Is a scientific discovery a universal fact ? Through an ethnological survey in a Japanese laboratory describing the gene of homosexuality of the drosophilic fly, Sophie Houdart highlights the cultural dimension of scientific activity. The commonly established sharing line between nature and culture is deeply questioned.
The sociology of laboratories, following the pioneering work of Bruno Latour, has shown that scientific activity produced facts as strange as those observed by ethnologists in so -called primitive societies. But she wanted to erase the ethnological dimension – when the very notion of “ ethnic group “Was radically challenged – by studying a form of globalized activity, where goods circulate in networks without ending on the unity of a culture. If science supposes a form of universality to occur, the sociology of science shows the effective conditions for the production of this universality. How then ethnology can then continue to seek cultural singularity in a world globalized by scientific activity ?
Sociology of laboratories and ethnology of Japan
Sophie Houdart dares to hold the bet of cultural singularity by going to Japan, a country whose language and history master. It is indeed a country both resolutely inserted into the most modern activities of globalization, and reflexively attached to its cultural singularity. The question asked by Sophie Houdart – “ Is there a specifically Japanese way to do science in the laboratory ? “-is therefore not naive: it is, from empirical observations on a particular laboratory, a question that the Japanese themselves poses themselves. Starting with the director of the laboratory where she goes, Yamamoto, who presents herself as a normal Japanese, produced by a successful Japanese education, and who stages himself in the media of her country as an important public character.
The rest of the story – admirably led at an never released pace – shows, however, that Yamamoto is distinguished from Japanese scholars trained at the University of Tokyo by his visit to an American university, and that he recruited Western collaborators to enter international competition. Is it a normal Japanese or a globalized scientist ? Sophie Houdart chooses to describe him as a Japanese “ hyper-normal », Capable of carrying the forms of Japanese culture to a point of innovation such as, confronted with the most standardized forms of modern science, this culture continues to produce specifically Japanese representations. We thus see Yamamoto reproach his collaborators, whether Western or Japanese, for ignoring the forms of “ culture And to therefore not be able to produce real scientific discovery. Science, before being a universal and homogenizing representation of the world, thus first appears as an innovation activity ; In this sense, it illustrates the ability of culture to produce always singular forms.
The sociology of sciences therefore falls under knowledge that Neo-Kantians call “ idiographical », In the sense that it starts from a singularity to deploy its possibilities of universalization. Sophie Houdart assumes from the entrance to the work to describe her “ Japanese laboratory Through the personality of its charismatic director. While following the precautions of method implied by such a choice – the employees of Yamamoto are duly interviewed and cited – it accepts the request of its interlocutor of “ Write the story of your life “, Since he continues to stage his person and makes it the engine of all the activities of the laboratory. The book follows Yamamoto from the moment when he manages to create his laboratory until the moment when he defeated, forming, the time of an innovation, something like a singular scientific culture. He thus thwarts the leitmotif of Science Studies According to which scientific activity consists in expanding its networks, since it studies the specific way in which discourse on networks is stated and put into practice by this Japanese scientist.
Anthropology of nature and paradoxes of reason
But this book is not only a matter of the anthropology of scientific culture: it also participates, in the wake of the work of Philippe Descola and Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, of an anthropology of nature, a movement which has undoubtedly renewed the anthropological discipline of the last twenty years as Science Studies. By anthropology of nature, we mean the study of interactions between humans and non-humans that produce differentiated representations of what we call nature. Such anthropology meets the sociology of laboratories when questioned not only the claim of sciences to universality but also the homogeneity of the nature they take as an object. The study of a laboratory reveals the multiplicity of interactions between humans and non-human, regulated by measures and techniques which produce this universal representation of nature which we assume that it preexists to scientific activity itself.
We then pass, if we can say, from form to content: the analysis is also only about the Japanese laboratory as one way among others to collectively do science, but on the specific type of science here at stake-the genetics of behavior-and on the type of non-human involved in observations: the fly of meat or drosophilic, selected for its ability to reproduce with clearly marked genetic changes. Sophie Houdart had to acquire, in addition to the knowledge of Japanese, the scientific culture necessary to read in their own logic behavioral genetics ; But it also does a remarkable job to restore the meaning that these beings are standardized by the science of genes in Japanese culture. She thus shows how the “ mush “,” critters “Which constitute the wonderful environment of a young Japanese like Yamamoto, turn into” konchu », Insects delivered to scientific observation, and become wild flies in the laboratory with which Yamamoto collaborates in Hawaii. She traces the genealogies of “ sati “, Drosophile thus qualified for his lack of sexual appetite by association with the stadium of” the awakening “In the Buddhist asceticism, and” Okina », Associated by the Americans with the lack of sexuality of Ken, the partner of the Barbie doll. The anthropological work is here to be attentive to the names, the qualifications, the classifications, according to the classic analyzes of C. Lévi-Strauss in Wild thought : the representation of a non-human varies according to the description which is given from it in a system of singular classifications.
But to grasp the singularity of the scientific representation of Drosophiles produced in the Japanese laboratory, it had to show that it differs from other scientific representations of the same Drosophile. S. Houdart has such a case: this is the controversy between the Yamamoto laboratory and that of his French partner – through which the ethnologist arrived in Japan – on the behavior “ homosexual »From the Drosophile sati. The apparent absence of sexual appetite seems to be accompanied, in this mutant, from an orientation towards same -sex partners ; But to support such a hypothesis you must put in place an entire observation protocol. While the Japanese laboratory identifies the different sequences of a “ court Between same -sex flies, the French laboratory doubts the possibility of repeating these various sequences and sees only a series of hazardous coincidences. The problem here is no longer to know what a Drosophile is: being wild or domesticated, subjective creature of childhood dreams or objective entity of scientific classifications. It is more deeply to know what behavior is, that is to say an identifiable sequence of repeated actions. Here the anthropological reasoning reaches a kind of abyss, because the anthropologist also observes behaviors, those of humans observing non-humans, and wonders about the possibility of standardizing these behaviors through the available grids of the “ nature “And” culture ». At the most fundamental ontological level, the anthropologist is only dealing with a confused set of vibrations which she is trying to identify in more robust local ontologies, as the scientist must identify meat flies among chaos of Drosophila’s homosexual behavior sati. “” The Miracles Court “, It is not only this proliferating set of beings where Victor Hugo romantically saw the condition of any drama: it is more deeply a set of behaviors of” court Where appear, thanks to a series of controversial identifications, “ miracles », That is to say scandalous hybrids of nature and culture.
The homosexual Drosophile: we are indeed touching here on a sort of paradox of reason, around which the book turns with distant irony. Not that we reach a kind of moral rock of civilization, nor a scientific fact of a large scale: but it is that around the possibility of such a hybrid are taking shape contrasting representations of nature and culture. If the French refuse to speak of homosexual Drosophile, it is not only for methodological reasons of good observation: it is that the very idea that sexual behavior is genetically determined is inconceivable to them, because sexuality, freely chosen, notes for them culture, and genetics, easily standardized, of nature. However, if Yamamoto is interested in such hybrids, it is not by defense of a homosexual community whose behavior would thus be standardized, according to the orientation of American research that it follows with interest: it is more deeply because its representation of nature admits a variable set of forms, as rigorous as those of culture. It is therefore not that nature determines culture, according to this representation that the French share with the Americans to subvert it in a few points – the sexuality constituting a separate domain where, in a mysterious way, determinism is reversed – it is that nature and culture are two forums which vary in parallel, thus forcing a mixture of tolerance and deference.
This book thus opens up new perspectives for anthropology at the same time as it takes up certain deepest teachings: it does not seek a universal human nature which would explain all social phenomena, or a singular culture that should be defended against globalized standardization, but it investigates a paradox of reason – a hybrid of nature and culture – to deploy from this fact a set of forms that world.