Research On Latour's Actor-Network-Theory

The thesis aims at the Actor-Network-Theory(ANT for short) which was brought forward by the French scholar Latour, the leader of the Paris school. The introduction of Latour's ANT avail Philosophy community and Society community of China to carry on the research of science and technology. Based on the summary of correlative works and theories, through the study of the source of Latour's thoughts and the analysis of the arguments about symmetry between Latour and Bloor, writer draws a conclusion: Latour is a social constructionist all the time . Then, writer analyzes the construction of ANT and its practical significance. Due to this research, we find that: on the basis of Paris schools'work including Caloon and Law, Latour extended the definition of Actor to nature, the network could include not only human actors but also non-human actors, non-human actors expressed themselves by agents; ANT is a progress in which heterogeneous actors build the network and develop the network It is a dynamic process and not a static concept. On the horizon of ANT, science is in action and society is reassembling itself. Finally, the thesis points out, ANT has such characters of Post-modernism: Anti-scientific-rationality,Anti-methodology-universalism and Anti-realism. In practice it overemphasizes the effects of non-human actors, and treats two kinds of science unsymmetrically. But he introduced the thoughts of relation and the thoughts of process to the analysis of scientific facts. It could expand the vision of our research of science and point out the direction of Philosophy of science and technology in the future.