Fact or Value

Facts are the invulnerable constants in a world full of speculation and rhetoric. They are descriptions lifted off the surface of reality. Once established, they remain true forever. Or do they?

In the sixteenth century, ‘scientists’ in Europe believed that garlic could weaken the power of magnets. By the eighteenth, however, they had grown so sceptical that they dismissed the existence of meteorites as absurd.

What explains this upsurge in incredulity? Were these attitudes rooted in the same source: an inability to ground beliefs in evidence?

In the two centuries that divide these perspectives, a significant shift occurred in how the fledgling scientific communities of the West approached the world. The scientific advancements of the seventeenth century prompted governments, scholars, businesses and individuals to take data seriously. It sparked a revolutionary but painstaking effort to gather facts—tables filled with seemingly insignificant information that, over time, led to more accurate understandings of reality and overturned centuries-old theories rooted in tradition and authority.

In a sense, the West ‘atomized’ reality and ‘discovered’ facts. Reports of new phenomena—of talking plants and new stars—were considered or dismissed based on how much they deviated from the established body of facts—an epistemic filtering process that pre-scientific Europe simply could not perform.

However, as this ‘culture of fact’ permeated the political foundations of European society, it also served as a tool to justify empire, slavery and prejudice. The findings of pseudoscientific disciplines, such as phrenology, commanded the reverence and certainty of factual knowledge, and were invoked to justify invasion and oppression.

Today, we regard facts as the indivisible building blocks of knowledge, distinct from values and theories, and immune to human subjectivity, bias or prejudice. Anyone who questions an established fact is often seen as delusional or acting in bad faith, in dire need of ‘fact-checking’.

But if some ‘facts’ have later been proven untrue, what does that say about the nature of facts? Are they objective descriptions of the world? Or are they inferences—informed guesses—drawn by observing the opaque surface of reality? Are facts found, or are they made?

In the next few sessions, we will explore the emergence and spread of factual culture: its roots, its transformational impact and its political consequences.

Session 1: The Prehistory of Facts

What is truth in a world without facts? What were the pre-scientific roots of factual culture?

Reading List

This Eurocentric bibliography betrays our limitations and is far from comprehensive. If you know of a text that charts the emergence and development of factual culture in other parts of the world, please do let us know and we will add it to the bibliography.

• FEBVRE, Lucien. ‘Chapter 11: A Possible Support for Irreligion: The Sciences’ in The Problem of Unbelief in the Sixteenth Century: The Religion of Rabelais (Beatrice Gottlieb trans.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982, pp. 380–420.
• FEBVRE, Lucien. ‘Chapter 12: A Possible Support for Irreligion: Occultism’ in The Problem of Unbelief in the Sixteenth Century: The Religion of Rabelais (Beatrice Gottlieb trans.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982, pp. 421–454.
• GREEN, Richard Firth. ‘Chapter 1: From Troth to Truth’ in A Crisis of Truth: Literature and Law in Ricardian England. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999, pp. 1–40.
• LEHOUX, Daryn. ‘Tropes, Facts and Empiricism’. Perspectives on Science 11(3) (Fall 2003): 326–45.
• POOVEY, Mary. ‘Accommodating Merchants: Double-Entry Bookkeeping, Mercantile Expertise, and the Effect of Accuracy’ in A History of the Modern Fact: Problems of Knowledge in the Sciences of Wealth and Society. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1998, pp. 29–91.
• SERJEANTSON, R. W. ‘Testimony and proof in early-modern England’. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 30(2) (1999): 195–236.
• SHAPIN, Steven. ‘Epistemological Decorum: The Practical Management of Factual Testimony’ in A Social History of Truth: Civility and Science in Seventeenth-Century England. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1995, pp. 193–242.
• SHAPIRO, Barbara J. ‘“Fact” and the Law’ in A Culture of Fact: England, 1550–1720. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000, pp. 8–33.
• SHAPIRO, Barbara J. ‘“News”, “Marvels”, “Wonders” and the Periodical Press’ in A Culture of Fact: England, 1550–1720. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000, pp. 86–104.

Session 2: The History of Objectivity

For us, the fact is the paradigm expression of the truth, a precise description that mirrors the world, one that two independent observers could pen without collusion. Facts are statements free of the observer’s distortions, unburdened by subjectivity.

We value the truth precisely when it is untainted by the clumsiness of human interference. But has this always been the case? Have statements that objectively reflect the world around us always been considered the pinnacle of truth? Could our predecessors have even imagined grasping reality with the same certainty we take for granted today?

Reading List

• BEVIR, Mark. ‘Objectivity in History’. History and Theory 33(3) (1994): 328–44.
• BLAIR, Ann, Paul Duguid, Anja-Silvia Goeing, and Anthony Grafton (eds). Information: A Historical Companion. Princeton University Press, 2021, pp. 38–60.
• DASTON, Lorraine, and Katherine Park. ‘Strange Facts’ in Wonders and the Order of Nature: 1150–1750. New York: Zone Books, 1998, pp. 215–54.
• DASTON, Lorraine, and Peter Galison. ‘Prologue: Objectivity Shock’ and ‘1. Epistemologies of the Eye’ in Objectivity. New York: Zone Books, 2007, pp. 11–55.
• DASTON, Lorraine. ‘Baconian Facts, Academic Civility and the Prehistory of Objectivity’ in A. Megill (ed.), Rethinking Objectivity. Durham: Duke University Press, pp. 37–63.
• DASTON, Lorraine. ‘Objectivity and the Escape from Perspective’. Social Studies of Science 22(4) (November 1992): 597–618.
• GITELMAN, Lisa (ed.). “Raw Data” is an Oxymoron. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2013.
• SHAPIN, Steven. ‘The Sciences of Subjectivity’. Social Studies of Science 42(2) (2012): 170–84.
• WESTRUM, Ron. ‘Science and Social Intelligence about Anomalies: The Case of Meteorites’. Social Studies of Science 8(4) (1978): 461–93.
• WOOTTON, David. ‘Accuracy and Galileo: A Case Study in Quantification and the Scientific Revolution’. The Journal of the Historical Society 10(1) (March 2010): 43–55.

Session 3: Truth from Fact

Is there such a thing as reality, built of facts?
If there is such a reality, is it at all possible to extract facts from it?
If it is possible to do so, is that truth or is truth something more? 

In Truth from Fact, we survey a series of interlocking arguments and discussions on the bridge between ontology and epistemology, from Aristotle to John Searle.

Forthcoming in December 2024.
Rules and reading list below.

Reading List (click on the spreadsheet below to download the texts)

• AUSTIN, J. L. ‘Truth’ in George Pitcher (ed.), Truth (Englewood, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1964), pp. 18–31.
• CRIVELLI, Paolo. ‘States of Affairs’ in Aristotle on Truth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 46–62.
• GOODMAN, Nelson. ‘II. Things’ in Of Mind and Other Matters (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990), pp. 29–53.
• PERLER, Dominik. ‘Late Medieval Ontologies of Facts’. The Monist 77(2) (1994): 149–69.
• PUTNAM, Hilary. ‘Realism with a Human Face’, ‘A Defence of Internal Realism’, ‘Beyond the Fact/Value Dichotomy’ and ‘The Place of Fact in a World of Values’ in Realism with a Human Face (James Conant ed.) (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990).
• SEARLE, John. ‘Creating Institutional Facts’, ‘Does the Real World Exist? Part 1’ and ‘Truth and Correspondence’ in The Construction of Social Reality (New York: Free Press, 1995).
• STRAWSON, P. F. ‘Truth’ in George Pitcher (ed.), Truth (Englewood, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1964), pp. 32–53.

Rules

• The only mandatory requirement for participation is that you read at least one text from the list.
• Please assign yourself one (and only one) text by writing your name alongside it on THIS SPREADSHEET under the columns ‘READER 1 / 2’.
• We have limited the number of readers per text to two to ensure a wide-ranging discussion.
• These sessions are by no means lectures or seminars. Folks who attend will be expected to talk about their texts, just as they would in a book club.
• All violations of these rules are punishable by defenestration.

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