Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
1.1.2.
The collection of writings
As a result of the previously mentioned debates
concerning the origins and cognitive consequences of writing,
Bruno Latour [LAT 85] put forward the recording and
diffusion functions of writing through the map. He refers to
Goody and aims to go beyond scientific discourses to explore
the practical reality of maps. Scientists tautologically explain
the validity of science through the rejection of non-scientific
thinking. Latour's hypothesis on the other hand is that the
difference between science and non-science does not reside in
overcoming the myth of the “savage mind” by the rigor of the
“scientific mind”, but that it results from a change in the
status of writing. To support this hypothesis, Bruno Latour
draws a parallel between the role of Goody's list and that of
printing according to Elizabeth Eisenstein [EIS 83]. Both
keep writings that are scattered geographically on the same
support and in the same place [LAT 85, p.5]. Therefore,
the domestication of the savage mind does not refer to the
passage from a primitive mind to a scientific mind but to
the logistical function of intellectual technologies which
facilitate settling, circulating and accumulating documents
used in the scientific practice.
In this view, maps are excellent tools for observing the
collection of writings. They are “immutable mobiles”
[LAT 85, p.11] which enclose the writings while making
them mobile in order to bring them to the laboratory. Latour
illustrates this characteristic of maps through an anecdote
during the exploration of the Sakhaline island by La Pérouse
[LAT 85, p.9]. After landing on the island, the latter asked
the inhabitants to draw a map of the island for him in the
sand. The map was erased by the rising tide, so one of the
inhabitants took La Pérouse's notebook and drew the map in
it. Two different statuses of writing are illustrated here: for
the inhabitants of the island, the map is ephemeral and its
drawing preserves its indexicality; whereas for La Pérouse,
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