On uncertainty
Helga Nowotny is author and coauthor of an impressive number of significant contributions to understanding our contemporary late-modern condition with respect to knowledge, science, and technology. She always has emphasized the importance ofresearch-based knowledge, while also acknowledging that science is both tentative and fragile. In her latest book, she explicitly deals with many different ways in which we encounter and engage with uncertainty. The main argument is that uncertainty is inherent to modern society and should be seenas a resource and not a problem for learning about, exploring and dealing with the present and the future.
Using the notion of the “cunning of uncertainty”Nowotny implies that we can and should learn from situations characterized by ambiguity, provisional knowledge, the unexpected, undecidedness, etc. “Cunning”according to the Oxford English Dictionary means “having or showing skill in achieving one’s ends by deceit or evasion”. Nowotnyuses the more archaic meaning of cunning: skillful, resourceful, opportune, and even wise. Building on a series of richly described case stories from the world of contemporary research and innovation, Nowotnyargues that the notion of uncertainty has much more in store for us than just, well uncertainty. Since uncertainty appears to be fundamental to the way we live today, we should stop shunning uncertainty but rather seek to maintain and qualify our deliberation on uncertain issues: “embracing uncertainty” as Nowotny puts it.
The way we understand uncertainty clearly has impact on public understanding of science, although Nowotny does not address this issue head on. There is a long tradition trying to explain different kinds of scientific uncertainty, such as the uncertainty involved in risk assessments, to non-scientists. Rather than focusing on scientific uncertainty alone, even though this clearly is important, Nowotny challenges us to think about the many kinds of uncertainty that are “written into the script of life”.
Her book is a welcome reminder that even we as humans crave for certainty, uncertainty is fundamental to our modern way of living and to science, and we need to find ways in which to cope with it. Nowotnyends by endorsing political scientist Charles Lindblom’s incrementalism, or “muddling through”, as a humble, reflective approach to understanding and managing the delicate and dynamic balance between “what we know and do not yet know about the world and about ourselves”.