Thoughts from reading Bruno Latour

I was recently encouraged to check out the book Science in Action, by a geoscience educator friend of mine. By happenstance, I stumbled upon a forum where Bruno Latour’s work non-human agency was referenced in relation to anthropomorphizing COVID. I usually don’t expect old philosophers’ writing to be immediately relevant in the year 2022, but in fact, Bruno Latour has been quite active, writing, speaking, and exploring new fields, all while emeritus. And it turns out Latour has picked up an interest in the Earth Sciences. In fact, he’s collaborated with geologists to propose an expansion of work on the Critical Zone. I was surprised to find on his website, several articles and lecture transcripts going back to at least 2016 about this topic.

I found this statement quite intriguing in Seven Objections to Landing on Earth. Latour writes:

This is just the situation, two hundred years later, that’s revealed today by Critical Zone Observatories: heterogeneous, discontinuous, a leopard skin of data separated by large spans of ignorance, in the middle of fierce battles that thwart any simple dream of domination. Once again, no shortcut allowed.

Lately, I have wondered where geoscience education has gone wrong. I have wondered if a science that aims to be global and all-encompassing is actually betraying itself and its ability to engage humanity by being just a bit too simplistic. Geology depends on a lot of heuristics to apply knowledge from one locality easily to another. Volcanic rock names, from the very specific (boninites, adakites), to the broadly found (tholeiites, syenites) suggest global similarities in lava composition. While useful, I wonder how much geology needs heuristics and parsimony to convince anyone that our ideas are systematic. It’s good for textbooks (maybe), but maybe not so for undergraduates who legitimately have questions.

After nearly a decade of geochemical research of oceanic islands, and nearly half a dozen introductory geology courses where I have to introduce students to the “rules” of the field, I have realized that exceptions are the rule in Geology. This realization makes developing teaching materials and K-12 outreach events quite Hellish.

Still, I accept the challenge of incorporating scientific humanities, philosophy, sociology, and history into teaching introductory geology. It’s worth the effort.