Here I continue with remarks on Latour's talk in Aarhous
http://cas.au.dk/en/currently/events/the-futures-lectures-series/bruno-latour/
1. He talks about the "critical zone" . What brings in my mind is the way the internal metrics of a space in general relativity allow us to understand its geometry without needing necessarily to embed the space is some larger space with more dimensions.
One could see the "critical zone" "bifurcationally". Then it is this tiny sheeve that surrounds the globe (extremely thin, relative to the earth). But (I think this is what Latour proposes us to do), we can also "stay flat", stay within the "critical zone" and then all the interconnections and trajectories are the equivalent of the internal metric relations in a space with gravity. We do not need to imagine a large embeding space (or if we do it, it would be a tool of our thought not "the real reality of how things stand")
2. At some point he talks about all these expectations that the different nations had in the climate summit and how there would be needed multiple Globes to satisfy them. And this image of multiple globes reminded me the "one Earth" in which we all live and
‘the progressive composition of the common world’. And I thought "why one earth?", "why one world?". Or else "In what sense "one"?"
I thought about it, comming from the side of a semi-modern. My opinion is that we may have many Earths, as many as we have grand traditions of meaning. For each Earth a People. Different Earths that coexist with different people that coexist. Can they coexist without being one People in one Earth?
Ricoeur gives a different image in his discussions with Changeux in "What makes us think?" . He speaks about different traditions of meaning as different continents, where one can go deeper and then the different continents/traditions can meet each other in the deep. This is a classical picture with clear boundaries and a path towards meeting. But we can also try to use analogies that come from other sciences. So we can have many Earths/"critical zones" attached to different traditions of meaning. How can they coexist?
One way is to take an analogy from M-theory in superstring theory (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-theory). M-theory is like an inexpressible presence that different theories point to without (perhaps) ever being able to express itself formaly
Another way is to take an analogy from quantum mechanical states . |Earth> as a quantum vector that may be represented along different systems of coordinates (different traditions of meaning) and yet no common (classical) picture can be given.
So the "construction of a common world" works in two ways: within a tradition of meaning and in the meeting of different traditions of meaning (which through this double work are exerting influences among themselves and are evolving)
I think Kundera was telling somewhere that Europe is like a big exercise in translations (translation in the sense that is used by Steiner in "After Babel"). Perhaps the Earth itself is a big exercise in translations. Translations among the multiple traditions of meaning (where humans and non humans are included), of which the moderns are the participants of one or more.
I like also that this idea of translation is present in the category theory approach to logics (for example I see the comment “Logic is
understood here no longer as a system of universal forms of
thought,
which are not sensitive to di_erences between various
domains of its application, but rather as
a
universal translational
protocol, which
allows one to navigate between di_erent domains.” in http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/9336/1/catax.pdf pg 124)
3. I think that all the approach of Latour, for all the comments on Schmitt and war , is towards real peace. And I think that the image of multiple possible Earths that coexist is along this direction. However I find it very difficult to fit it with the history of the moderns, with the kind of "management knowledge" that one expects to pass from generation to generation among the moderns themselves.
From my little knowledge of history I can suppose that the lesson that the leading people amongst the moderns have learnt is that military prowess (even brutality) and "counting the beans" is the road to the "good life" (the little exarchate in Ravena becomes the powerful Vennice, the barbarian nothings turn to be the moking recipients of begging Roman emperors, the rebels of the Papal order get to be the owners of an empire, and cunning mercants get to be the most powerful country in the world)
How can these people who have learnt to live without Providence, for whom nothing less than being judges of the Universe is good enough, will diminish themselves to come in terms with other traditions of meaning (except for leading to positions that they have already foreseen)? How will it be that they will sacrifice themselves in the names of values and virtues when all they really seem to care for is keeping a certain way of life?
Not very probable that it will come out of them, even in the face of danger (they will probably sacrifice first all the others who have not arrived to their enlightened hights - a little moral gymnastics will do the trick).
