we were never modern

★ Must-read bibliography in the fields of history of science, philosophy of science, and scientific anthropology, revised and republished after 12 years

★ We have never really been modern, modernity is just a belief

★ Blur the boundaries of science, humanities and social sciences, and reshape our spiritual landscape

-Editor's Choice-

★River pollution, frozen embryos, HIV, the hole in the ozone layer... Are these strange "things" that invade our world a part of nature or culture? How are we to understand them?

★As moderns, we believe that with the rise of science, the world has been irreversibly changed, and that this change, in turn, separates us from our primitive, pre-modern forebears. However, if we let go of this obsession, what will the world be like?

★What does modern mean? What does it mean to be a modern man? A work that cannot be avoided in the current debates about modernity, anti-modernity, and postmodernity, a profound reflection on the definition and composition of modernity itself, and a new interpretation of science.

-brief introduction-

This book intervenes in an original way into the current debates about modernity, anti-modernity, and postmodernity, which the author argues are deeply rooted in the binary oppositions (subject and object, nature and culture) on which modernity is founded. , human and non-human...) and split time. Our "modern" society has never operated along the grand divide that underpins its system of representation of the world: nature on the one hand, and culture on the other, in fundamental opposition. In fact, modern man has never ceased in practice to produce hybrids, things that belong to both nature and culture. In this sense, Latour's book of scientific anthropology tells us that we have never really been modern, that modernity is largely nothing more than a belief.

Based on this, Latour ingeniously constructed a "non-modern" standpoint different from postmodernism based on the work of "Scientology", and developed a symmetrical anthropology. He tries to connect the categories of human and non-human in practice, breaks the division between nature and history and the division between pre-modern, modern and post-modern, and tries to reconstruct the author's so-called " modern system". This book blurs the boundaries between the sciences, the humanities, and the social sciences and advances our understanding of the three, which is tantamount to reshaping our mental landscape.

-Experts recommend-

If you like an anti-dualistic philosophical discussion, if you want to break down divisions like subject and object, mind and body, language and fact, then you'll love Latour... for now, in breaking Latour does his best work on the split between making and discovery, nature and history, and between premodern, modern and postmodern.

—Richard Rorty

In the current debate about modernity, anti-modernity and post-modernity, [Latour] undoubtedly occupies a very important and quite original position. On the one hand, he is committed to linking the human and non-human categories in practice. And other thinkers make brief evaluations, which make the content of the current debate richer and more heated.

—Andrew Pickering

This is a work on metaphysics and political ontology. Latour's goal is to break down philosophical categories like nature, power, language. Visions abound, ranging from his advocacy of plural naturalism (as opposed to multiculturalism) to calls for social theorists to recognize the historicity of objects. This is a marvelous book, a refreshing departure from the self-contained flattery of the history and philosophy of science. This book is difficult to read, but for those with philosophical wisdom, it is a reward and worth reading.

—Robert N. Proctor

This book presents a colorful, thoughtful, and exhaustive focus on the problems of the contemporary and the notion of "modernism." The book focuses on three important interrelated areas: science and technology, politics and government, and linguistics and semiotic studies. On the basis of examining pre-modernists, post-modernists, anti-modernists, and so-called modernists, Latour concludes that we have never really been modern, as he says, a kind of Modernism, after many harmful traits, is what we should pursue.

--"choose"