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there are many other questions that are asked and experienced about contemporary problems that
affect more than the scientific community. Scientists representing environments are not the only
participants in the Parliament, since the concerns the Parliament addresses reach beyond
questions of so-called scientific expertise. Any controversy that involves an environment—in
essence, all controversies—become open to all who regard themselves as affected by
consequences of the problem. And “it is in this sense that Bruno Latour foresees not only
scientific representatives, but industrialists, administrators, workers, and citizens in the
Parliament of Things—other sensibilities implying the formulation of other problems than those
scientists are prone to take into account.” But to this open door policy, Stengers adds a “political
constraint—that every proposition passes through those who are the most qualified to put it at
risk.”
50
It is unclear what precisely who or what is to determine what “most qualified” means,
and Stengers’ response—the production of public experts, discussed below—does not satisfy.
Others who have an expert knowledge of the particular problem being addressed must be able to
contribute to the decision-making process of the Parliament as well. Their knowledge and input
is not gathered through polls, elections, or town hall meetings, for Stengers, but through the
production of experts and expertise in all those who are or could be affected by a particular
decision. It is necessary to invent “apparatuses such that the citizens of whom scientific experts
speak can be effectively present, to pose questions to which their interests make them sensible, to
demand explanations, to posit conditions, to suggest modalities, in short, to participate in the
invention” of the common world they will inevitably inhabit as a result of the parliamentary
decisions.
51
50
Stengers, 159.
51
Stengers, 160.
Convention