Latour, Intellectual and Extremist Critiquing

“While we spent years trying to detect the real prejudices hidden behind the appearance of objective statements, do we now have to reveal the real objective and incontrovertible facts hidden behind the illusion of prejudices? And yet entire Ph.D. programs are still running to make sure that good American kids are learning the hard way that facts are made up, that there is no such thing as natural, unmediated, unbiased access to truth, that we are always prisoners of language, that we always speak from a particular standpoint, and so on, while dangerous extremists are using the very same argument of social construction to destroy hard-won evidence that could save our lives.”

Latour raises are very important point with this statement. Our critiquing of ideas may very well have helped in the advancement of our world, discovering of new concepts, understanding of life and over turning of incorrect ideas. In a teaching environment, we are encouraged to come up with our own ideas, critique others ideas while taking bias out of it which I think is impossible. People invest time, money and hard work into researching an idea that they believe is the ultimate unbiased truth only to be critiqued by there peers who may or may not have been investing almost the same amount of resource into the same topic. They are speaking from a particular standpoint and thus radiate the idea that it is impossible to find and gain truth. Take for example the project topic on saving the rainforest and saving the planet, they are presenting the ideas they believe is the ultimate truth with research that complements their idea, while the class critiques the idea. Others who critique the idea usually have their own preconceived notion and thus would either argue for against it with research that also complements their own idea too.

The unfortunate part to this all is that dangerous extremists have taken advantage of intellectuals constant need to critique ideas even if they are saving lives. They have used it pursue their agendas destroying years of research that has been saving lives. Take for instance the project on vaccination, the James ‘guy’ who has a website where he comments on his ideas about vaccination. He encourages people not to get vaccinated against illness such as polio, MMR, all of which kill tens of thousands of people in America before the vaccination was discovered and still killing millions in Africa. He has no intellectual degree; he criticizes researches with no valid or concrete point to support his conception.

Latour is right, we should be concerned about what criticizing of ideas are really affecting our institutions.