科学家如何工作？他们如何“发现”科学事实？为试图回答这些问题，法国著名科学社会学家布鲁诺·拉图尔以及英国社会学家史蒂夫·伍尔加深入到美国的一个神经内分泌学实验室并与那里的教授共度两年时光，对科学家进行观察，看他们如何选择课题和申请基金，如何从事研究和发表论文，如何评级评奖等等。作者以自然主义的方式研究科学，特别探讨了科学的社会制约因素，触及人性、社会、理性和知识这些更大的问题，从一个全新的视角对科学事实的建构做了独到的诠释。本书是科学社会学也是国外社会学研究的前沿领域SSK的经典之作。 以色列著名哲学家约瑟夫·阿伽西曾说：“科学是现代文化的一个内在组成部分。在某些意义上孤立地看待科学也情有可原，但是没有注意到孤立的图景可能歪曲图景本身，这将导致混乱。而被扭曲的图景会产生误导作用。” 的确，在科学研究日益精细化的今天，孤立、片面地看待科学以及与之相关的问题早已经与这时代格格不入了。因此，法国著名科学哲学家布鲁诺·拉图尔提出：“我们调查研究的目的是开辟一条不同的途径：走近科学，绕过科学家们的说法去熟悉事实的产生，然后，返回自己的家，用一种不属于分析语言的元语言来分析研究者所做的事。总之，重要的是去做所有人类文化学志学者们所做的事，并把人文科学通常的义务论用于科学:使自己熟悉一个领域，并保持独立和距离。”在库恩之后，科学论的视角发生了转换：“我们都关心获得知识的动态过程，更甚关心科学成品的逻辑结构 ”，“要分析科学知识的发展就必须考虑科学的实际活动方式 ”。当然，在这一被欧洲科学社会学注重的科学“实质性理论 ”(即科学知识过程)的形成过程中，巴黎学派的拉图尔功不可没。原因是：一方面，他把对科学知识的研究从“社会建构 ”转向了“科学实践 ”，提出了“实验室生活”、“科学事实观”、“黑箱论”、“行动者网络”等一系列科学事实;另一方面，他在科学实践中充分借用了人类学学科独有的“整体观 ”、“参与式观察 ”、“对他者的研究”、“文化相对论”等一系列研究原则和方法，使这些科学事实变得更具“真实性”和“可靠性”，在欧洲科学哲学研究中掀起了一股“实验室研究风潮”。

本书作者布鲁诺·拉图尔是科学知识社会的领军人物之一、巴黎学派的代表者。在这部著作中，拉图尔试图发现科学实际上是怎样“工作”的。该书以重新理解科学实践以及它与社会的关系为目的，利用大量来自科学发展的不同阶段和不同学科的轶闻趣味、案例研究和实际例证，向我们详细描述了那些能够在追随科学家左右、跟随科学家活动过程中所使用的方法规则。为了消除人们以往在自然和社会之间制造的分裂，以便形成一种新的联合，本书给予非人类因素以关键的位置。人们完全可以把本书当作一部有关科学的社会——文化研究的一般性入门读物和典型的研究实际来阅读。

Frankenstein's monster was born of human endeavour and 19th-century ignominious end but provided many lessons during his 24 years of plans and prototypes. Aramis, the guided-transportation system intended for Paris, represented a major advance in "personal rapid transit" - a system that combined the efficiency of a subway with the flexibility of the private automobile. But in the end, the system of electronic couplings proved too complex and expensive, the political will failed, and the plans were jettisoned in 1987. The story of Aramis, of its birth and death, is told here by several different parties, none of which is given precedence over any other: an engineer and his professor, who together act as "detectives" to ferret out the reasons for the project's failure; company executives and elected officials; a sociologist; and finally Aramis itself, who delivers a passionate plea on behalf of technological innovations that risk being abandoned by their makers. Technology has needs and desires, especially a desire to be born, but cannot function without the sustained commitment of those who have created it. Part novel and part sociological study, Bruno Latour has written a tale of a technological dream gone wrong. As the young engineer and professor follow Aramis's trail - conducting interviews, analyzing documents, assessing the evidence - perspectives keep shifting: the truth is revealed as multilayered, unascertainable, comprising an array of possibilities worthy of "Rasbomon". The reader is eventually led to see the project from the point of view of Aramis, and along the way gains insight into the relationship between human beings and their technological creations.

《我们从未现代过:对称性人类学论集》将探讨的触角延伸到有关现代性、反现代性和后现代性的争论中，独具匠心地开创出他不同于后现代主义的“非现代”立场，力图在实践中将人类与非人类这对范畴联结起来，打破自然与历史之间的割裂以及前现代、现代和后现代之间的分裂，并通过组建准客体，重构其所谓的“现代性宪法”(the Modern Constitution)。本书已被翻译有多种语言出版，对当代科学哲学发展具有重大影响力。

With the rise of science, we moderns believe, the world changed irrevocably, separating us forever from our primitive, premodern ancestors. But if we were to let go of this fond conviction, Bruno Latour asks, what would the world look like? His book, an anthropology of science, shows us how much of modernity is actually a matter of faith. What does it mean to be modern? What difference does the scientific method make? The difference, Latour explains, is in our careful distinctions between nature and society, between human and thing, distinctions that our benighted ancestors, in their world of alchemy, astrology, and phrenology, never made. But alongside this purifying practice that defines modernity, there exists another seemingly contrary one: the construction of systems that mix politics, science, technology, and nature. The ozone debate is such a hybrid, in Latour's analysis, as are global warming, deforestation, even the idea of black holes. As these hybrids proliferate, the prospect of keeping nature and culture in their separate mental chambers becomes overwhelming--and rather than try, Latour suggests, we should rethink our distinctions, rethink the definition and constitution of modernity itself. His book offers a new explanation of science that finally recognizes the connections between nature and culture--and so, between our culture and others, past and present. Nothing short of a reworking of our mental landscape. "We Have Never Been Modern" blurs the boundaries among science, the humanities, and the social sciences to enhance understanding on all sides. A summation of the work of one of the most influential and provocative interpreters of science, it aims at saving what is good and valuable in modernity and replacing the rest with a broader, fairer, and finer sense of possibility.

Science and technology have immense authority and influence in our society, yet their working remains little understood. The conventional perception of science in Western societies has been modified in recent years by the work of philosophers, sociologists and historians of science. In this book Bruno Latour brings together these different approaches to provide a lively and challenging analysis of science, demonstrating how social context and technical content are both essential to a proper understanding of scientific activity. Emphasizing that science can only be understood through its practice, the author examines science and technology in action: the role of scientific literature, the activities of laboratories, the institutional context of science in the modern world, and the means by which inventions and discoveries become accepted. From the study of scientific practice he develops an analysis of science as the building of networks. Throughout, Bruno Latour shows how a lively and realistic picture of science in action alters our conception of not only the natural sciences but also the social sciences and the sociology of knowledge in general. This stimulating book, drawing on a wealth of examples from a wide range of scientific activities, will interest all philosophers, sociologists and historians of science, scientists and engineers, and students of the philosophy of social science and the sociology of knowledge.

Reassembling the Social is a fundamental challenge from one of the world's leading social theorists to how we understand society and the 'social'. Bruno Latour's contention is that the word 'social' as used by Social Scientists has become laden with assumptions to the point where it has become a misnomer. When the adjective is applied to a phenomenon, it is used to indicate a stabilized state of affairs, a bundle of ties that in due course may be used to account for another phenomenon. Latour also finds the word used as if it described a type of material, in a comparable way to an adjective such as 'wooden' or 'steely'. Rather than simply indicating what is already assembled together, it is now used in a way that makes assumptions about the nature of what is assembled. It has become a word that designates two distinct things: a process of assembling: and a type of material, distinct from others. Latour shows why 'the social' cannot be thought of as a kind of material or domain, and disputes attempts to provide a 'social explanation' of other states of affairs. While these attempts have been productive (and probably necessary) in the past, the very success of the social sciences mean that they are largely no longer so. At the present stage it is no longer possible to inspect the precise constituents entering the social domain. Latour returns to the original meaning of 'the social' to redefine the notion and allow it to trace connections again. It will then be possible to resume the traditional goal of the social sciences, but using more refined tools. Drawing on his extensive work examining the 'assemblages' of nature, Latour finds it necessary to scrutinize thoroughly the exact content of what is assembled under the umbrella of Society. This approach, a 'sociology of associations' has become known as Actor-Network-Theory, and this book is an essential introduction both for those seeking to understand Actor-Network-Theory, or the ideas of one of its most influential proponents.