The post-normal science of precaution

Science now finds itself in a new and troubled situation. The traditional optimistic picture is problematic and compromised at every turn. The scientific system now faces a crisis of confidence, of legitimacy and ultimately of power. We can usefully distinguish two sorts of science. The ‘mainstream’ is reductionist in style, and increasingly linked to industry. By contrast, the ‘post-normal’ approach embodies the precautionary principle. It depends on public debate, and involves an essential role for the ‘extended peer community’. It is based on the recent recognition of the influence of values on all research, even including the basic statistical tests of significance. It is the appropriate methodology when either systems uncertainties or decision stakes are high; under those conditions the puzzle-solving approach of ‘normal science’ is obsolete. This is a drastic cultural change for science, which many scientists will difficult to accept. But there is no turning back; we can understand post-normal science as the extension of democracy appropriate to the conditions of our age.     

Engineering ethics and post-normal science: A French perspective

The paper identifies three failures of current engineering ethics and suggests that a post-normal turn may help redesign a more demanding ethics for engineering practice. Finally it outlines some difficulties that such a post-normal engineering ethics may face, especially in the French context.     

The science of ‘what-if?’

An appropriate response to the new challenges to science will require more than new explicit goals and social organisation. New leading questions will be appropriate. The traditional questions of ‘what/how?’ for research and ‘how/why?’ for the design fields, will be supplemented by ‘what-if?’. This previously had its place in exploratory phases of all research; now it will become an essential component of ‘post-normal’ science. Its form precludes the dogmatic and exclusive styles which have hitherto been dominant in science as applied to policy problems; and it lends itself to open enquiry and public participation.     

Risk management and governance:: a post-normal science approach

In this essay we consider the problems of risks and governance in the light of three well-known examples: the ‘Seveso' accident involving dioxin; the BSE epidemic; and the licensing of genetically modified maize. These form a natural progression, from hazards that are ‘classical', manageable mainly by ‘applied science', to those that are totally post-normal. The new hazards typified by genetically modified maize, but including many others such as untested toxic chemicals, pose serious challenges to governance. The erosion of trust in the established institutions could lead to paralysis of innovation and also of government.     

Recent environmental research in the Netherlands: towards post-normal science?

Dutch environmental sciences have a tradition of multi- and interdisciplinarity and are developed in close interaction with Dutch environmental policy. Interdisciplinarity and policy relevance, two elements that are also prominent in the climate change scientific and policy debate, form highly important issues within the theory of post-normal science. The greater part of the Dutch climate research is organised in the National Research Programme (NRP), a research programme that explicitly focuses on delivering a contribution to the policy process. This paper uses four criteria for post-normal science (namely the management of uncertainty, the management of inter- and transdisciplinarity, the management of policy relevance and the management of quality) to detect a trend towards post-normal science. These criteria are useful for indicating long-term shifts but they do not (yet) provide measurable standards to assess scientific programmes like the NRP. The paper concludes that the NRP can not be typified as a post-normal research activity, but that it undoubtedly contains post-normal aspects. Especially the growing attention that is paid to the involvement of different stakeholders and divergent perspectives refers to a post-normal scientific practice.     

Peak energy and climate change: The double bind of post-normal science

Insofar as the viability of industrial society is at stake, energy supply and climate change are not normal scientific issues. Fossil fuel is the ultimate finite resource, and the atmosphere the ultimate finite sink. There is dispute about the most fundamental issues and values to be promoted or defended. The concept of post-normal science has been introduced for precisely this kind of situation, where “facts are uncertain, values in dispute, stakes high and decisions urgent (Ravetz [1, p. 349]).” Although this applies equally to energy supply and climate change, the related knowledge regimes offer a remarkable contrast. Mainstream energy science, on the one hand, has refused to engage in post-normal science. The accredited experts at the International Energy Agency (IEA) and elsewhere have left “peak energy” to mavericks at the fringes or outside mainstream scientific discourse. Consequently, the pressing issue of future energy scarcity has been kept from the public agenda. Official climate science, on the other hand, has embraced post-normal science. But even though the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has been uniquely successful in placing climate change on the public agenda, the inherent ambiguities of post-normal science have plunged climate science into a deep legitimacy crisis. Most people prefer denial and self-deception to an unvarnished vision of the truth when intractable problems such as peak energy and climate change are at stake. In such cases, scientists are in a double bind: they are damned if they do and doomed if they do not engage in post-normal science.     

Science in a double-bind:: Gregory Bateson and the origins of post-normal science

The work of Gregory Bateson, particularly his principles for a new kind of science which, in 1958 “had as yet no satisfactory name”, is revisited as a foundation for post-normal science and adaptive approaches to management of complex environmental problems. The addition of usefulness and relevance of results to decision-making as quality criteria in post-normal science implies inquiry into context at different levels of complexity (what Bateson refers to as deutero-learning). This in turn implies emphasis on processes that facilitate inclusion of diverse perspectives—which facilitates an understanding of relationships among different aspects of a problem; also, social learning, an adaptive approach to valuation that also inquires into the process by which values are constructed, and a reflexive approach to decision-making. Though marginalized from policy discourse, Bateson's principles provided the basis for the eventual development of a new shared understanding.     

Dialogue and debate in a post-normal practice of science: a reflexion

Scientific activities are always embedded in the cultural matrix that gives purpose to the enterprise, and so we need to develop a rich and meaningful view of social reality. In doing so we realise that we all live different lives, but each of us can broaden our knowledge of the social world through dialogue with others. If scientific questions, which relate directly to society, were researched in a ‘dialogical' manner, ways would be sought to understand the concerned individuals, populations or stakeholders. While never rejecting concern for internal coherence and rigour, science can cope better with future uncertainties, and better solve the problems of those peoples that make up society, by extensively utilising social dialogue.     

Postnormal Science and the maturing of the structural contradictions of modern European science

To analyze the sometimes paradoxical features of contemporary science, I use the concept of ‘contradiction’, namely a problem that cannot be solved within the confines of the system in which it is set. I study such contradictions as knowledge and power, knowledge and ignorance, the True and the Good, innovation and property, elitism/democracy, and reality and safety. I then sketch the reactions that have occurred so far, both official and popular, and advance some ideas of my own, including awareness and non-violence.     

Environmental nasty surprise, post-normal science, and the troubled role of experts in sustainable democratic environmental decision making

An environmental nasty surprise is an environmental problem such as stratospheric ozone depletion that: catches scientists, technologists, regulators, mass media, and public off-guard; is already extensive by the time it is widely recognized; stems from entrenched technologies; and presents a potentially large-scale, long-term threat to humans or ecosystems. How might the need to minimize the generation of such problems - and address them as effectively as possible when they emerge - help us think more clearly about the role that experts should play in environmental decision making? Using case material on industrial chlorine chemistry, this paper considers the limitations of the theory of post-normal science as a framework for identifying appropriate and inappropriate modes of scientific and technical expertise in environmental decision making. The analysis highlights the need for a model of sustainability expertise that (a) recognizes how prevailing frameworks of environmental decision making allow technologists to actively produce - and exploit - uncertainty and (b) normatively promotes development and deployment of expertise in ways that actively confront these tendencies while making environmental decision making more democratic.     

Extended peer communities and the ascendance of post-normal politics

This paper describes an approach to the operationalisation of extended peer communities that deploys uncertainty, ignorance and indeterminacy, and examines the crucial role of trust. Trust underwrites both the dialogue central to extended peer communities and the functional utility of the knowledge so created, because when “facts are uncertain, values in dispute, stakes high … and the framing of the problem involves politics and values as much as science” (Ravetz J. Knowledge in an uncertain world. New Scientist 1990;127:2) the taken-for-granted trust in ‘normal' science is no longer assured, necessitating the cultivation of trust by other means. It is argued that extended peer communities provide a focus for the ascendant politics of the post-normal realm, in resonance with recently articulated insights into broader social theory.“… we continue to believe in the sciences, but instead of taking in their objectivity, their truth, their coldness, their extraterritoriality … we retain what has always been most interesting about them: their daring, their experimentation, their uncertainty, their warmth, their incongruous blend of hybrids, their crazy ability to reconstitute the social bond. We take away from them only the mystery of their birth and the danger their clandestineness posed to democracy” (Latour B. We have never been modern. Hemel Hempstead (UK): Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993:142).     

The territorial futures of Europe: ‘Trends’, ‘Competition’ or ‘Cohesion’

The ESPON 2006 scenario project generated three integrated roll-forward scenarios (A roll-forward scenario is a scenario in which the hypotheses define the parameters at the start of the covered time period and the scenario then explores the unfolding of events based on theses hypotheses. This is opposed to a roll-backward scenario in which the situation at the end of the time period is defined and the scenario then explores the path to reach this situation.). In the trend scenario renewed efforts are made for the Lisbon strategy, demanding extra investments in R&D and education. Regional policy will also be continued with vigour. In the Competition Scenario bold decisions are made regarding Europe's continued prosperity. The Lisbon strategy takes precedence over institutional reform and other sectoral policies. In the Cohesion Scenario Europe is confronted with the challenge of fully integrating the various regions in Europe. The budgets for Regional Policy and Rural Development Policy are enhanced and targeted to the most needy regions. The scenarios are described as stories about the future, supported by model calculations and visualised by various maps. They concentrate on urban and rural development and on territorial developments in different parts of Europe, like North-West Europe, the Alpine Space and Central and Eastern Europe. In addition, a proactive, roll-back scenario explores the possibilities to combine competitiveness, cohesion and sustainability. A message, derived from the scenarios, is that independent of the explored policy options the European territory will be confronted with large challenges like a (rapid) decline of fossil energy resources and increasing impacts of climate change. The scenarios appear particularly helpful in the context of the current paradigm shift in European regional policy from a policy for balance to a policy for aggregate growth.     

‘Exploratory landscape scenarios’ in the formulation of ‘landscape quality objectives’

The European Landscape Convention (ELC) calls for the definition of ‘landscape quality objectives’ (LQO) as “the formulation by the competent public authorities of the aspirations of the public with regard to the landscape features of their surroundings”. However, it is not yet defined how the integration of the visions of the public should be carried out. Notably in regions with poor participatory culture and in rural landscapes abandoned by people and consequently by their activities, dealing with the future does not seem a straightforward task. In these marginal rural landscapes the role of agriculture is being altered under the influence of the new rationale of the Common Agriculture Policy, so it may have to assume different functions in the future. Thus, this paper aims at showing how the development of ‘exploratory landscape scenarios’ can be a useful tool, firstly to find plausible landscape futures, and secondly to trigger discussions with the public regarding their aspirations for their landscape. The development procedure for ‘exploratory landscape scenarios’ builds on the ‘intuitive logics’ approach that focuses on the production of a variety of scenarios as starting point for discussion about the future rather than on finding an optimal one, which can limit the options unnecessarily from the beginning. The methodological approach is illustrated at a local scale by using the case study of Mértola in southeast Portugal. The results of the scenario exercise point out the adequateness of the methodology in the development of futures that are perceived as plausible by local stakeholders and, thereby, able to bring out their desires and threats towards the future of their landscape.     

Child accounting and ‘the handling of human souls’

Child accounting texts published in the US during the early to mid-20th century are utilised to reveal the potency of Foucauldian analyses of accounting as a disciplinary technology. It is contended that child accounting – a voguish technique for recording, monitoring and governing the school pupil – provides a compelling illustration of Foucault’s emphasis on individualisation as a foundation for the exercise of disciplinary power. Further, child accounting encompassed mundane practices which could activate disciplinary power such as continuous hierarchical surveillance and normalising judgment. Centred on the child in the place of instruction rather than the employee in the corporation, the study offers a socio-historical exploration of accounting at its margins and in a domain where Foucault’s work on discipline has particular resonance.     

The twilight of science-Last of the ‘gods’

That technology is the world's dominant religion and science its theology, is a theme which I have developed over two decades. Once linguistic hurdles are cleared, this thesis appears self-evident, even trite. The newer proposition in this paper is that just as with all other religions, the public which will no doubt continue to want the fruits (and pay the price) of the techno-religion is not at all sure about the value of the science-theology. We are definitely witnessing the beginning of the end for the first universal theology and its god, science.     

The pricing of leverage products: An empirical investigation of the German market for ‘long’ and ‘short’ stock index certificates

This paper describes the first thorough empirical analysis of the pricing of leverage products in the German retail market. These mainly exchange-traded products with an impressive trading volume are frequently advertised as long and short futures contracts, although they are theoretically equivalent to one-sided barrier options. Issuers’ daily quotes for stock index products are compared to (i) theoretical values derived from the prices of Eurex options and to (ii) boundaries obtained from semi-static superhedging strategies. For the vast majority of products, bid and ask quotes significantly exceed both theoretical values and upper hedging boundaries, thus providing almost risk-free profits for the issuers.     

Here be dragons… exploring the ‘unknown unknowns’

Since ancient times, the phrase ‘Here be Dragons’ has been used to signify dangerous and unexplored territories. While wayfarers of the past realised that lack of knowledge necessitated increased vigilance and caution, today's ‘Here be Dragons’ generally remain hidden and unwanted. Human psychology, institutional frameworks and scientific convention have removed these unrecognised sources of ignorance from the mental maps of modern society. This omission is critical in today's interconnected, interdependent world. It is now time to counter current myopia by using the new digital tools available to draw on wider societal framing in conjunction with scenarios methodologies. This process could provide the meta risk analysis suitable to enable the ‘Here be Dragons’ to be identified, monitored and tackled, thereby ensuring that decision-makers and ultimately society become more aware of intractable uncertainty and adaptive in the face of inevitable change.