Talk:David Bloor

Untitled
"David Bloor strongly disagreed with the ANT camp that human and non-humans should be treated in an equivalent manner"

It's not entirely clear from this sentence which side he did come down on.

Should it be

"David Bloor strongly disagreed with the ANT camp when they argued that human and non-humans should be treated in an equivalent manner"

or

"David Bloor strongly disagreed with the ANT camp, arguing that human and non-humans should be treated in an equivalent manner"

?

Reply from a reader who has read Bloor and the ANT literature: The first version is the correct meaning; this clarification has been made in the article.


 * Yes, although I don't think Bloor's main objection is them being treated in an "equivalent manner"; he more fundamentally objects to treating non-human influences at all in the sociology of scientific knowledge. In "Anti-Latour" he argues that to do so is a back-door way of bringing "objective truth" back into science and therefore objectionable, since allowing for the influence of non-humans on the content of scientific knowledge can be interpreted as admitting that scientific knowledge is in part influenced by an external-to-humans "real world". Bloor argues instead for a pure social-constructionist viewpoint in which the content of scientific knowledge is analyzed exclusively as the product of human actors. --Delirium (talk) 21:25, 10 January 2008 (UTC)