Did you intend the underlying self-referential play on consensus reality within your text? (The 'authoritative' wikipedia definition, the reference to Charles Tart with the caveat of "may have been coined," and Joi's highlighting of papers [or texts] that could prove or change facts if they were not ignored?)

Anyway, since I haven't read Latour's book, and only have reference to your and Joi's descriptions of it contents, I'll throw this out as a question: isn't this just a rehashing and (maybe) an extrapolation of many previous works (i.e., Plato's metaphor of the cave, Kabbalistic Pansemioticism, writings of de Sassure's, Husserl, Derrida, et al.)?

And since we're throwing out related readings, I thought I'd recommend Umberto Eco's _The Name of the Rose_. Probably more fun that reading his _Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language_ or _The Search for the Perfect Lanaguage_, but still qualifying by showing the dichotomy of interpretation of events and/or reality as described through language with "mystical overtones" vs. apparent a priori/a posteriori analyses and descriptions.

Of course, there are political motivations that lend to the division of and tension between these two viewpoints.

Which brings me to another question: if consensus reality is "a very anthropocentric view," why is there no discussion on the political or power-seeking motivations behind the structures? If we look at the example of the shift from Ptolemaic to Copernican astronomy, Prof. Gingerich's idea that the "entire social and intellectual milieu . . . was ready to accept such a change," and Stevens' view that "the construction of reality is an artistic act, not just a scientific one," aren't we also talking about the political dynamics within and surrounding the (artistic) creation of 'facts' and 'truth'? To me, that would be a quite an issue for contemplation and discussion.

Regards,
Kevin Harris Stoll