We Have Never Been Modern: Essays in the Anthropology of Symmetry Author: Bruno Latour Translator: Liu Peng/ Annes Publisher: Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House

★ A must-read book in the fields of history of science, philosophy of science, and anthropology of science, revised and reprinted after 12 years

★ We have never really been modern; modernity is nothing more than a belief

★ Blurring the boundaries between science, humanities and social sciences, reshaping our spiritual landscape

-Editor's Recommendation-

★River pollution, frozen embryos, HIV, ozone hole...Are these strange "things" that invade our world part of nature or culture? How should we understand them?

★As modern people, we believe that the world has been irreversibly changed with the rise of science, and that this change has separated us from our primitive, pre-modern ancestors. However, if we let go of this obsession, what will the world be like?

★What does modern mean? What does it mean to be a modern person? A book that cannot be avoided in the current debate on modernity, anti-modernity, and postmodernity, a profound reflection on the definition and composition of modernity itself, and a new interpretation of science.

-Content Introduction-

This book is an original intervention in the current debates about modernity, anti-modernity, and postmodernity. The author believes that these debates are deeply trapped in the errors of the binary oppositions founded by modernity (subject and object, nature and culture, human and non-human...), and divide time. Our "modern" society has never operated according to the grand divisions that support its world representation system: on the one hand, there is nature, and on the other hand, there is culture, which is fundamentally opposed. In fact, modern people have never stopped creating hybrids in practice, things that belong to both nature and culture. In this sense, Latour's work on scientific anthropology tells us that we have never really been modern, and modernity is largely just a belief.

Based on this, Latour ingeniously constructed a "non-modern" position different from postmodernism based on his work on "theory of science" and developed a symmetrical anthropology. He tried to connect the categories of human and non-human in practice, breaking the separation between nature and history and the division between pre-modern, modern and postmodern, and tried to reconstruct what the author called "modern system" by forming pseudo-objects. This book blurs the boundaries between science, humanities and social sciences, and promotes people's understanding of the three, which is tantamount to reshaping our spiritual landscape.

-Expert Recommendation-

If you like an anti-dualistic philosophical discussion, if you want to break down the splits between subject and object, mind and body, language and fact, then you will definitely like Latour... Latour's work is currently the best in breaking down the splits between manufacturing and discovery, nature and history, and the splits between pre-modern, modern and postmodern.

—Richard Rorty

In the current debate about modernity, anti-modernity, and postmodernity, [Latour] undoubtedly occupies a very important and original position. His efforts to link the categories of human and non-human in practice, as well as his brief assessments of thinkers such as Kant, Hegel, Bachelard, Habermas, Baudrillard, Lyotard, and Heidegger, have enriched and heated the current debate.

--Andrew Pickering

This is a book about metaphysical and political ontology. Latour aims to break down philosophical categories such as nature, power, language, etc. There are insights everywhere, from his advocacy of plural naturalism (as opposed to multiculturalism) to his call for social theorists to recognize the historicity of objects. This is a wonderful book, a refreshing break from the self-contained flattery in the history and philosophy of science. It is a difficult book, but a reward for those with philosophical intelligence.

--Robert N. Proctor

This book is a colorful, thoughtful, and comprehensive look at the problems of the contemporary and the idea of ​​"modernism." It focuses on three important interrelated areas: science and technology, politics and government, and linguistics and semiotics. Based on his examination of premodernists, postmodernists, antimodernists, and so-called modernists, Latour concludes that we have never really been modern, and that a modernism without its many harmful qualities is what we should pursue, as he says.

--"choose"