Merging Spheres

In Bruno Latour’s “We Have Never Been Modern,” Latour argues that we live in a hybrid, non-modern world of nature and society versus a “modern” world where nature and society are separate spheres. However, most people are reluctant to admit that. As Latour writes, “Our intellectual life is out of kilter. Epistemology, the social sciences, the sciences of texts—all have their privileged vantage point, provided that they remain separate. If the creatures we are pursuing cross all three spaces, we are no longer understood ” (3).  In other words, Latour believes that our rhetorical discourse is limited when we try to branch the spheres of nature and society since our culture, believing itself to be modern, tries to keep nature and society separated. 

To find Latour’s  theory in popular culture, I once again turn to a clip from The West Wing. (If anyone’s counting, this is my third example from an Aaron Sorkin show.) While the show actually features many scenes where the characters (members of the White House staff) struggle to merge the spheres of nature and society by figuring out ways to communicate to the public vital statistics and scientific data, this scene illustrates Latour’s belief that the act of merging the two spheres leads to discord since the audience is convinced that we live in society where nature and science should be separate.

In this scene, Sam Seaborn, the deputy communications director for the President, is forced to throw out part of the State of the Union speech where he discusses the President’s wish to find a cure for cancer in the next decade. In other scenes, the reasoning behind disregarding this part of speech is that the rest of the staff think it’s inappropriate to include the scientific goals of the administration since the President is already seen as an elitist due to his education and work as an economist. The characters don’t want to merge the spheres of nature and society, or to be more specific, science and politics.

However, as Sam points out in this clip, the ability for the characters to merge science and politics could allow for their society to create something as game-changing as a cure for cancer. Latour addresses  this ability when he states,m“The critical power of the moderns lies in this double language; they can mobilize Nature at the heart of social relationships, even as they leave Nature infinitely remote from human beings; they are free to make and unmake their society, even as they render its law ineluctable, necessary and absolute ” (31). But, tragically, because of their reluctance to merge spheres, society is held back from greatness.