It is not an easy task to transform the inarticulate mutterings of a
multitude of entities that do not necessarily want to make themselves
understood: every researcher, every politician, every moralist, every
manufacturer or marketer, every administrator knows this well. A
profusion of clever devices, setups, instruments, laboratories, ques-
tionnaires, visits, investigations, demonstrations, observations, and
data collections will be required in order to make the propositions a
little more clearly understood. Unlike the old Constitution, let us not
forget, all this work is not chalked up on the debit side of the quality
of the diction but to its credit. The more work one does in the labora-
tory, the more quickly and clearly matters of concern are detected; the
more the opinion-formers are equipped, the better articulated their
opinions will be; the more one structures attempts to bind goods and
persons, the better the quality of the investigation will be; the more
one is determined to raise artificial problems, the more one cultivates
the art of the scruple. This link between constructivism and realism
would be perfectly obvious if the Sphinx had not imposed its blockage
on the city for so long by asking propositions to choose between
facticity and reality.^55 It has unleashed so many hesitations in the cor-
tege that there is some point in recalling this once again if we want the
procession to advance in orderly fashion. It is by its capacity for work,
by the number of items of equipment and sensors, by the artificiality
of its shapings, by the interventionist nature of its setups, by the
intentionality of its research, by the scope of its requirements that a
good assembly is measured. Thanks to such an assembly, we under-
stand through the mediation of its translators what is being demanded
by the candidates for existence that are thronging at its door.
Thus the propositions are now already almost involved in the col-
lective; in any case,they are beginning to speak its language:“I cause a
deadly and unforeseen illness,” say this virus and its virologists; “I de-
mand the means to modify cosmology profoundly,” say that pulsar
and its accompanying radioastronomers; “I pay and yet what I want
is not taken into account,” say this consumer and his means of calcu-
lation; “I propose to modify cosmology even more profoundly,” say
that flying saucer and its ufologists; “I cast spells,” say this fetish and
its fetishist. An assembly that would accept all these propositions at
once would explode right away under the tremendous multiplication
of foreignnesses that crowd in to demand existence. Those who are
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