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36perfect intermediary between hardware (since t shelters) and soft-ware (since t classifies), between a box and the tree of knowledge.

The tags designate the names of the collected plants. The dossiers,files, and folders shelter not text-forms or mail-but plants, the veryplants that the betanist removed from the forest, that she dried in anoven at 40 degrees Celsius to kill the fungi, and that she has sincepressed between newspapers.

Are we far from or near to the forest? N ear since one finds it here inthe collection. The ntir forest? No. Neither ants, nor trapdoor spi-ders nor trees nor soil nor worms nor the howler monkeys whosecry can be heard for miles are in attendance. Only those few speci-mens and representatives that are of interest to the botanist havemade it into the co lection. So are we, therefore, far from the forest?Let us say we are in between, possessing all of it through these dele-gates, as if Congress held the entire United States; a very economicalmetonymy in science as in politics, by which a tiny part allows thegrasping of the immense whole.

And what would be the point oftransporting the whole forest here?One would get lost in it It would be hot. The betanist would in anycase be unable to see beyend her small plot. Here, however, the airconditioner is humming. Here, even the walls become part of the mul-tiple crisscrossed lines of the chart where the plants find a place thatbelongs to them within the taxonomy that has been standardized formany centuries. Space becomes a table chart, the table chart becomesa cabinet the cabinet becomes a concept and the concept becomes aninstitution.Therefore we are neither very far from nor very close to the fieldsite. We are at a good distance, and we have transportedasmall number of pertinent features. During the transportation something hasbeen preserved. If I can manage to grasp this invariant this je n saisquoi I believe, I will have understood scientific reference.

In this little room where the betanist shelters her col ection (Figure2.6) is a table, similar to that in the restaurant, on which the speci-mens brought back from distinct locations at different times are nowdisplayed. Philosophy, the art of wonderment should consider this ta-ble carefully, since it is where we see why the betanist gains so muchmore from her collection than she loses by distancing hersel f from the

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Figure 2.6

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44

Figure 2.9

of triangles. Equipped only with the priori forms of intuition, to useKant s expression again, it would be impossible to draw these sites to-gether short of teaching somehow a limbless mind-in-a-vat how touse such equipment as compasses, clisimeters, and topofils.

Sandoval the technician, the only person on the expedition who isnative to the region, has dug the largest part of the hole shown in Fig-ure 2.10. Of course had I not artificially severed the philosophy fromthe sociology, I would have to account for this division of labor be-tween French and Brazilians, mestizos and Indians, and I would haveto explain the male and female distributions of roles.) Armand, hereleaning on the drill, is removing core samples by collecting earth inthe small chamber at its tip. Unlike Sandoval s tool, the mattock thatis lying on the ground now that its task is complete, the dri ll is a pieceof laboratory equipment. Two rubber Stoppers placed at 90 centime-ters and at one meter allow it to be used both as an instrument formeasuring depth and, by pushing and twisting, as a sampling tool. Thepedologists examine the soil sample, then Heloisa collects it in a plas-tic bag on which she writes the number of the hole and the depth atwhich it was taken.

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Figure 2.10

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Figure 2 17

CIRCUL TING REFERENCE

63molding figurines? No, it is to extract another judgment, one that no

involves color, but rather texture. Unfortunately, for this purthere is no equivalent of the Munsell code, and if there were one,

wouldn t know how to get it here. Todefine granularity in a standardized manner, one would need half of a well-equipped laboratory.Consequently, our friends must content themselves with a qualitativetest that rests on thirty years' experience and that they willlater com

with Iabara tory results. If the soil is easily molded, it is clay; if itcr:umbles under one's fingers, then one is dealing with sand. Hereis anonmrently very easy trial that amounts to a sort of Iabaratory experi

in the hollow of one's band. The two extremes are easily recog-ilizable, even by a beginner like me. It is the intermediate compounds

sand and clay that make the differentiation difficult and crucial,we are interested in qualifying the subtle modifications of the

transition soils which are more clayey toward the forest and moretoward the savanna.

Lacking any kind of gauge, Armand and Rene rely on a back-anddiscussion of their judgments of taste, as my father would dohe tasted his Corton wirres.Sandy-clay or clayey-sand?

No, I would say clayey, sandy, no sandy-clay._Wait, mold it a bit more, give it some time.Okay, yes, Iet' s say between sandy-clay and clayey-sand.Helolsa, make a note: at P2, between five and seventeen centime

areno argiloso a argilo-arenoso. (I forgot to mention that we are alteJ'nating constantly between French and Portuguese, the politics of;mgnage being added to the politics of race, gender, and disciplines.)combination of discussion, know-how, and physical manipula

allows for the extraction of a calibrated qualification of texturecan immediately replace, in the notebook, the soil that can now

thrown away. A ward replaces a thing while conserving a trait thatit. Is this a term-to-term correspondence? No, the judgment

not resemble the soil. Is this metaphorical displacement? Noso than a correspondence. Is it metonymy? Not that either, sincewe take a handful of soil for the whole horizon, we keep onlyis on the paper of the notebook and none of the earth that wasto qualify it. Is this compression of data? Yes definitely, since

r ~ o occupy the location of the soil sample, but it is a change of

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76

2. that this transformation would begin in the savanna in a 15- to30-meter band at the edge.

While these rw o notions are dif:ficult to conceive when startingfrom the assumptions of classical pedology, it is necessary, takinginto account the solidity of the arguments derived from biologicalstudy, to test these hypotheses.

The clay enrichment of superior horizons cannot be accomplishedby neoformation (lacking a known source of aluminum [aluminumis responsible for the creation of clay out of the silica containedin quartz]). The only agents capable of accomplishing this areearthworms, whose activity on the studied site we have been ableverify, and which dispese of large quantities of koalinite contained inthe horizon to a depth of 70 cm. The study of this worm populationand the measure of its activity will therefore supply essential datathe continuation of this research.Unfortunately, I will not be able to follow the next expedition;

While the other members of the team say au revoir to Edileusa, Isay adieu We are leaving by plane. Edileusa is staying in Boapleased by an intense and friendiy collaboration that was new toand she will continue to watch over her field site, which, because qthe Superposition of pedology and botany, has just increased intance. And her plot will thicken more once we add the scienceearthworms. Constructing a phenomenon in successive layersit more and more real within a network traced by the displacemen(in both senses) of researchers, samples, graphics, specimens,reports, and funding requests.

For this network to begin to lie-for it to cease tosufficient to interrupt its expansion at either end, to stop providhfor it, to suspend its funding, or to break it at any otherSandoval's jeep swerves, breaking the jars of earthworms anding the little packages of earth, the whole expeditionwill have topeated. If my friends cannot find the funding to return to thewill never know if the sentence in the report about the role ofearthworms is a scientific truth, a gratuitous hypothesis, or aAnd ifi lose all my negatives at the photo shop, how will anyonewhether I have lied?

Airconditioning at last Finally, a space that looks more like aratory (Figure 2.26 . We are in Manaus, at INPA, in an old

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Figure 2.26

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