THE VALUE OF SCIENCE 45 1 



And that is not all. I have said that the scientific fact is the 

 translation of a crude fact into a certain language; I should add that 

 every scientific fact is formed of many crude facts. This is sufficiently 

 shown by the examples cited above. For instance, for the hour of the 

 eclipse my clock marked the hour a at the instant of the eclipse; it 

 marked the hour /? at the moment of the last transit of the meridian 

 of a certain star that we take as origin of right ascensions; it marked 

 the hour y at the moment of the preceding transit of this same star. 

 There are three distinct facts (still it will be noticed that each of them 

 results itself from two simultaneous facts in the rough; but let us 

 pass this over). In place of that I say: The eclipse happened at the 

 hour 24 (a-/?)/(/?— y), and the three facts are combined in a single 

 scientific fact. I have concluded that the three readings a, /?, y made 

 on my clock at three different moments lacked interest and that the 

 only thing interesting was the combination (a-/?)/(/?— y) of the three. 

 In this conclusion is found the free activity of my mind. 



But I have thus used up my power; I can not make this com- 

 bination (a-(3) / (/3-^>) have such a value and not such another, since 

 I can not influence either the value of a, or that of /?, or that of y, 

 which are imposed upon me as crude facts. 



In sum, facts are facts, and if it happens that they satisfy a pre- 

 diction, this is not an effect of our free activity. There is no precise 

 frontier between the fact in the rough and the scientific fact; it can 

 only be said that such an enunciation of fact is more crude or, on the 

 contrary, more scientific than such another. 



(To be continued) 



