alists make of iron-clad economic laws, we would be denouncing the
smugglers from the other side who hide under the name of Science
and sneak in certain assertions that they dare not express openly, for
fear of shocking their public, but that obviously belong to the world of
preferences—that is, values.
By seeking to make a clear distinction between Science and ideol-
ogy, the old Constitution sought to rectify the continually patrolled
border, while avoiding two types of frauds: the one in which values are
used in secret, to interrupt discussions of facts (the Lyssenko affair re-
mains the classic model); and the one coming from the opposite direc-
tion, in which matters of fact are surreptitiously used to impose pref-
erences that the user does not dare admit or discuss frankly (scientific
racism is the most typical and best-studied example). The struggle
against scientific ideology thus seems to have the advantage of puri-
fying scientists of the political or moral pollution from which they
hoped to profit; it calls them back to order and requires them to re-
place all the amalgams of facts and values with facts alone, nothing
but matters of fact. The struggle against the ideological use of Science
forbids those who discuss values to hide behind the evidence of na-
ture, while obliging them to disclose their values, nothing but their
values, without dragging the sciences into the picture, since, as they
say, “What is cannot suffice to define what ought to be.”
It appears truly difficult to do without an arrangement that makes it
possible to protect the autonomy of Science and the independence of
moral judgments simultaneously. Unfortunately, such arrangements
have the weaknesses of the dichotomy that they aim to maintain. Even
if an arrangement of this sort were to achieve its aims, the most effec-
tive of all border police would succeed only in obtaining pure facts
and pure values. Now, we have just demonstrated that facts define the
work of the sciences as poorly as values define the task of morality.
The source of the impotence of the Science-ideology distinction is
thus clear: it has a laudable goal that, were it to be achieved, would not
advance us one iota!^8 The difference between Science and ideology,
purity and pollution, even though it has occupied and continues to oc-
cupy a great number of intellectuals, thus does not have the efficacity
that one might suppose, considering the energy spent on it, as well as
the size of the police forces that patrol the border.^9 The allegory of the
POLITICS OF NATURE
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