Daniel Sarewitz - “We have always been post-normal”

“New Currents in Science: The Challenges of Quality” workshop | Ispra, 3-4 March 2016

Keynote address: Daniel Sarewitz, Arizona State Univ. - “We have always been post-normal”

The crisis in science is comprehensive, yet it is also largely a semantic delusion. The reason we are so disappointed and afraid is that our expectations for science were conditioned by physics, rather than by economics, sociology, and ecology. If the latter had been our canonical sciences, then no one would have expected science to be replicable, general, accurate, predictive, and redemptive.
I suggest that one reason many of our social and political institutions today seem to be performing so poorly is that we keep aiming more and more science at them without positive effect. We are continually told that this poor performance is a reflection on the institutions (or the irrational humans that inhabit them), and have prescribed as a cure such bromides as more evidence-based policy, and a more scientifically literate public—still more science, that is.
The post-normal science perspective allows us to see that the crisis in science is less about deterioration of scientific quality, or weakness of our institutions, than the falsification of unreasonable expectations about science. This is actually a good thing because, fortunately, our institutions are not organized around the need for physics-like accuracy and prediction in human affairs. The modern myths of science have made us believe that this is something to be regretted and overcome; the post-normal science perspective helps us recover the insight that, on the contrary, it is a core strength of democratic societies.

#JRC_STS #PNS2016