Bruno Latour’s “The ‘Pedofil’ of Boa Vista: A photo-philosophical montage

Megan McGinty

Latour, B. (1995). The “Pedofil” of Boa Vista: A photo-philosophical montage. Common Knowledge, 4(1), pp. 144-187. 

In this reflective photo-prose essay, Latour follows a group of physical scientists into the field as they investigate the border between a savanna and a forest. As the scientists, a pedologist, a botanist and a geomorphologist, investigate and debate, Latour works alongside them in an effort to decipher ‘scientific reference’.

“Is the referent what I point to with my finger or what I bring back to the discourse?” p.150

As he traces the story arc from material survey (soil, plants) to scientific theory (the forest is encroaching onto the savanna) to next phase of investigation (Do worms account for the unusual soil profiles, and if so, how?), Latour moves back and forth between the photos and text, using each photo and its accompanying commentary to lay out a series of steps in the concurrent pedologic / botanical / geomorphic and socio-philosophical investigations. In selecting particular photographs and then narrating them with reflective captions, Latour is mirroring the actions of his fellow scientists, who are collecting data in various forms and samples— a blade of grass, a soil horizon, a coded soil color— and transmuting them into data via de- and re-contextualization, allowing the sample to represent a new piece of information in the process. Each of these bits of information are referents to a piece of the greater puzzle. It is not the mere act of representation that makes each sample important. It is the ability of that sample, in in the hands of the appropriate disciplinarian, to become a point of knowledge, transcendent of both its former and future contexts.

“It seems that reference is not what one points to, or what, from the outside, one would use to guarantee the truth of a statement; rather, it is that which remains constant through a series of transformations. Knowledge does not reflect a real exterior world that it would resemble via mimesis, but rather, a real interior world, the coherence and continuity of which it helps to ensure.” (p. 170, emphasis Latour’s)

These disciplinarians are then able to place the links into a larger series of understandings (held by the investigative team) about the soil processes on the edge of the forest / savanna border in Boa Vista. The result is a chain of movements from material (matter) to representation (form). This process is depicted by a chain figure that Latour draws, a most important part of the chain being that steps can be traced inboth directions.

“To know is not to explore, but rather to be able to return on your own footsteps, following the path you have just marked out.” p. 184

It is in this last quote that I see the relevance of this article to our seminar on science education an d reform. As science practices are translated into classroom practices, student mimicry of the steps or the practice is not sufficient for deep scientific understanding. That is, if students are not able to carry ‘that which remains constant through a series of transformations’, they will not have learned the art of scientific practice.

At the same time, Latour flips things in and out of context pretty quickly here and it can be easy to underestimate the difficulty of forging a link in Latour’s chain of meaning. For example, savanna soil is represented in a profile, a cube, the contents of a pit, a sample sent to Manaus, a texture, a codified color number, etc. In its various forms and contexts, the soil carries different meanings; the important point is not to get so caught up in the transformed soil in its new form (sample catalog number, texture, paint code) that we mistake the constancy of all its properties, i.e. that we don’t wind up trying to grow savanna grass on a paint chip the color of savanna topsoil.

Questions for discussion:

How closely can school lessons reflect the conditions under which scientific knowledge is produced? How far back (or forward) along Latour’s chain must teachers go to ensure that a scientific form is being sufficiently connected to its material origins? That is, how will they know they have created an adequate reference? (p.180)