Whitehead's Philosophy of Unities Explored in a Case of Social Democratic Cattle Breeding

摘要

Donna Haraway struck a contemporary chord with this quote. During the last decades, most of the social sciences in general, and science and technology studies (STS) in particular, have been "wary of holism." This essay is written in the conviction that too much of the holist traditions, together with their organic metaphors, have been discarded. We still need an organic metaphor. This will be explored in a case of a breeding organization and a population of cattle, both named Norwegian Red Cattle (NRC). Together, NRC: the human organization and NRC: the bovine population comprise an "organism" of some sort. The organic metaphor will not be mobilized in opposition to an STS tradition that is wary of wholes, but in continuation with such a tradition. Thus, in line with contemporary STS, NRC (the organization and population) is a "hybrid collective" and a "body multiple."