SCIENCES WERE NEVER “GOOD”

This piece is an answer to the responses of Helen Verran, Steven D. Brown, and Brit Ross Winthereik to the author's article, “Comparison as a Matter of Concern.” She acknowledges the difficulty of her respondents to accept her claim that the sciences may be destroyed as many practices before them have been. She opposes, however, an “adaptationist” or “transformationist” perspective, in order to emphasize that, if the sciences are to survive, a radical mutation would be needed. She emphasizes that what is at stake is not a “good science” threatened by its alliance with industry. The recruitment of powerful allies has been part of the scientific enterprise since its beginning. What is at stake is the collective fabric of sciences as characterized by Bruno Latour in terms of “links and knots.”