The distinction between "fact" and "value" in western culture is, I should think, as old as philosophy. The discovery that it implies a chasm dividing facts and values into two separate realms is, however, no older than a couple of centuries. Once discovered, though, it seemed to many philosophers impossible to bridge. More recent explorations of the distinction tend to suggest that here and there a bridge may be built after all and that in places the gap appears to close such that fact and value fuse almost seamlessly.