Bruno Latour

I've been reading a lot of Bruno Latour, the French sociologist and philosopher of science. His book, We Have Never Been Modern contains what may be the best review of another awesome book, Leviathan and the Air Pump, by Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer. Latour reconceptualizes their work as showing the invention of separate spaces for scientific versus political discourse, not just the clash between the two realms. Latour goes on to propose a three-category conceptual framework for everything: natural, social, and textural.

In the Prince and the Wolf, Latour out-argues a professional philosopher by refusing to believe in the necessity of a single viewpoint. Instead, he argues in favor of 'Occasionalism' which finds its philosophy in each new moment.

Consensus, Controversy, and Deviance

The national press, despite its power and occasional hobbyhorses, sees its role as “witnessing,” as serving up a “daily diary of debate,” as offering “a platform for independent inquiry and investigation” — but not as setting the terms of public discussion.

But, is it really possible for the media to be objective?



"A long-term focus on shifting the Overton window allows a think tank to follow its ideals and perform a genuinely positive public service, instead of being constrained to merely advocating those policies that are currently possible. When the window of political possibilities is moved along the political spectrum, the impossible becomes desirable and the simply desirable becomes imperative. This is the true influence of a think tank — shaping the political climate of future legislative and legal debates by researching, educating, involving and inspiring."

Ideas and topics can shift up and down the scale of acceptability:

• Unthinkable
• Radical
• Acceptable
• Sensible
• Popular
• Policy

Industrialism vs Natural Agriculture

You see a system that runs on sun and rain, year after year, with no one to cultivate the soil or plant the seeds. (Benyus)

Wendell Berry:
THE WAY OF INDUSTRIALISM is the way of the machine. To the industrial mind, a machine is not merely an instrument for doing work or amusing ourselves or making war; it is an explanation of the world and of life. Because industrialism cannot understand living things except as machines, and can grant them no value that is not utilitarian, it conceives of farming and forestry as forms of mining; it cannot use the land without abusing it.

I hold the most archaic values on earth, they go back to the Paleolithic; I try to hold history and the wilderness in mind that I may approach the true nature of things, and stand against the unbalance and ignorance of our times.

Identification with that other totally alien, nonhuman can be experienced in tilling the soil, shaping word or stone, the lust and ecstasy of the dance, or the power-vision in solitude.

Gary Snyder:
"Wild mind means elegantly self-disciplined, self-regulating. That's what wilderness is. Nobody has a management plan for it."



Notes
45,000 sq ft to feed a person, 10,000 vegetarian

biointensive minifarming
deep cultivation to aid root growth
compost crops
closely spaced palnts in widebeds to optimize microclimates
interplanting of mixed species to foil pests
bioneer kenny ausubel
the land institute
ecology action
masanobu fukuoka
ecoagriculture
Natural Systems Agriculture
Wes Jackson


wallace stevens
gary snyder's essays on the wild.