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PARKINS

Sheila Jasanoff

The great mystery of modernity is that wethink of certainty as an attainable state.Uncertainty has become the threat to col-lective action, the disease that knowledgemust cure. It is the condition that posescruel dilemmas for decision-makers; thatmust be reduced at any cost; that is tamedwith scenarios and assessments; andthat feeds the frenzy for new know-ledge, much of it scientific.

For a long time we acceptedlack of certainty as humankindsnatural lot. What has happened to

reverse that presumption? Perhapsit is the spread of binary thinkingthat frames the future in terms ofdeterminate choices between know-able options. Boolean algebra anddigital logics are not only built intoour computers, mobile phones andother information and communica-tion technologies, they dominate theframing of social problems and theoptions for dealing with them.

Thus, statistics offers a choicebetween Type 1 and Type 2 errors. Thefirst lead to false positives that promote

too much risk avoidance, the second tofalse negatives that keep us from actingwhen we ought. Implicitly, error follows abinary trail. Philosophy casts moral dilem-mas as trolley problems, in which possi-ble solutions are represented as choicesencountered at forks in the track. Oneoption is to let the trolley run its course andlet five people die; the other is to throw a fatman on to the track, diverting the trolleyand killing only one person. Which is themoral choice? Decision theory adopts oneway of thinking and reasoning as rational;all others are biased by definition and need

to be explained away as aberrations ofhuman cognition. Even the concept of thewinwin solution assumes, in binary logic,that for each party to a game, winning andlosing are the only options.

Life, as we know from experience, sel-dom unfolds in binaries. We rarely con-front Hamlets choice to act or not to act.There are always added considerations.Which action is best, by what criteria, howsoon, with what provisos, at what cost andwith what allowance for error? Even thehalf-mad prince recognized that second-order consequences might complicate his

first-order decision: to be or not to be.Real problems in the real world are

infinitely complex, and for any given

problem, science offers only part of thepicture. Climate scientists can tell us withhigh certainty that human activities areraising Earths mean surface temperature,that extreme weather events will occur,and that melting ice caps will cause abrupt

changes in the global climate. But it takestime and money to produce such certainty,and for all the doors that science even pro-visionally closes, others relevant to policyremain beyond closure by science alone.In the case of climate change, for example,science cannot tell us where and when dis-aster will strike, how to allocate resourcesbetween prevention and mitigation, whichactivities to target first in reducing green-house gases, or whom to hold responsi-

ble for protecting the poor. How shouldpolicy-makers deal with these layersof ignorance?

The short answer is with humility, aboutboth the limits of scientific knowledge andabout when to stop turning to science tosolve problems. Policy-makers need to focuson when it is best to look beyond science forethical solutions. And science advisers needto admit that other sorts of analyses mustalso inform political decisions. Capacity-building in the face of uncertainty has tobe a multidisciplinary exercise, engaginghistory, moral philosophy, political theory

and social studies of science, in addition tothe sciences themselves.

Science fixes our attention on the know-

able, leading to an over-dependence onfact-finding. Even when scientists recog-nize the limits of their own inquiries, asthey often do, the policy world, implicitlyencouraged by scientists, asks for moreresearch. For most complex problems, thepursuit of perfect knowledge is asymptotic.Uncertainty, ignorance and indeterminacyare always present.

We need disciplined methods toaccommodate the partiality of sci-

entific knowledge and to act underirredeemable uncertainty. Letus call these the technologies of

humility. These technologies com-pel us to reflect on the sources ofambiguity, indeterminacy andcomplexity. Humility instructsus to think harder about how toreframe problems so that their ethi-cal dimensions are brought to light,which new facts to seek and whento resist asking science for clarifica-tion. Humility directs us to alleviateknown causes of peoples vulner-

ability to harm, to pay attention tothe distribution of risks and benefits,

and to reflect on the social factors that

promote or discourage learning.Policies based on humility might: redress

inequality before finding out how the poorare hurt by climate change; value green-house gases differently depending on thenature of the activities that give rise to them;and uncover the sources of vulnerabilityin fishing communities before installingexpensive tsunami detection systems.

This call for humility is a plea for pol-icy-makers to cultivate, and for universi-ties to teach, modes of knowing that areoften pushed aside in expanding scientificunderstanding and technological capacity.

It is a request for research on what peoplevalue and why they value it. It is a prescrip-tion to supplement science with the analy-sis of those aspects of the human conditionthat science cannot easily illuminate. It is acall for policy analysts and policy-makersto re-engage with the moral foundationsfor acting in the face of inevitable scientificuncertainty. Sheila Jasanoff is Pforzheimer Professor

of Science and Technology Studies, John F.

Kennedy School of Government, Harvard

University, 79 John F. Kennedy Street,

Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA.

For more essays and information see http://nature.com/nature/focus/scipol/index.html.

Technologies of humilityResearchers and policy-makers need ways for accommodating the partiality of scientific

knowledge and for acting under the inevitable uncertainty it holds.

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ESSAYNATURE|Vol 450|1 November 2007

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