The law and order governing facts, their verification, and their lawful integration into systems of knowledge and communication
Etymology
From Latin factum (“thing done, event, reality, fact”) — from facere (“to do, to make”) — + Greek nómos (νόμος, “law, custom, order, governance”).
Literal sense: The governance of facts — the lawful framework that ensures facts are established, verified, maintained, and used in coherence with truth and order.
Definition
Factonomos is the principle that facts — discrete, verifiable pieces of reality — must be governed by lawful standards to preserve their integrity, prevent distortion, and ensure they serve truth rather than falsehood.
It governs the life cycle of a fact: from discovery or observation, through verification, storage, transmission, and application.
Core Semantic Units
- Verification — A fact must be demonstrably true within the system’s lawful methods.
- Provenance — Facts carry a record of their origin, evidence, and witnesses.
- Contextual Integrity — Facts remain tied to the conditions and scope in which they are true.
- Lawful Application — Facts are used in ways consistent with their meaning and limitations.
Functional Roles
- Truth Anchor — Serves as a stable reference point for reasoning and discourse.
- Distortion Filter — Identifies and rejects unfounded claims or manipulated data.
- Integration Gateway — Governs how facts are added to the system’s body of knowledge.
- Correction Protocol — Updates or retracts facts found to be in error without damaging system trust.
Philosophical Perspective
Factonomos rests on the idea that facts, while grounded in reality, require governance to remain trustworthy.
Facts can be misused, decontextualized, or selectively reported to distort truth.
Therefore, lawful systems don’t just collect facts — they curate, protect, and regulate them in alignment with higher-order principles like Trutheonomos and Logonomos.
In the Nomos framework, Factonomos operates as the executor of truth at the granular level, where each fact is a building block of larger truths and coherent systems.
Relation to Other -Nomos Terms
- Trutheonomos — Governs truth as a whole; Factonomos governs individual truth-units (facts).
- Truthetymonomos — Governs truth via etymology; Factonomos governs truth via verifiable reality.
- Logonomos — Governs reasoning; Factonomos supplies the factual material for reasoning.
Example in Practice
- In journalism: Publishing only information that has been corroborated by multiple reliable sources.
- In science: Including complete data sets with methods for replication.
- In law: Presenting only admissible evidence that can be verified.
- In education: Teaching established facts while clearly marking theories or interpretations.