Bruno Latour Quotes on Knowledge
Bruno Latour was a French philosopher, anthropologist, and sociologist of science, and one of the principal architects of actor-network theory and the field of science and technology studies. This page collects quotes attributed to Bruno Latour on the topic of knowledge, drawn from across the philosopher's works.
Quotes
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Attributed to Bruno Latour:
“We have never been modern.”
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Attributed to Bruno Latour:
“Nothing is by itself either knowable or unknowable; everything is translated.”
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Attributed to Bruno Latour:
“The fate of facts and machines is in later users' hands; their qualities are a consequence, not a cause, of collective action.”
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“Bruno Latour, “Why Has Critique Run out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern” Critical Inquiry 30 , (Winter 2004)”
What has happened to those who, like Heidegger , have tried to find their ways in immediacy, in intuition, in nature, would be too sad to retell—and is well known anyway. What is certain is that those pathmarks off the beaten track led indeed nowhere. -
“Bruno Latour in: The only shibboleth the West has is science , The Times of India , 4 April 2011.”
The only shibboleth the West has is science . It is the premise of modernity and it defines itself as a rationality capable of, indeed requiring separation from politics , religion and reality, society . Modernisation is to work towards this. -
“Philosophy is not in the business of explaining anything. Actual occasions explain what happened, not philosophy. If there is one thing which philosophy should not do, it is to try to explain anything.”
Bruno Latour, Graham Harman, Peter Erdelyi. The Prince and the Wolf: Latour and Harman at the LSE. 2011. p.67 -
“Bruno Latour, Graham Harman, Peter Erdelyi. The Prince and the Wolf: Latour and Harman at the LSE. 2011. p.67”
Philosophy is not in the business of explaining anything. Actual occasions explain what happened, not philosophy. If there is one thing which philosophy should not do, it is to try to explain anything. -
“Bruno Latour, Rejoicing: Or the Torments of Religious Speech. 2018, p. 144”
There is no control and no all-powerful creator , either – no more ' God ' than man – but there is care, scruple, cautiousness, attention, contemplation, hesitation and revival. To understand each other, all we have is what comes from our hands, but that does not mean our hands have to be taken for the origin.