The control of nature and the origins of the dichotomy between fact and value

Abstract

My objective is to reflect on a distinction that is fundamental to the origin of a central aspect of current scientific practices. These practices, those which we are accustomed to call the practices of modern science, represent the development, and (as foreseen by Bacon in the New Atlantis) the complexification and specialization of a practice, a particular way of dealing with questions about nature, which arose and was consolidated in the 16th and 17th centuries. The articulation of this practice depended on the distinction between fact and value, which emerged in the first half of the 17th century in the works of Francis Bacon, Galileo Galilei, René Descartes and Blaise Pascal. I will show that the distinction between fact and value underlies the modern conception of the domination (control) of nature, a conception that, following subsequent developments, has ended up being taken to be a central value that orients scientific knowledge and technical/technological development.