Introduction: Opening Pandora's Black Box

Part 1: Towards a Stronger Rhetoric

Chapter 1 Literature
1.
controversy
2.
When controversy rages, literature becomes specialized.
3.
Writing text that withstands hostile attacks
Conclusion: Numbers, more numbers

Chapter 2 Laboratory
1.
From Text to Object: The Final Word
2.
Building a counter-laboratory
3.
Appeal to nature

Part 2: Towards a Stronger Fortress

Chapter 3 Device
Preface: The Fact-Builder's Plight
1.
Translation of interests
2.
Alignment of interest groups
3.
Diffusion model and translation model

Chapter 4: Insider's External Activities
1.
Creating a conflict of interest in the lab
2.
Counting allies and resources

Part 3: Towards a more expanding network

Chapter 5 The Court of Reason
1.
A Trial on Reasonableness
2.
sociologics
3.
Who needs hard facts?

Chapter 6 Computing Centers
Prologue: The Taming of the Savage Mind
1.
remote action
2.
Computation centers
3.
weights and measures

Appendix 1 Rules of Method
Appendix 2 Principles

Translator's Note: Another Battlefield: Technoscience as an Agent-Network

A story that unfolds on the battlefield of 'science'

The idea that science is the most ideal knowledge system for humans is a universal belief shared not only by experts but also by the general public.
According to this, science and the scientific are rational activities that are clearly distinct from politics and the political.
People believe that science, unlike politics or rhetoric, pursues objective truth and is autonomous.


However, Bruno Latour, a scholar who is currently receiving significant attention from social science and feminist researchers beyond the fields of science and technology studies (STS), history of science, and philosophy of science, challenges this common sense.
Latour shatters our image of science by tracing the scientists and engineers at work in the scientific field and showing how science is formed.

Latour is a sociologist of science who, along with Michel Callon and John Law, established the actor-network theory (ANT).
His work can be said to have pioneered a new field, which he calls 'the anthropology of science' or, in his own words, 'the humanities of science'.
『Frontiers of Young Science』, a book written by Latour in 1987, is evaluated to have opened new horizons in understanding the relationship between science and technology, and science, technology, and society, and is now established as a classic in not only science and technology studies but also social science.


In this book, Latour establishes the framework of 'actor-network theory.' Given that this theory's influence is expanding beyond science and technology studies to include sociology, anthropology, management, and psychology, it is expected that this book will be of great help to relevant scholars.
The original title of this book, 'Science in Action,' refers to science in the process of being created, and is a term used in contrast to established science, science that is already created and closed as a 'black box.'
The translator translated it as “The Frontier of Young Science” to preserve the nuance of the term and to match the language of politics and war that Latour uses.

This book is the result of work analyzing the production process of scientific knowledge as it is.
This is a follow-up report on how scientists are deploying ever more powerful rhetoric, striving to seize ever more fortified positions, and vastly expanding networks of disparate actors.
What Latour shows us is a story of the field unfolding on the front lines of young technoscience, a living science that has not yet solidified.

According to Latour, facts and artifacts are intertwined and connected.
This is because the process of constructing scientific facts in a laboratory space and stabilizing artifacts, such as tools used in experiments, occur simultaneously.
Non-human entities such as technology and devices also influence humans, including scientists and engineers, and change their behavior.
In this sense, non-humans are actors just like humans and can be viewed as symmetrical to humans.
This book unfolds in vivid and fascinating scenes of the laboratory role of technology at the heart of nonhuman agents, and the construction of scientific facts.


As readers follow the stories that Latour reenacts like scenes from a movie, they witness the battles taking place on the front lines of the "battlefield," the mobilization and alignment of troops behind the scenes, and the state of logistics.
In the field of 'technoscience' where science and technology are intertwined, actors engage in a 'struggle' with each other.
Leading actors seek to enlist new partners, mobilize and move facts, equipment, and all sorts of disparate resources, and further solidify the 'alliance'.
Actions within technoscience involve 'recruiting' and mobilizing allies, and creating a 'world' with the power and numbers of those allies.


Readers who listen to these fascinating episodes of power struggles will gain a unique perspective on the encounters and misalignments of "interests" in technoscience, the "translation" of interests and the resulting alliances and collaborations, and the small number of powerful representatives who represent the actors.
You will gain new perspectives on the relationship between technoscience and society, and with nature, on the relationship between experts and the general public, and above all, on the relationship between humans and non-humans such as texts, laboratories, objects, and machines.