Politics of Nature: How to Bring the Sciences into Democracy

useless to repress, hide, or play down the importance of controversies,
the mediation of instruments, the cost of knowledge, and the clamor
of disputes. We have installed controversies at the heart of collective
activity, without worrying about whether they are nourished by the
usual uncertainty of research or by the debates proper to represen-
tative assemblies.^23 When new entities are involved, there is always
lively discussion. As we are no longer in a hurry to crush under the lit-
tle word “fact” the countless configurations under which the new enti-
ties participate in collective life, we shall have all the space we need for
them to unfold at leisure. I do not claim that this exercise will be easy,
but simply that we shall be able to fulfill this item in the specifica-
tions set.
I also believe that we can fulfill the second clause fairly readily. The
notion of “fact,” let us recall, had the disadvantage of not taking into
account the enormous work of shaping, formatting, ordering, and de-
ducing, needed to give the data a meaning that they never have on
their own. Tradition in the philosophy of the sciences gives this work
the name “theory.” A lovely euphemism that has come straight down
from the Heaven of Ideas to illuminate the Cave! The word we have

A NEW SEPARATION OF POWERS

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Box 3.3. Summary of the specifications that the successor to the fact-value dis-

tinction has to respect.

1. The notion that replaces that of fact has to include the successive stages of
   fabrication.


2. The notion that replaces that of fact has to include the role of the shaping re-
   sponsible for its stabilization.


3. The notion that replaces that of value has to allow the triage of propositions,
   while paying close attention to the facts in detail rather than turning the at-
   tention to foundations or forms.


4. The notion that replaces that of value has to guarantee against the cheating
   that causes values to be disguised as facts and facts to be disguised as values.


5. The notion that replaces the fact-value distinction has to protect the auton-
   omy of the sciences and the purity of morality.


6. The notion that replaces the fact-value distinction has to be able to ensure a
   quality control at least as good as, and if possible better than, the one that is
   being abandoned, concerning both the production of facts and the produc-
   tion of values.