On the table in this part of our work is how 'minds' get formed and changed. How ideas get legs. Memes. How beliefs can go viral. How common sense becomes so common. I will argue ('Beyond...reason') that it's seldom a matter of facts alone. Feelings. Fears and wishes—all the pathos.
In a sense, State of Fear is a massive 'intervention'—one that made Dr. Crichton a good deal of money, but more importantly: got him invited to the White House and to testify to Congress, and which probably changed more minds than any more familiarly scientific discovery could. Latour outright claims that the facts become so when we get the believers lined up behind them (rather than the reverse). 'Public relations' construct the world and our ways of being in it. South Park my have made us all knowing cynics.
Visit one of the global-warming websites we posted (or another you found, if you wish). Find a complex rich 'argument' about global warming—for, against, a parody of Al Gore, whatever. Show us how it works to construct a view of science, atmospheric science, authority, scientists, politicians, the world, the polis, industry, progress, fear, human agency—whatever. You pick the site, the argument (remember that arguments are typically more than words; when the idea comes out of Cartman's mouth, it's a different argument from if it came from Al Gore), the issue. Work it for us. Show us how the world of ideas gets formed.
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