Revolution and reaction: On the origins of object-oriented sociology

Abstract

This paper investigates a curious precedent in the history of social theory, namely the birth of object-oriented sociology from the spirit of the sociology of science. Our analysis focuses on the dispute between David Bloor and Bruno Latour, which was preceded by an extended trench war between adherents of the Strong Program and representatives of the "weak" approaches to the sociology of knowledge. We will attempt to show how the schism in the Wittgensteinian camp of sociology occurred, how the internal clash between the "skeptics" and "anti-skeptics" led to a weakened position of the Edinburgh School, and how Latour took advantage of the hasty retreat of Bloor to conservative Durkheimian positions prepared ahead of time. This dispute was a tragic event in the sociology of science, the final and decisive battle of the Strong Program against considerably more radical opponents. Not being able to survive from being stabbed in the back by his former Wittgensteinian allies, Bloor was forced to fend off Latour's attacks by invoking the intuitions of Emile Durkheim and Mary Douglas. During this clash of the titans, Latour employed his ontological argument for the first time, conceiving the object as a self-referential, underdetermined and causal unit. It is precisely this conceptual move that would give the impulse for the creation of object-oriented sociology. Of all places, why did phrenology become so widespread on the British Isles? Is "one" a number? How did the appeal to the concept of "form of life" (Lebensform) help to answer the question about the social nature of scientific knowledge? How did the anti-skeptical argument of the post-Wittgensteinian sociology of science weaken the Strong Program? Why did the thesis of the "impossibility of private language" lead the Edinburgh School into a dead-end? And why did a debate on the nature of scientific knowledge of objects lead to a war of all-against-all, and a disagreement about the nature of objects themselves? These questions, along with some others, are discussed in this paper.