Stud. Hist. Phil. Sci.

33 (2002) 639–647
www.elsevier.com/locate/shpsa

Essay review
Metaphysical déjà vu: Hacking and Latour on
science studies and metaphysics
Martin Kusch
Department of History and Philosophy of Science, Free School Lane, Cambridge CB2 3RH, UK

The Social Construction of What?

Ian Hacking; Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass. and London, England,
1999, pp. x+261, Price £18.50 hardback, ISBN 0-674-81200-X.
Pandora’s Hope: Essays on the Reality of Science Studies
Bruno Latour; Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass. and London, England,
1999, pp. x+324, Price £12.50, $19.95 paperback, ISBN 0-67-465336-X, £27.95,
$45.00 hardback, ISBN 0-67-465335-1.

The two most recent books by Ian Hacking and Bruno Latour are intended as inter-
ventions in the current ‘science wars’. Hacking poses as a ‘foreign correspondent’
who reports on the causes of battle to an uncommitted and distant audience (p. vii).
Latour comes armed with a detailed peace settlement and an analysis of the ancient
roots of the conflict. Both books make metaphysics the centrepiece of their argu-
ments. Hacking believes that the two sides in the science wars are re-enacting cen-
turies-old and irresolvable metaphysical disputes; Latour proposes that only a new
metaphysics of humans and nonhumans can liberate us from tired old debates over
reality. These old debates include the science wars.
The main new material of Hacking’s book is contained in Chapters One to Three.1
These chapters deal with social constructivism,2 the science wars and metaphysics.
Hacking’s general characterization of social constructivism is unobjectionable. The
claim that something, say X, is socially constructed, usually implies the further con-

E-mail address: mphk2@cam.ac.uk (M. Kusch).

1
I am indebted to Anjan Chakravartty for many helpful comments and corrections. In thinking about
Hacking’s book I was helped by reading two as yet unpublished reviews by David Bloor and Ivan Croz-
ier respectively.
2
Hacking prefers to speak of ‘social constructionism’.

0039-3681/02/$ - see front matter  2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
PII: S 0 0 3 9 - 3 6 8 1 ( 0 1 ) 0 0 0 3 7 - 1
640 M. Kusch / Stud. Hist. Phil. Sci. 33 (2002) 639–647

tention that X is currently taken for granted.3 Moreover, to argue that X is socially
constructed often means that:

1. X need not have existed, or need not be at all as it is . . .

2. X is quite bad as it is.
3. We would be better off if X were done away with, or at least radically transfor-
med. (p. 6)

An author on X who subscribes merely to (1) commits herself to ‘historical’ or

‘ironic’ constructivism. The ironist is scathing about X, the historicist is not. A writer
who advocates (1) and (2) supports ‘reformist’ or ‘unmasking’ constructivism; the
reformist wants to change at least some aspects of X; the unmasker wants to strip
X of its false appeal to rationality. Finally, a thinker who endorses (1) to (3) is a
‘rebellious’ or a ‘revolutionary’ constructivist. The revolutionary goes beyond the
rebel in being an activist out there in the world.
Hacking thinks that the two sides in the science wars — sociologists and scien-
tists — are divided by three large metaphysical issues, or ‘sticking points’. The first
is the dispute over ‘contingency’. Social constructivists concerning the natural
sciences are said to hold that even our most cherished scientific beliefs are strongly
contingent. At any point in the past, any given scientific field could have taken a
different route such that (a) the alternative route would have resulted in scientific
beliefs fundamentally different from ours; and (b) the alternative route would have
led to a science that fits the criteria of a progressive Lakatosian research programme.
For instance, physics could have developed in a way that does not involve quarks.
Hacking points out that this contingency thesis is compatible with scientific realism.
The scientific realist can accommodate contingency by allowing for different roads
to the one true ultimate theory.4 Most scientists reject the contingency thesis; scien-
tists are typically ‘inevitabilists’. Inevitabilists believe that there is one, and only
one, route to the truth. The second sticking point is nominalism. Scientists insist
that nature has joints to be carved; scientists defend ‘inherent-structurism’. Social
constructivists deny that nature has joints. Hacking’s main example of a nominalist
position is Laboratory Life (Latour & Woolgar, 1979), a book that maintains that
facts are made. Finally, the third metaphysical issue is ‘explanations of stability’.
What explains the relative stability of a lot of science? Social constructivists favour
external explanations; their opponents favour internal accounts.5
Hacking defines five points on each of the three independent scales ‘contingency
vs. inevitability’, ‘nominalism vs. inherent-structurism’ and ‘external vs. internal
explanation of stability’. Kuhn turns out to be a radical, scoring 5s in all three dimen-
sions. Hacking gives himself a 2 on the first scale. This is because he believes that

3
X here refers not just to a concept but to a feature of the world.
4
Hacking’s characterisation of the scientific realist is not without problems. A scientific realist need
not commit herself to the view that there is anything like a ‘grand unified theory’ waiting to be discovered.
5
The former invoke social and psychological factors as causes; the latter invoke reasons and evidence
as reasons.
 M. Kusch / Stud. Hist. Phil. Sci. 33 (2002) 639–647 641

the contingency thesis only applies to the form of science but not to its content. This
distinction is defended in Chapter Six. There Hacking tells us that ‘a form of knowl-
edge represents what is held to be thinkable, to be possible, at some moment in
time’ (p. 170). Such form can be thought of as defining a set of questions. The
content of knowledge is the answers arrived at through the study of nature. Which
questions get asked is contingent; how they are correctly answered is not. Hacking
sides with nominalism (score 4), ‘because I was born that way’ (p. 233). And he
assigns himself an ambiguous 3 on the stability question.
Hacking takes his 125-point array to be enlightening not just to non-combatants
who wish to understand the science wars; he also believes that his foregrounding of
metaphysical disputes is a contribution to the science wars itself. Once scientists and
constructivists realize that they are re-enacting metaphysical disputes they might be
more inclined to see their disputes as irresolvable:

Since neither scientists nor constructionists dare to use the word metaphysics, it
is not surprising that they talk past each other, since each is standing on metaphys-
ical ground in opposition to the other. (p. 61)

The issues [i.e. the metaphysical sticking points] may be irresoluble, for they are
contemporary versions of problems that have vexed Western thinkers for millen-
nia. (p. 63)

There used to be a time when the sociology of scientific knowledge crossed swords
mainly with Anglo-American philosophy of science. In present-day science wars,
the philosophy of science has been marginalized. The two central camps in the cur-
rent debate are sociologists and scientists. Hacking seeks to re-establish the philo-
sophy of science as a neutral interpreter and metaphysical (psycho-)analyst. He prom-
ises to ‘analyse, not exclude’ (p. vii), and endeavours to raise unacknowledged and
irresolvable metaphysical conflicts to the surface of awareness. Do the science wars
really need this kind of analyst? I doubt it.
First of all, Hacking is far from neutral and fair in his presentation of leading
science warriors. He links social constructivism repeatedly to ‘a rage against science
and scientists’ (p. 61) and insists that ‘many constructionists do appear to dislike
the practice and the content of the sciences’ (p. 68). Hacking does not argue for this
link. He merely insinuates that such a link exists. The following flippant passage on
Harry Collins speaks for itself:

. . . many constructionists do appear to dislike the practice and the content of the
sciences. When Collins (1993, 262) insists that ‘Most of us love science, including
Einstein among our top five all time heroes . . .’ (and on and on in a sentence
with 65 more words), one cringes and mutters something about protesting too
much. (p. 68)
642 M. Kusch / Stud. Hist. Phil. Sci. 33 (2002) 639–647

Second, Hacking excludes rather than analyses also when he turns to presenting
the arguments and ideas of the sociology of scientific knowledge. Hacking uses as
his main points of reference Andy Pickering’s Constructing Quarks and The Mangle
of Practice (Pickering, 1984, 1995) and Latour and Woolgar’s Laboratory Life. One
need not belittle the importance of these books in order to maintain that they are
not the key theoretical treatises in science studies of the past two decades. In other
words, it is easy to paint a picture of science studies as relying blindly on implicit
metaphysical assumptions if one ignores books and papers in which these very philo-
sophical commitments are developed and defended at great length. Take for instance
the writings of Barry Barnes or David Bloor, or the work of the Edinburgh School
more broadly. Hacking mentions this work only to set it aside. He reduces the Edin-
burgh School to interest theory, the symmetry principle, and an advocacy of external
explanations of stability. I find this reduction intolerable. Barnes’ and Bloor’s many
books and articles on meaning finitism are nothing if not a philosophical defence of
both contingency and nominalism. Barnes’ 1983 book T. S. Kuhn and Social Science
develops these themes in and through a detailed discussion of Kuhn’s work; and
Bloor’s two books on Wittgenstein provide a general account of the theory (Barnes,
1982; Bloor, 1983, 1997). Contingency and nominalism are central even in papers
by these authors in which finitism is not the prominent theme. Bloor’s 1982 paper
‘Durkheim and Mauss Revisited’ argues that our webs of concepts and laws (i.e.
our theories) do not latch on to fixed joints in nature, and that they can be developed
and adjusted in different ways (Bloor, 1982). Such different ways can all be rational
and progressive by their own standards. Surely the argument in this paper addresses
the issue of nominalism and contingency clearly and systematically.6
Third, I find Hacking’s distinction between the form and the content of scientific
knowledge unconvincing. Hacking’s argument here runs together different issues that
had better be distinguished. Of course it makes sense to say that different (scientific)
traditions often seek to answer different questions, and that the questions of one
tradition need not make sense to the members of other traditions. We might also go
further and say that the members of scientific traditions usually assume that their
‘real’ questions have determinate answers.7 But these correct observations do not
license the further claim that such questions really do have determinate answers as
such, and that these answers are outside the realm of negotiations, contingency and
history. What constitutes a direct and full answer to a question depends on a complex
web of presuppositions, criteria and interests as part of the question itself, no one
single answer need emerge as predetermined. On the one hand, experiments and
observations do not have the structure of simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answers. On the other
hand, our criteria for sufficient ‘answerhood’ need to be applied to the case at hand.

6
Hacking’s own work on kinds (reported in other chapters of his book) is similar in important respects
to work by Barry Barnes on natural and social kinds. Hacking never refers to Barnes’ work. See, for
example, Barnes (1983). For uses of Barnes’ work on kinds by other members of the Edinburgh School,
see, for example, Bloor (1997) and Kusch (1999).
7
These themes are discussed in great detail in Jardine (1991).
 M. Kusch / Stud. Hist. Phil. Sci. 33 (2002) 639–647 643

And finitism teaches us that every application to a new situation involves judgements
of similarity and analogy that are undetermined by past practice.
But can we not speak of the possibility of speaking of form and content of scien-
tific knowledge directly — that is, without using the question-answer relation as a
device for clarifying the distinction? Maybe we can, but in order to convince us of
this possibility Hacking would have to establish two things: a clear suggestion of
how we can tease apart form and content; and a plausible account as to why issues
of content are not likewise socially contingent. In this book at least, Hacking does
neither.
Finally, I doubt that the reputation of philosophy amongst science warriors can
be improved in the way Hacking envisages. Hacking’s analysis tastes too much of
natural history: we get three ways of using the construction metaphor
(‘constructivism’, ‘constructionalism’ and ‘constructionism’), six ways of being a
social constructivist (‘historical’, ‘ironic’, ‘reformist’, ‘unmasking’, ‘rebellious’,
‘revolutionary’) and 125 ways of situating oneself on the scales between extreme
social constructionism and extreme anticonstructionism. It is this sort of botanising
that gives analytic philosophy a bad name.
Latour’s use of metaphysics is much less aloof. Latour is not concerned to reduce
the science wars to a triplet of metaphysical disputes. He explicitly wants us to
adopt an altogether new metaphysics. The metaphysics offered in Pandora’s Hope is
familiar from Latour’s other writings. Nevertheless, Pandora’s Hope binds together
Latour’s familiar themes in a novel way. Whatever one makes of Latour’s meta-
physics, one thing is clear: it is far more than a point on the scale between nominal-
ism and realism (or ‘inherent-structurism’). And yet — reviewing Hacking and Lat-
our at the same time invites the attempt to read Latour as part and parcel of the
history of metaphysics. I find it particularly helpful to read Latour as someone who
(consciously or not) borrows heavily from both Leibniz and Heidegger.
Leibniz first. Recall the classical metaphysical distinctions of accidental vs. essen-
tial properties (or relations) and external vs. internal relations.8 The presence or
absence of accidental properties does not affect their bearer’s identity or category.
The presence or absence of an essential property does. For instance, it might be
thought that the exact number of hairs on my head is an accidental property of mine.
I shall still be me even after I have torn out a few of my hairs. On the other hand,
it seems natural to suggest that I would no longer be me if the genetic code in all
of my cells was exchanged for Latour’s genetic code. Thus my genetic code seems
a good candidate for an essential property.9 External relations are relations of com-
parison (e.g. a is taller than b), internal relations are relations of interaction (e.g., a
hits b). Leibniz famously held the view that all properties are essential properties.
According to Leibniz it would not make sense to ask ‘what would have happened
if Peter had not denied Christ’ since this question amounts to asking ‘what would

8
Some years ago I suggested that these metaphysical distinctions can help us to make sense of Fou-
cault’s theory of power (see Kusch, 1991, pp. 130–136).
9
I recognise that this example is debatable in the light of identical twins, clones and so on. But for
the simple contrast I need here we can ignore the difficulties of finding any essential properties.
644 M. Kusch / Stud. Hist. Phil. Sci. 33 (2002) 639–647

have happened if Peter had not been Peter, for denying is contained in the complete
notion of Peter’. Leibniz also thought that in picking out one complete concept, say
Adam, we in fact pick out a whole world: since Adam mirrors all other concepts
within his world, if anything — even thousands of years later — were different from
what it is, Adam would not have been Adam.10 Leibniz’s view holds for both proper-
ties and relations, and for both external and internal relations.
Now consider some of Latour’s claims about ‘actants’ and their ‘collectives’. Take
first his claim that experiments are so-called ‘events’; by this he means that they
change the identity of all ingredients. After Pasteur had experimented on lactic acid
ferment, and after the Academy had accepted his results, the identity of all three,
the ferment, Pasteur and the Academy, changed forever. Being experimented on by
Pasteur is not an accidental temporally limited property of the ferment; it is an essen-
tial property of the ferment. Investigating this ferment is not an accidental property
of Pasteur; it is partially defining Pasteur as Pasteur. Here are some typical quotes:

If Pasteur wins we will find two (partially) new actors on the bottom line: a new
yeast and a new Pasteur! (p. 124)

. . . all the elements have been partially transformed: a (partially) new Pasteur, a
(partially) new yeast, and a (partially) new Academy . . . (p. 126)

. . . we should be able to say that not only the microbes-for-us-humans changed

in the 1850s, but also the microbes-for-themselves. Their counter with Pasteur
changed them as well. (p. 146)

A lactic acid ferment grown in a culture in Pasteur’s laboratory in Lille in 1858

is not the same thing as the residue of an alcoholic fermentation in Liebig’s labora-
tory in Munich in 1852 . . . [It is] a different thing to be in Lille and in Munich,
to be cultivated with yeast and without it, to be seen under the microscope and
with a pair of glasses, and so on. (p. 150)

Moreover, Latour subscribes to the Leibnizian view that to pick out a substance as
real is to pick out — in some sense — a whole world. For instance, we are told
that Pasteur’s victory over Pouchet is ‘final’ only if we all uphold the appropriate
beliefs (p. 168). Our actions and beliefs are as essential to Pasteur’s victory as were
his own actions.
Latour’s central argument for a symmetrical treatment of humans and nonhumans
is also illuminated by the parallel with Leibniz. To adapt Latour’s central example:
it wasn’t Oswald who killed J. F. Kennedy, and it wasn’t a gun. It was a new actor
or actant: ‘a citizen-gun, a gun-citizen’. Oswald was ‘a different person with the gun
in [his] hand’, ‘the gun [was] different with [him] holding it’ (pp. 179–80). Again,
the relation between gun and Oswald is internal and essential. Oswald and gun each

10
Cited from Mates (1986, pp. 140–141).
 M. Kusch / Stud. Hist. Phil. Sci. 33 (2002) 639–647 645

partially define each other’s identity, and thus neither deserves to be given ontologi-
cal priority. No wonder that Latour so persistently insists on treating humans and
nonhumans symmetrically. Neither humans nor nonhumans are able to define them-
selves and others. Each individual human or nonhuman actant is defined in its identity
by its (internal) relations to other human and nonhuman actants, and neither human
nor nonhuman actants have cognitive access to what these (internal) relations are.
The Heideggerian theme in Latour is closer to the surface — although it too is
not acknowledged. I am thinking of course of Heidegger’s attack on the subject-
object scheme.11 The perhaps most central Leitmotiv of Heidegger’s thinking was
his opposition to an unsophisticated and excessive use of the ‘subject-object’ scheme
in traditional and contemporary philosophy. As Heidegger saw it, the subject-object
distinction has its natural home in — and only makes sense in — a particular kind
of perception, that is, in controlled and scientific observation of a small or medium-
size object. In such perception we seek to be objective by distinguishing sharply
between the observer and the observed, by separating clearly between the observed
and its background, and by explicitly focusing our attention on the observed only.
In such situation activity and control lies with the subject; and the object is assumed
to be passive and fixed. According to Heidegger, the subject-object scheme leads to
distortions once it is used as a central figure of thought in types of situation that are
radically unlike the type of situation just described. For instance, my relationship to
other people is not an instance of the subject-object scheme since my primary
relationship to others is not one of controlled observation. My relationship to the
world or reality is not an instance of the subject-object scheme since the world as
a whole can never be an object of observation. And our relationship to technical
artefacts is not an instance of the subject-object scheme since intentional tool-using
action is not a form of observation either. Heidegger traces the advent of the subject-
object scheme back to Plato and seeks (hope of) liberation by appeal to the Pre-
Socratics and Romantic poets.
Latour’s attack on the subject-object scheme has many resonances of the Heidegg-
erian precedent. Latour rejects analyses of nature and technology whenever these are
based on the subject-object scheme. In this realm the scheme amounts to a distinction
between active, self-transparent, form-imposing, social human subjects, on the one
hand, and passive, dumb, material, form-receiving, non-social and nonhuman objects,
on the other hand. Latour concurs with Heidegger in suggesting that humans are
unable to live up to their end of the bargain. And he insists that nonhumans do so
much better already — this is the point where the Leibnizian essentialism carries
the weight of the argument. In terms reminiscent of the authenticity-talk of Sein und
Zeit, Latour chastises us for being out of touch with the life we in fact already live.
The way we philosophise about nonhumans does not agree with how we live with
them, and talk about them. Latour is a good Heideggerian also in tracing the subject-

11
In thinking about the relationship between Latour and Heidegger I have been helped by conversations
with Lynne Khong, and by reading her M.Phil. essay on the relationship between Latour and Heidegger.
I have discussed Heidegger’s criticism of the subject-object distinction at greater length elsewhere (see
Kusch, 1989, pp. 152–166).
646 M. Kusch / Stud. Hist. Phil. Sci. 33 (2002) 639–647

object scheme back to Plato. Latour locates the origin of the scheme in Socrates’
attempt to provide a justification for keeping ‘the mob’ under control. Philosophers
are the natural rulers since only they can gain knowledge of a world of inhuman
objects. Latour thinks that the Sophists knew better.
What are we to make of Latour’s metaphysical aspirations? And what use is the
attempt to situate him within the tradition of metaphysical thinking? First of all, I
think some of Latour’s pronouncements become more intelligible once they are read
as developments or restatements of traditional philosophical-metaphysical views. To
read Latour in this way also corrects his somewhat inflated self-image of a thinker
against all tides.
Second, seeing the central role of Leibniz-style essentialism in Latour enables me
to understand better my own hostility towards Latour’s position. I cannot help feeling
that the distinctions between accidental and essential properties and relations is a
hard-won achievement of metaphysical thinking. I can see why people would want
to give it up; perhaps there are no essences. But give it up because all properties
and relations are essential? I simply cannot grasp the need for this move. Latour’s
essentialism forces us to say that whenever anywhere something is done to a kind,
the kind itself changes. Microbes changed their identity when Pasteur experimented
on them; the historical event became part of what they are. But of course we cannot
stop here. If Pasteur’s experiments changed the microbes, then surely so do the
experiments carried out this morning in the lab down the road from my office. After
all, Latour treats all relations of interaction as essential to the identity of the relata.
Or, to return to technological artefacts, Latour’s position commits him to saying that
the identity of guns changes every time a gun is used for shooting (or for anything
else for that matter). And all tools that I use, however briefly and in passing, become
part of what defines me as an actant: my current and all my earlier tooth-brushes;
all door-handles I have ever used; all buttons, all shoe-laces, and all paper-clips. Are
we really going to believe that this old-fashioned essentialism is a ‘new settlement’,
a radical step ahead on the road to understanding the place of humans and nonhumans
in the world?
Third, and finally, consider the Heidegger connection. Undoubtedly there are many
aspects of Heidegger’s criticism of the subject-object distinction that continue to be
important. But do we really need yet another variation on Heidegger’s sweeping
metahysical narrative, a narrative that spans Western history from Plato to NATO?
Hasn’t the twentieth century produced enough of these same old stories? Isn’t the
plot all too familiar already? Surely we have had enough master thinkers telling us
how things started to go wrong with Plato’s invention of the Ge-stell or of the trans-
parent voice. Surely we have enough wise men informing us that the suppression
of women, social injustice in general, the ecological catastrophe and uncontrollable
technologies all have their roots in ‘the ancient settlement’. And surely we have had
enough prophets of radical new — or Pre-Socratic — settlements and salvations.
I agree with Hacking and Latour that philosophy and science studies can, and
should, be brought into a dialogue. But I am unconvinced that their offerings of
metaphysical déjà vu constitute a fruitful exchange between the two fields. In its
dialogue with philosophy, social constructivism should be after bigger game than
 M. Kusch / Stud. Hist. Phil. Sci. 33 (2002) 639–647 647

the identification of its proper metaphysical place. The more ambitious goal is to
change the very nature of philosophy by freeing it from its traditional individualism.

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