that the debates must take in order to sort out these propositions,
which are no longer unified by anything at all, and especially not by
nature. After bringing together the collective and thus fighting the
false differentiation mandated by the old Constitution, we still have to
divide it up again by discovering the “right” differentiating principle,
the one that will allow us to avoid the procedural shortcuts owing to
which most of the decisions made according to the old separation of
powers* between nature and society were illegitimate.
Some Disadvantages of the Concepts of Fact and Value
The tempting aspect of the distinction between facts and values lies in
its seeming modesty, its innocence, even: scientists define facts, only
facts; they leave to politicians and moralists the even more daunting
task of defining values. Who would not feel the comfort in such a for-
mulation? The bed is still warm; all one has to do is slip in and settle
at once into the sleep of the just. It is from this long dogmatic sleep,
however, that we have to awaken. For what reason would it be more
difficult to declare what things are worth than to declare what they
are?^2
In order to discover a good successor to the difference between facts
and values, let us examine the common use of these notions by setting
up a list of specifications containing the essential requirements that its
replacements will have to meet.
What is wrong with the way the word “fact” is currently used? It
obliges us, in the first place, to omit the work required in order to es-
tablish the persistent, stubborn data. In the opposition between facts
and values, one is obliged to limit “facts” to the final stage in a long
process of elaboration. Now, if facts are fabricated, if “facts are made,”
as they are said to be, they pass through many other stages, which the
historians, sociologists, psychologists, and economists of the sciences
have struggled to inventory and categorize. Apart from the recognized
matters of fact, we now know how to identify a whole gamut of stages
where facts are uncertain, warm, cold, light, heavy, hard, supple, mat-
ters of concern that are defined precisely because they do not conceal
the researchers who are in the process of fabricating them, the labo-
ratories necessary for their production, the instruments that ensure
their validation, the sometimes heated polemics to which they give
A NEW SEPARATION OF POWERS
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