry and allows us to understand why the contradiction is only apparent. Lactic-acid 

yeast changes its history upon contact wich Pasteur and his laboratory. It is quite real, 

but its historical reality puts it on an equal footing with the researcher and the labora- 

tory in which it is involved. Lactic acid has also changed. The yeast has taken the little 

push that Pasteur has given it as a historic opportunity to manifest itself by altering 

its entire trajectory. The yeast proposes, Pasteur disposes. Pasteur proposes, the yeast 

disposes. Pasteur has not imposed his views on an infinitely plastic form, nor tenta- 

tively discovered the resistance of an infrnitely robust form; he has given a phenome- 

non its chance. This is why, writing his report, he sees no contradiction between his 

realist and constructivist rhetoric, though everything discinguishes them in the eyes 

of an epistemologist or a social historian. An ontology, even more counterintuitive 

than that of the sociai historv of science. allows us to foilow the common sense of 

a scientist: 

The experinenter, a man of conquest ûuer natilre, finds bimself cease/ess/y at grips uitb 

facts that are nlt let manifested and exist, for the most part, only potentially in 

natural Iaw. The unknown in the bossible and not in wbat has been-this is his donain, 

(Emphasis 

added.)'8 

r3louis 

Pasteur, Oeares complètes,7 vols. (Paris: Mæson, 1939), 7:)34.-Trans. L. Dauit

88 COMMON KNOlYLEDGE 

Tbsrso sy lùfHrrrFreRo 

Vhy does positing the historicity of all things, even though this solution may in che 

end be reconciled with common sense, appear at lirsc sight so unlikely, so senseless2 

Because ofour ideas about nature, about transcendence, and about causality, ideas that 

l7hitehead allows, profoundly, to dismiss. 

Suppose we were to calculate the ingred.ients rhat enter into rhe composition of 

Iactic yeast of I8)7 in order to understand the coproducrion of this scientific fact. 

Once the accounts ofdiscovery in the old mode have been abandoned, along with the 

more recent accounts ofsocial construction, we musr draw up a heterogeneous list thar 

includes, among many other factors, Pasteur, the Faculty of Science at Lille, Liebig, 

cheesemongers, laboratory appararus, brewer's yeasr, sugar, and lactic yeasr. There is 

no essentialism in this list since each entity is defined only by its relations. If the 

relations change, the definition changes similarly; rhe Faculty of Science with and 

without Pasceur is not exactly the same Faculty; sugar with and without lactic yeast is 

not quite the same sugar; lactic yeast after and before 18)7 is not ar all the same yeasc. 

But history cannot be defined by a simple rearrangement of factors. History is not 

created from already made ingredienrs. To avoid rhe jangling of combinations, rhe 

atomism of factors, we must thus recognize in every compound, in every concrescence, 

something more, some rad.ical and unique capacity for innovation-and, to do so, we 

must accept the fact that events, to deserve their name, are in part without cause. 

As absurd as that appears, realism demands that one abandon rhe idea of causality as 

compulsory movement or as a displacement of forms. The discovery of lactic yeast.in 

1857 is not due to a dispersal of infinitesimai conditions that defr calculation but of 

which each, nevertheless, acts as a cause. For there to be history, the yeast-of-1817-at- 

Lille-with-Pasteur must in part be caasa sui,te 

Nowhere in the universe does one find a cause, a compulsory movement, that per- 

mics one to surn up any event in order to explain irs emergence rerrospectively. If it 

were otherwise, one would not be faced with an event, with a difference, but only wirh 

the simple activation of a potential, the mere actualization of a cause.'u Time would /a 

nothing and history would be in vain. The discovery-invention-construction of lactic 

yeast requires that it be given the status ofa mediation, that is, ofan occurrence that 

is neither altogether a cause nor aitogether a consequence, nor completely a means nor 

completely an end. 

Pasteur can be understood as an event occurring to lactic yeasr because he is unfore- 

'e"All actual entities share with God this characteristic of self-causation. For this reason every actual 

entity also shares with God the characteristic of transcending all other actual entities, including God." 

\Thitehead, 223. 

'oThis is also the argumenr of the most Whiteheadian French philosopher, Deleuze. See especially Gilles 

Deleuze, Le Pli: Leibniz et lc baroqrc (Paris: Minuit, 1988), and the remarkable small book by François Zourabicâvili, 

Deleuze. ane philoupbie dz I'rh,énment (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1994).

DO SCIENTIFTC OBJECTS HAVE A HISTORY? 89 

seen, external to the history that until then defrned the "society" of the microorganism, 

its trajectory its heritage. To 6nd itselfin a laboratory there co be scattered, cultivated, 

redescribed, purifred, diverts the yeast in an unpredictable way. At the same time, the 

lasring presence of a yeast associated with a fermentation, the chemical acûvity of a 

living creature, constitutes, for Pasteur, a decisive branching out ofhis career and iden- 

tity. As for the chemists, by accepting Pasteur and his yeast, they become, through a 

decisive rranslacion, biochemists. No ingredient, as we can see, enters into these rela- 

tions wirhout changing its nature. 

As long as one made nature the kingdom of causes, to speak of a historicity of 

tbings seemed improbable: inventiveness, flexibility, hesitation, could only come from 

humans and their painful history. They alone could transcend the brutal realm of ob- 

jects, affirm their freedom against the viscous constraints ofthe "practico-inert," to use 

Sarrre's expression for the antipodes of freedom. By linking humans and nonhumans, 

the principle of generalized symmetry causes a small scandal, since it amounts to ex- 

tending rhe notion of personhood to creatures of nature-panpsychism, hylozorsm- 

or, on rhe other hand, co plunging human invention into the more or less predictable 

game of cause5-ms6h2nism, social engineering.2r 

\ù(hat a difference it would make if all entities left behind. transcended, exceeded 

ro some degree their causes, their histories, their ancestries! The objects of nature no 

longer offer as their only ontological model the stubborn, obstinate, headstrong, silent 

demand ofsubstance. Nothing thus prevents us from granting them a role in the fabri- 

carion of the human world, and doing so does not require our returning to the old- 

style realism that social historians rightly fought, nor does it open us to the accusation 

ofgranting to nonhumans that intentional personality heretofore reserved for humans. 

Nature shares with society the same historicity, but the uniÊed whole does nor become 

either immanent or transcendent, impersonal or personal, animated or inanimate. The 

transcendence necessary co innovarion is distributed through all the little uncouplings 

through which effects leave behind their causes. The history ofscience becomes once 

and for all an existentialism extended to things. Nature, by becoming historical,22 be- 

comes even more lnteresting, more realistic. 

As for nature's contrary, culture, ic is transformed even more thoroughly, and may 

be reconciled more completely with common sense. In culture, one is therefore not 

2rThe 

transition from cause-and-effect analysis to a conception of order through disorder has curiously 

not changed chis alrernative, despite Ilya Prigogine and I. Stengers, Eiltre le îemps et /'étrnité (Paris: Fayarà, 

1988). The notion ofemergence, rhough very \ùThrteheadian, does not necessarily imply the symmerrical 

historicization of nature and societr. 

"This hisroricity musr nor be confused with a transformation in rime of particles or living crearures 

such as are discussed in cosmological or evolutionist accounts a, for instance, Stephen Jay Gould, tVondafal 

Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of Histar;'(New York: !7. W. Norton, 1989). Inverting the anthropic 

principle cames scientists to enter the history of things. One not only recounts how the dinosaurs disappeared 

but also how paleontologists participate in the very history of the dinosaurs-two complementary 

but distinct historiciries.

forever a prisoner oflanguage, locked into conceptual frameworks, forever deprived of 

all access to things themselves, on which, as for Kant, we could only impose arbitrary 

categories. Our minds, our societies, our paradigms are no longer so many closed 

circles. Despite his hesitations, Pasteur does not dictate to the facts how they should 

speak. He ningles with them. He does not discover them any more than he fashions 

them. 

\Whitehead pleasantly makes fun of philosophers who believe our minds ate con- 

nected to the world by the fragile footbridge of perception alone, as though a grc^r 

city, until then open to the surrounding countryside, had decided to enclose itself 

gradually behind ramparcs, permirting no passage except by way of a narrow Postern 

gate and a shaky drawbridge. All philosophy of knowledge arises, he argues, from this 

artifuially maintained fragrlity, as though rhe mind constantly risked losing its pre- 

cious provisions. But if you demolish the ramparts, authorize other passages, open 

wide the city to the countryside, do away with city taxes. contacts between the mind 

and the world will not be lacking. There is no risk o[ an embargo on importations, 

since, no longer ascetics, we would no longer be obliged to deprive ourselves of sum- 

moning the things ofnature, which would then be broadly accessible because transcen- 

dent like us, historical like us, heterogeneous like us. 

By sharing transcendence with objects and gaining access to them through the 

thousand conduirs oflanguage, ofpractice, ofsocial life, we are no longer bound to file 

items exclusively under the heading of nature or society or discourse. It is enough to 

place rhem in "networks"-but while that word used to be employed in a vague sense, 

it can have, thanks to \ùThitehead, 

the ontology of its ambitions. Every item or circum- 

stance exactly lills, withouc suppiement or residue, its unique spatioternporal enve- 

lope. There exists nothing, not lactic yeast, not universal gravitation, that "would over- 

flow" the historical conditions of its emergence-which does not mean, however, that 

everything is rhe result of human work alone, as social constructivists feel always 

obliged to conclude. Again, we do not have to choose between these two versions. In 

order for an item or circumstance to extend and thus give the impression of "overflow- 

ing," it requires other historical conditions, other vehicles, other mediations, other 

underpinnings-each partially causes of themselves. 

'We 

would not find this historicrzation diffrcuh except that we make unconsidered 

use of the two pairs of adverbs a/u'a1's/na,er anà n,ery,71'/ttr't1rru'bere. Since the emergence 

in 1817 of lactic acid, we have concluded that it has alu,als been there and that it 

acts equally a'ulwhere. From the time of Pasteur's destruction of Liebig's theory about 

fermentation rhrough degradation of substances, we have concluded that it has neuer 

been present, anyu,/tere-a double exaggeration that makes the history of things co- 

alesce and then obliges one to invent, by contrast, those accounts of discovery that I 

criticized at the opening ofthis essay. Because yeast has always existed, a fact unknown 

before 1817, Pasteur musr necessarily have discovered ir by lifting a veil that concealed 

it. But Pasteur, his colleagues, the cheesemongers, the dairies, the historians, must

DO SCIENTIFIC OBJECTS HAVE A HISTORY? 9I 

work hard in order to extend into the past the retrospective presence of lactic-acid 

yeast. Scientists and historians work like software companies that, for a modest sum, 

will replace version 2.1 of your program with the new version 2.2,retrofrtttng all the 

new advances without (so you hope) endangering your earlier programs. In the case of 

the iactic-acid yeast, enormous work is necessary also in space as weil as time to extend 

to all dairies and cheese manufacturers the presence, soon "universal," of lactic yeasr. 

Still more work must be done to eliminate Liebig's version from history and gradualiy 

eliminare it from scientific 112nu215-until the "discovery" of enzymes, later in the 

century, which newly reshapes fermentation, Pasteur, Liebig, and the retrospective his- 

tory ofbiochemistry. Lactic yeast, in the course ofits history, never exaggerates either 

its existence or nonexistence, its locality or universality. Like other entities, it perse- 

veres in its being, however tiny, in certain places, for a certain time, on condition of 

existing in common with many others that also decline to acquiesce either to substance 

or nothingness, but "decide," at the turning points, on their history. Like frbers, lin- 

eages, trajectories, heritages, societies, rhizomes. 

I hope that I have shown, as I promised, thac \Whitehead's metaphysics allows us to 

help the philosophy of the history of science-blocked for some time on the question 

of the role that ought to be given to nonhuman5-1e salçs a small step forward. It is 

perfectly possible to reconcile skepticism and realism, provided historicity be thor- 

oughly granted to nonhumans as well. A little historicity spawns reiativism, a grcat 

deal ensenders realism.

Do Scientific Objects Have a History? - Bruno Latour

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