I think that Latour's attempt to flatten out all the artifacts, while very
useful as a corrective, is problematic because (as it seems we all agree?)
humans have properties that are not identical to things. The question then
is on what principles do we distinguish among the artifactual products of
history sedimented variously in the genes of our species, in the ecosystem
of our planet, in our bodies (including the brain), in our languages, in
our social institutions, etc. Hutchins suggests heterochronicity as one
criterion. Pickering, whose notion of material agency attempts to flatten
out the division of things and people, also argues strongly that material
agency is different from human agency (in part if my memory serves me
because humans anticipate futures in ways that things do not). He also
argues that it is a mistake to reduce people and things, as Latour
suggests, to semiotic actants (bodies matter).
In any case, taking up and agreeing with the central argument in CP5 that
Mike states as:
>In that chapter, I
>try to develop the idea of artifacts as simultaneously ideal and
>material, and of mediation of activity through artifacts as the
>necessary condition for the development of human thoought.
it seems to me that it is important to foreground and carefully analyze
artifacts (Wartofsky's scheme in that chapter offers another way of
dividing up the artifactuality of culture).
Paul Prior
p-prior who-is-at uiuc.edu
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign