The
elusive origins of the immutable mobile*
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Michael
John Gorman Program in Science, Technology and Society Stanford
University |
Read Elizabeth
Eisenstein’s response to this paper |
Bruno Latour’s concept of the
“immutable mobile”, or, more precisely, the “immutable and combinable mobile” has
exerted a powerful influence on the writings of historians of science and
technology in recent years. Reviled by some, embraced by many, Latour’s concept
has stimulated a number of investigations of the bureaucratic power of science,
inducing countless historians and sociologists to hunt everywhere for
two-dimensional surfaces bearing inscriptions and to observe their every
movement carefully. The concept, introduced in Latour’s controversial 1987
classic, Science in Action, is closely related to Latour’s materialist
account of scientific and technological innovation, an account that emphasizes
the creation of “centres of calculation”, in which immutable mobiles can be
created and combined, and criticizes an intellectualist tradition in the
history of science that has attributed too much agency to things that go on
inside the heads of scientists. What are “immutable mobiles”, then? How and
when did they acquire their fundamental role in scientific practice? In Science
in Action, Latour introduces the key concept as follows:
For a Copernican revolution to take place it
does not matter what means are used provided this goal is achieved: a shift in
what counts as centre and what counts as periphery. For instance, nothing
dominates us more than the stars. It seems that there is no way to reverse the
scale and to make us, the astronomers, able to master the sky above our heads.
The situation is quickly reversed, however, when Tycho Brahe, inside a well
equipped observatory built for him at
Oranenbourg [sic], starts not only to write down on
the same homogeneous charts the positions of the planets, but also to gather
the sightings made by other astronomers all over Europe which he had asked them
to write down on the same preprinted forms he has sent them. Here again a
virtuous cumulative circle starts to unfold if all sightings at different
places and times are gathered together and synoptically displayed. The positive
loop runs all the more rapidly, if the same Brahe is able to gather in the same
place not only fresh observations made by him and his colleagues, but all the
older books of astronomy that the printing press has made available at a low
cost. His mind has not undergone a mutation; his eyes are not suddenly freed
from old prejudices; he is not watching the summer sky more carefully than
anyone before. But he is the first indeed to consider at a glance the summer
sky, plus his observations, plus those of his collaborators, plus Copernicus’
books, plus many versions of Ptolemy’s Almagest; the first to sit at the
beginning and at the end of a long network that generates what I will call immutable and combinable mobiles (Latour 1987, 226-7)
In a footnote, Latour claims that he has drawn his account of Tycho
Brahe’s accumulation of astronomical data by means of the distribution of
pre-printed forms from the classic work on the impact of print by Elizabeth
Eiseinstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change (Eisenstein 1979).
Latour’s reference to a generalized “Copernican revolution”, somewhat
reminiscent of Immanuel Kant’s comparison of his proposed shift in
philosophical perspective to the Copernican hypothesis in the Critique of
Pure Reason, is clearly intended as a broader conceptual category than the
historically specific events that followed the publication of De
Revolutionibus. We are being encouraged to look for similar “Copernican
Revolutions”, employing immutable mobiles to “reverse the balance of forces
between those who master and those who are mastered” (Latour 1987, 227).
Latour’s Einsteinian twist on Kant’s Transcendental Aesthetic informs us
that “it seems strange at first to claim that space and time may be constructed
locally, but these are the most common of all constructions. Space is
constituted by reversible and time by irreversible displacements. Since
everything depends on having elements displaced each invention of a new
immutable mobile is going to trace a different space-time” (Latour 1987, 230).
Immutable mobiles, for Latour, allow centres of calculation to “act at a
distance” (Latour 1987, 229), and are thus endowed with a quasi-occult power.
Adrian Johns neatly summarizes Latour’s strategy as follows in his
recent study of print culture and early modern natural philosophy, The
Nature of the Book:
Latour identifies the collection and deployment
of durable paper entities as the foundation of science’s success. The creation
and circulation of such objects, Latour maintains, enabled Tycho to master
natural and social entities that were otherwise beyond reach. He could use
print both to capture heavenly bodies, as Eisenstein claimed, and furthermore,
effectively to turn every observatory in Europe into an extension of Uraniborg.
This he achieved by distributing printed forms on which astronomers could enter
the observations before returning them to the central site of Hven. In doing
this he pioneered a practice central to the development of modern science
(Johns 1998, 11-12)
However, as Johns points out, Eisenstein, although she discusses Tycho’s
use of the press at some length, never mentions his use of “pre-printed” forms,
central to Latour’s account of the emergence of the immutable mobile, to
collect the observations of his contemporaries. As Johns writes: “Latour’s
preprinted forms for example, seem to be mythical”. He continues: “I have found
no trace of these preprinted forms in Tycho’s Opera Omnia, not in any
relevant secondary authority. I am also unable to find Latour’s source for this
central claim; it may well derive from an imaginative reading of certain
passages in Eisenstein’s Printing Press,
e.g., 626-7” (Johns 1998, 17 and note 26).
While Tycho eagerly solicited astronomical observations from his
contemporaries, particularly Langrave Wilhelm IV of Kassel, through correspondence,
he does not seem to have employed printed forms for this purpose. So, where
does Latour’s primordial “immutable and combinable mobile”, so essential to the
nature of scientific practice actually come from?
Puzzled by this question, and eager to save the immutable mobile from
Johns’ apparently lethal attack, I began scrutinizing Eisenstein’s work
closely. There was certainly nothing concerning Tycho that bore any resemblance
to Latour’s elusive forms, even on the pages cited by Johns, and even employing
a great deal of imagination. But I refused to believe that Latour had simply
invented the story of Tycho’s attempts to gather observations from other
astronomers. Turning a few pages beyond Eisenstein’s discussion of Tycho, I
found apparent cause for relief. I will quote the relevant passage:
In 1631 Gassendi, following a suggestion made by Kepler, published an open letter to the astronomers of Europe asking them to observe the transit of Mercury across the sun and noting it was due to take place on November 7, 1631. Here is an example of a collaborative effort in simultaneous observation that was made possible by print and had been impossible in the age of scribes. The new process of feedback operated in this instance as well. A German observer who accepted the challenge not only found the Rudolphine Tables gave the most accurate prediction. He also published a pamphlet in 1632 which informed the reading public of his findings, outlined Kepler’s theory and referred interested readers to Kepler’s publications for further details (Eisenstein, 1979, 631)
So, Gassendi, and not Tycho, had published an open letter to the
astronomers of Europe. Latour had merely accidentally merged Tycho and
Gassendi, due to their proximity in Eisenstein’s account. The great “centre of
calculation” was not Tycho’s Uraniborg, but Gassendi’s Paris. The great
convergence of immutable and combinable mobiles occurred not in the late
sixteenth century, but in the 1630s. The pre-printed forms – such appealing
ancestors for the social scientist’s favourite tool, the questionnaire -- are
not mentioned, it is true, but this is surely a minor detail. The “feedback”
process celebrated in Latour’s influential discussion of immutable and
combinable mobiles is apparent for all to see.
Convinced that I had stumbled upon the true ancestor of the immutable
mobile, I was curious to have a look at Gassendi’s famous letter. Eisenstein
quoted as her source on this point an article on Kepler’s laws of planetary
motion by James Russell. Sure enough, Russell gives a detailed description of
the episode in which Gassendi published an open letter in order to urge
European astronomers to make observations of the transit of Mercury, an episode
very significant, we are told, in gaining widespread support for Kepler’s
abstruse theories:
In 1632 further support for Kepler’s theories came from a German astronomer, Wilhelm Schickard. In the previous year Gassendi, following a suggestion of Kepler himself, had published an open letter to the astronomers of Europe asking them to observe the transit of Mercury across the sun which was due to take place on 7 November 1631. Schickard was one of those who co-operated. He found that Kepler’s tables gave a more accurate prediction of the time of transit than any others, and he concluded that the theory on which they were based was sound (Russell 1964, pp. 10-11)
According to Russell and Eisenstein, then, Gassendi published his open
letter in 1631. I scoured the Opera Omnia of Gassendi trying to find this
publication, but found nothing. Perhaps, I thought, the open letter was too
“ephemeral” a publication to find its way into Gassendi’s complete works. What
I found, instead, was a pamphlet published by Gassendi in 1632, after
the transit of Mercury, in which he gave a detailed report of his observations.
In this report, however, Gassendi did mention a certain “Admonition to
astronomers of Johannes Kepler published during the previous year”. Kepler
died in 1630, so it would initially seem that this “Admonition” would have had
to have been published posthumously. And Gassendi follows his mention of the
book by saying that it “I myself was also alerted by it” – perhaps a source for
Russell’s claim that Gassendi had published the open letter on the basis of Kepler’s
instructions (Gassendi 1964, IV: 499-510; Kepler, 1995:57-77).
However, appearances are deceptive. Gassendi’s report was originally
composed as a letter to Wilhelm Schickard in 1631. So, “the previous year”
actually refers to 1630, when Kepler was very much alive. And, if we look in
Kepler’s works, we do in fact find an “Admonition to Astronomers and Students
of Celestial Matters”, first published in 1629 in Leipzig, and then republished
in Frankfurt in 1630 – presumably the edition to which Gassendi was referring
(Kepler 1937-, XI.1: 475-482; Kepler 1995, 43-55).
So, the open letter, which didn’t contain pre-printed forms, was written
not by Tycho from Uraniborg, pace Latour, nor even by Gassendi from
Paris, pace Eisenstein and Russell, but by the ageing Johannes Kepler in
Sagan. Here, at last was the original source of the immutable and combinable
mobile, itself the unhappy victim of a series of successive mutations through
the vicissitudes of print culture, in apparent contradiction of its very nature.
Kepler’s letter or “admonition” was composed as an addition to his Ephemerides,
predicting the planetary positions for 1631, computed with the assistance of
his obedient son-in-law Jakob Bartsch on the basis of the Rudolphine Tables
compiled by Kepler on the basis of Tycho’s observations (an indirect link, at
least, with Uraniborg). In the margins of Kepler’s Ephemerides for 1631,
he annotates his prediction of the transit of Mercury with the advice:
“Vigilate cum tubo” – “be vigilant with the tube [i.e. telescope]” (Kepler
1937-, XI.1: 365). Kepler’s addition to the Ephemerides, describing the
predicted phenomena in detail, the open letter itself, is perhaps best regarded
as a potent form of advertisement for the accuracy of his Ephemerides,
and, indirectly, for the Rudolphine Tables on which they were based,
rather than as a collective, Latourian, centralized astronomical project.
“Feedback”, given Kepler’s imminent death, is perhaps not the most appropriate
term with which to describe the episode. Kepler does not seem to have been
especially lucky in observing transits of Mercury, incidentally. Previously, in
1607, he had run excitedly through the streets of Prague to recruit witnesses
to the transit of Mercury that he had observed through a hole in the roof, and
published a triumphant report of his observations, comparing his observation in
hyperbolic terms to Archimedes’ revelations in his bathtub and Pythagoras’
discovery of the eponymous theorem, only to conclude to his chagrin some time
later that what he had seen was just a large sunspot, and not Mercury at all.
What, if anything, does all of this prove? The tortuous paper-trail
through the literature that we have had to follow to trace the origins of
Latour’s immutable mobile certainly seems to argue against the inevitable
stability of knowledge propagated via print, a stability that forms the basis
of Eisenstein’s work and is the antithesis of Johns’ recent study.
Latour might have had more luck in locating the Ur-immutable
mobile in manuscript culture. Maps and charts, objects that elsewhere enjoy the
favour of Latour and appear as showcase examples of the power of immutable
mobiles in creating asymmetrical power relations between groups of humans in
different social and geographical settings, would probably have constituted a
more convincing early example of the feedback process. This is recognized by
Eisenstein, in her discussion of the successive editions of Abraham Ortelius’
great printed atlas, but a more powerful and and somewhat earlier example –
unfavourable perhaps to Eisenstein’s derogatory view of manuscript culture –
can be found in the master chart of the Indies routes, known as the padrón,
kept in the Casa de Contracación, the celebrated training centre for
Spanish pilots in sixteenth-century Seville. As David Goodman recounts, pilots
were required to “keep daily records of their voyages, noting shallows, reefs,
currents, latitudes, and other important information, and to present these on
their return to the cosmographers of the Casa so that new data could be
identified and the padrón brought up to date” (Goodman 1988, 77). Pilots
did not always comply with the regulations, but I think, nonetheless, that we
have here something that bears a more convincing resemblance to Latour’s immutable
and combinable mobiles than Kepler’s astronomical advertisement. The other
obvious place to look for immutable mobiles in this period, again anathema to
Eisenstein’s glorification of the transformative power of print, is in the
(largely manuscript) bureaucratic correspondence networks of religious orders,
diplomats and the Holy See during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The
vast, centralised correspondence of Ignatius Loyola might, in this respect, be
a fitting foil to Tycho’s enormous astronomical instruments at Uraniborg.
However, perhaps the real moral to the story
is that we should keep in mind that Latour’s Science in Action, while
undoubtedly a wonderful and stimulating book, presents a highly idealized model
of scientific practice. This model was designed to replace an older model – the
model of scientific research that focused too much on theories and ideas, a
model that placed the mysterious cognitive processes of an intellectual elite
at the centre of scientific practices, and had become increasingly
heuristically sterile for historians and sociologists of science. While
Latour’s “Rules of Method” and “Principles” are superficially (even playfully)
Cartesian, his cycles of accumulation and centres of calculation bear a more
convincing resemblance to Francis Bacon’s utopian descriptions of Solomon’s
House. Real science seldom follows the blueprint, however. Attempts to build
Baconian information-communities in the seventeenth century generally ran into
recalcitrant problems of calibration and standardization. Superior bureaucratic
organization did not guarantee scientific success in the seventeenth century,
or in any other century. Latour’s immutable and combinable mobiles, winging
their way smoothly through the ether, come to resemble the perfectly elastic
collisions and frictionless pulleys of Newtonian mechanics. This does not
suggest that Latour’s work is useless (is Newtonian mechanics useless?), but
rather that we should make sure that we remain aware of the limitations of the
model in our applications of Latour to real-world situations.
Eisenstein, Elizabeth. 1979. The Printing
Press as an Agent of Change. 2 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gassendi, Pierre. 1964. Opera
Omnia. Faksimile-Neudruck
der Ausgabe von Lyon 1658 in 6 Banden mit einer Einleitung von Tullio Gregory, 6 vols. Stuttgart-Bad Canstatt: Friedrich
Frommann Verlag.
Goodman, David C.1988. Power and penury:
government, technology, and science in Philip II's Spain. Cambridge and New
York: Cambridge University Press.
Latour, Bruno. 1987. Science in Action, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press
Russell, James L.1964. “Kepler’s
Laws of Planetary Motion, 1609-1666.” British Journal for the History of
Science, II:1-24
Copyright 2001, Michael John
Gorman