Abstract
In the historiography of the sciences there are consolidated dichotomies that can hinder better research. Fissures include mental-material, subject-object and nature-society, and the bitter conflict between relativism and realism that draws on these dichotomies and can block research. The aim of this article is to tackle these disputes, to unravel them and to move on. The proposed solution is to give consideration to the agency of material things alongside the actions of human subjects. One obstacle is presented by Latour who simulates this result by means of hylozoistic rhetoric. Here, an alternative to Latour is presented, containing no elements of animism, which gives evidence of the concrete way in which the material agency of objects participates in the doing of science, alongside humans.
material agency; relativism-realism; sociology of knowledge; subject-object interaction; reciprocal agency