tions, let us thus add that the term we need to replace the word “fact”
will have to include, in addition to the stages in its fabrication, the in-
dispensable role ofshapingdata summed up by the word “theory” or
“paradigm.”^5
Let us now move to the other side of the border. The notion of
“value” has its own disadvantages. It has the pronounced weakness,
first of all, of depending entirely on thepriordefinition of “facts” to
mark its territory. Values always come too late, and they always find
themselves placed, as it were, ahead of the accomplished fact, thefait
accompli.If, in order to bring about what ought to be, values require
rejecting what is, the retort will be that the stubbornness of the estab-
lished matters of fact no longer allows anything to be modified: “The
facts are there, whether you like it or not.” It is impossible to delimit
the second domain before stabilizing the first: that of the facts, the
evidence, the indisputable data of Science. Then, but only then, can
values express their priorities and their desires. Once the cloning of
sheep and mice has become a fact of nature, one can, for example,
raise the “grave ethical question” whether or not mammals, including
humans, should be cloned. By formulating the historical record of
these traces in such a way, we see clearly that values fluctuate in rela-
tion to the progress of facts. The scales are thus not weighted evenly
between someone who can define the ineluctable and indisputable re-
ality of what simply “is” (the common world) and someone who has
to maintain the indisputable and ineluctable necessity of what must be
(the common good), come hell or high water.
Even if they reject this position of weakness that obliges them al-
ways to wait behind the fluctuating border of facts, values still can-
not regroup in a domain that would be properly theirs, in order to de-
fine the hierarchy among beings or the order of importance that they
should be granted. They would then be obliged to judgewithout facts,
without the rich material owing to which facts are defined, stabilized,
and judged. The modesty of those who speak “only about facts” leads
astray those who must make judgments about values. Seeing the ges-
ture of humility with which scientists define “the simple reality of the
facts, without claiming in any way to pass judgment on what is mor-
ally desirable,” the moralists believe that they have been left the best
part, the noblest, most difficult part! They take at face value the role of
humble drudge, zealous servant, unbiased technician played by those
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