Bruno Latour claims we have never been modern, and therefore we have never been revolutionary. He argues that the modernist distinction between nature and culture has never existed. Things are constantly changing and evolving in our world. In a revolution, normally we think of a new specific idea or change replacing the old, but Latour believes that if things are constantly changing, no one thing can be called revolutionary. However, I think we are definitely revolutionary.
If you ask people to name something revolutionary, they will most likely mention the American or French Revolution, however, revolutions do not only include these huge fights with the government. Revolutions are just simply a change in thought. For example, there are many revolutionary scientific theories. One of them is Charles Darwin’s discovery about evolution by natural selection. We even had a lecture on the Darwian Revolution in this class from Judy Stone. Darwin showed how survival and reproduction of organisms was a natural process due to differences in phenotype. His discovery explained how and why evolution works. This was so revolutionary that there were and still are people who doubt it. It can be hard for people to come to terms with certain facts because such a big change in thought can be difficult to understand. However, this shows how Darwin’s discovery was truly revolutionary.
Another example of an extremely revolutionary scientific theory is Nicolaus Copernicus’ work published in 1543, known as heliocentrism. He discovered that the sun stayed still in the middle of the universe, while earth and the other planets rotated around it. This is another theory that was doubted for a long time because it was so revolutionary. However, not only scientific theories and overthrowing of governments are revolutionary, but also certain inventions of things such as technology can be revolutionary.
The internet is revolutionary. It has drastically changed the way people interact, provides a tremendous amount of information and allows people to do a lot that we could not do before. Although the internet is always transforming and new material is added to it, it is still revolutionary.
Revolutions are always occurring around the world. Sometimes they are big and sometimes they are small, but they are definitely happening. Professor Keith Peterson’s lecture was very interesting and made me think a lot about our world and what being modern and revolutionary truly means. Modern is a complicated term because new things and ideas are constantly becoming available so it can be difficult to differentiate what is actually modern. This leads to difficulty in differentiating what is actually revolutionary. However, I believe that we are revolutionary and that each revolution changes our society and the course of history around the world.