THE WARNING OF THE PHILOSOPHER OF SCIENCE BRUNO LATOUR
“Nothing is reducible to anything else”
— Bruno Latour
In osteopathy, let us not confuse scientific chains of reference with the transformative chains of practical teaching: a scientific model derives its validity from the robustness of inscriptions (graph, image, figure, formula…) linking measured phenomena to their representations, while a phenomenological map draws its power from its ability to shift the practitioner’s attention and transform practice.
To confuse these two regimes is to change the rules halfway through the game.
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What category error is Latour warning us against?
Each regime of enunciation has its own “felicity conditions” — i.e., its own criteria for validation.
• In the REF mode (scientific reference chain), the crucial question is:
Does the inscription (the measurement — graph, image, figure, formula…) faithfully represent what was detected?
• In a phenomenological pedagogical setting (close to HAB – Habitual mode of existence, or PRE – Propositional/Predicative mode, as defined by Latour — see below), the key question becomes:
Does this map enhance the practitioner’s perceptual capacity?
The criteria for success are therefore different; statements only make full sense within their own regime.
The modern ideal of purification is a costly illusion.
Latour shows that trying to absorb all meaningful discourse into a single scientific regime either dries up practice (by denying, for instance, the sensory training required by osteopathy), or overloads science with tasks it cannot fulfil (like describing the lived experience of palpation).
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Maps and territories are not in rivalry, but complementary
• A scientific model offers a metric projection: what forces, what tissues, what measurable correlations?
• A phenomenological map offers a praxic projection: where to direct attention, what sensory contrasts to cultivate, what felt experience to develop?
Moving from one to the other means changing navigational instruments; trying to superimpose them is like reading a road map through a sextant.
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Practical Implications for Osteopathic Education
1. Clarify the didactic contract
Make it explicit to the student when we are in a scientific justification register (evidence, statistics, biomechanics), and when we are proposing a perceptual exercise whose value is pragmatic and formative, and evolves with experience.
2. Respect pluralism without implicit hierarchy
A phenomenological map is not a “lesser science”, but a tool embedded in another mode of existence — with its own seriousness and its own limits.
3. Articulate, do not unify
Design bridges (workshops, reflexive protocols) that allow one to transition from scientific discourse to phenomenological discourse without conflating them — just as one would switch from a microscope to a stethoscope depending on the question asked.
Our BONE Project, the “Résonances” study days, and the work of C.O.R.P.U.S. led by SOFA for many years, aim precisely at articulation rather than unification.
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By following Latour, we avoid the category mistake:
The temptation to judge a phenomenological map by scientific standards — or vice versa, to ask science to act as a master of perceptual training.
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On Latour’s Modes of Existence
In An Inquiry into Modes of Existence (2012, abbreviated AIME), Bruno Latour identifies distinct regimes through which things exist, are known, and may be called “true” or “successful”. Each mode has its own validation rules, its own objects, and its own trajectory. These are different ways of being in the world.
HAB – The Mode of Existence of Habit
• Describes: Embodied behaviour, learned gestures, daily skills, the body’s tacit knowledge.
• Mode of being: Persistent existence through repetition.
• Felicity condition: The gesture works as long as it “holds”, and continues without interruption.
• Osteopathic example: The hand that “finds” tissue tension without analytical thought — it knows through repetition.
PRE – The Propositional / Predicative Mode of Existence
• Describes: Speech, utterances, formulations. Language as a way of posing the world, not freezing it.
• Mode of being: A proposition is a trial — something put forward that awaits uptake in a shared context.
• Felicity condition: To be heard, received, and interpreted by a community.
• Osteopathic example: When a teacher describes an inner image, metaphor, or target sensation — it is not scientific data, but a cue for perception.
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Why this matters
Latour insists there is not one valid mode (science, REF) but a plurality of modes of existence, which cannot be translated into one another without loss.
• Perceptual teaching in osteopathy belongs mainly to HAB and PRE.
• Scientific research belongs to REF.
• Confusing or ranking them without care risks destroying the coherence of each world.
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REF — The Mode of Reference
This is the mode of modern science in Latour’s system. It refers to how scientific statements produce truth and robustness through chains of mediations.
Definition of the REF mode:
• Object: The natural world, as stabilised through science.
• Type of existence: Built through reference chains — a sequence translating a field phenomenon (e.g. a tissue, a movement) into a stable inscription (e.g. graph, formula).
• Felicity condition: Continuity and faithfulness of the chain. Each step must allow tracing back to the original phenomenon.
Scientific example:
• An osteopath observes a joint inflammation.
• A biologist measures cytokine concentration.
• A chemist graphs the results.
• A paper publishes the interpretation.
→ Each step is an inscription. Scientific knowledge (REF) depends on these inscriptions being verifiable and reproducible — the chain can be retraced.
Importance of the REF mode
Latour does not deny the value or power of science — but he stresses its specific conditions.
Science does not merely “discover reality”, it produces robust entities via well-crafted reference chains.
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Crucial distinction
REF does not address lived experience, subjectivity, or felt sensation. It aims to produce objectifiable representations, detached from the body, and transmissible.
It therefore differs in method (though not in worth) from HAB (embodied habit) and PRE (propositional articulation) — which are central to manual practices like osteopathy.
In the end, the point is not that everything is relative, but that everything is relative to well-established chains, well-constructed worlds, and well-practised gestures.
What constitutes “truth” in science is not what constitutes “truth” in care — and what heals is not always what can be proven.
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Recommended Introduction
Social Studies of Science podcast: Bruno Latour on 'modes of existence': A conversation between John Tresch and Bruno Latour, where Latour discusses his research project on 'modes of existence' in relation to his forthcoming book An Inquiry into Modes of Existence. A condensed and edited transcription of the full interview appears in Tresch's paper from the April 2013 issue (43:2) of Social Studies of Science. Posted February 2013
Key Reading – Bruno Latour
• Science in Action (1987)
How scientific facts are constructed — not simply discovered.
Themes: fact-building, actor networks, labs, inscriptions.
• We Have Never Been Modern (1991)
A deconstruction of the modern separation of nature and society — useful for seeing osteopathy as a hybrid practice.
Themes: purification, hybrids, critique of modernity.
• Pandora’s Hope (1999)
Clear, narrative essays on how science “makes” reality — full of illustrative case studies.
Themes: reference chains, pragmatic realism.
• An Inquiry into Modes of Existence (2012)
The theoretical core: Latour lays out multiple modes of truth, including REF, HAB, PRE.
Themes: pluralism, validation, experience, diplomacy of knowledge.
• Petites leçons de sociologie des sciences (1996)
A short and accessible introduction to Latour’s sociological method.
Themes: actors, devices, laboratory logic.