The Cunning of Uncertainty

Helga Nowotny

• Publisher: Polity
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9780745687629, 9780745687612
• eBook ISBN: 9780745687650
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Teaching Science & Technology

Uncertainty is interwoven into human existence. It is a powerful incentive in the search for knowledge and an inherent component of scientific research. We have developed many ways of coping with uncertainty. We make promises, manage risks and make predictions to try to clear the mists and predict ahead. But the future is inherently uncertain - and the mist that shrouds our path an inherent part of our journey. The burning question is whether our societies can face up to uncertainty, learn to embrace it and whether we can open up to a constantly evolving future.

In this new book, Helga Nowotny shows how research can thrive at the cusp of uncertainty.  Science, she argues, can eventually transform uncertainty into certainty, but into certainty which remains always provisional.

Uncertainty is never completely static.  It is constantly evolving. It encompasses geological time scales and, at the level of human experience, split-second changes as cells divide. Life and death decisions are taken in the blink of the eye, while human interactions with the natural environment may reveal their impact over millennia.

Uncertainty is cunning. It appears at unexpected moments, it shuns the straight line, takes the oblique route and sometimes the unexpected short-cut. As we acknowledge the cunning of uncertainty, its threats retreat. We accept that any scientific inquiry must produce results that are provisional and uncertain. This message is vital for politicians and policy-makers: do not be tempted by small, short-term, controllable gains to the exclusion of uncertain, high-gain opportunities.

Wide-ranging in its use of examples and enriched by the author's experience as President of the European Research Council, one of the world's leading funding organisations for fundamental research. The Cunning of Uncertainty is a must-read for students and scholars of all disciplines, politicians, policy-makers and anyone concerned with the fundamental role of knowledge and science in our societies today.

1
Craving for Certainty

Uncertainty in context

Uncertainty is pervasive, written into the script of life. The temporality of human existence prevents the achievement of absolute certainty and the fullness of life mixes events which can be foreseen and are routinely expected with unforeseen elements and surprising turns. This is played out in the unfolding of the individual life course just as much as on the world stage. Uncertainty undergirds the social arrangements of living together, be it in conflict or cooperation. Craving for certainty is only one means of stemming the tide, warding off the feeling of being overwhelmed by something which one cannot yet grasp, let alone control. The craving for certainty exists, irrespective of whether it can be fulfilled, expressed in innumerable ways that attempt to lay our doubts and fears to rest. It is in the productive, ever-changing tension between the two poles of a dynamic spectrum, of being in control and exposed to uncertainty, that personal and collective identities are formed by seeking continuity in defiance of what might happen next. The interplay between overcoming uncertainty and striving for certainty underpins the wish to know in order to be able to influence present and future. It is as old as humanity. It is rooted in the deep-seated desire for security, the material, technological and social protection necessary for survival, comfort and well-being. Knowledge generated when confronted with uncertainty has proven to be the most powerful means developed in our cultural evolutionary trajectory so far to assure survival and striving for continuous improvements in material living standards and well-being. The capacity for generating knowledge and how to use it needs to be widely shared by assuring access through education and research if the challenges of future uncertainties are to be met.

Western capitalistic societies owe much of the living standards they enjoy to the systematic attempt to reduce existential insecurity. Their belief in technical progress and continuous improvement is rooted in the values of the Enlightenment which opened the legitimate space for the libido scientiae, the desire to know, and made room for practical experimentation across a wide range of activities (Mokyr 2009). Political, legal, economic and cultural structural arrangements were accompanied by strong beliefs in the universalism of reason, manifest in scientific positivism. Rationality and reason were championed as the signposts to safeguard and assure a double-anchored future. One route was through the epistemological foundations of the certainty of knowledge gained through experimentation and proof. The other route was through the practical applications of the new knowledge which were the result of such efforts. From the Baconian project to Diderot's Encyclopedia, an impressive array of transformations of knowledge into practice followed, which in turn led to new knowledge in the useful arts and inventions. As a result, the security and comfort of daily life were enhanced and an impressive infrastructure for the increase of material wealth and vastly improved health conditions emerged. Among them, the amazing gains in longevity stand out. Seen through a worldwide statistical lens today, never before did such a large part of humanity have the chance to live healthily into old age, whose onset and termination continue to be extended. The improvements in health and life expectancy reach even those countries in which, admittedly, still much more needs to be done. This is one of the dreams of the Enlightenment that has materialized, even if new challenges come with it.

Historical flashbacks risk either falling into a heroic narrative or construing vastly exaggerated discontinuities. Looking back to the values and beliefs of the Enlightenment, the late Yehuda Elkana never tired of inviting me and others to ‘rethink’ it. We should accept the fact that all knowledge – and this includes knowledge about uncertainties − is situated in a specific historical and social context. This is key to discovering the origins of knowledge, enriching and relevant as it is to understand their conceptual power and reach. It also holds for assessing the validity and reliability of knowledge. The pertinent question of whether knowledge can and will contribute towards a solution for a problem at hand is intimately connected with contextualizing it, a lesson which many policy makers often learn the hard way. Rethinking the Enlightenment entails an epistemological shift from a ‘local universalism’ to a ‘global contextualism’ (Elkana and Klöpper 2012). What this means is we must leave behind the assumption of Enlightenment belief in the universalism of reason. With the benefit of hindsight, this presumed universalism turns out to be a historically situated, local form of knowledge. It was sufficiently powerful to succeed in generalizing itself as a universal norm. Historians of science and other scholars have amply demonstrated that local knowledge elements enter in multiple ways. Whatever is presented today as universal in a globalized world has a local flavour to it which needs to be contextualized. Epistemologically speaking, it follows that we ought to move towards a global contextualism, in which the variety of contexts is given its epistemological as well as its practical due by recognizing the historical, cultural, political and social specificities and differences of diverse forms of knowledge.

Such a rethinking matters when it comes to putting uncertainty, and the attempts to cope with and overcome it, into context. Just as one can no longer speak of one modernity, but has to acknowledge that there are multiple modernities, each emerging from and producing its own specific preconditions and meanings, putting uncertainty into context reveals a colourful mix of ambiguities and contradictions. The tensions that become visible need to be made explicit and so do the different meanings attached to uncertainty. Speaking about uncertainty and analysing the various ways of coping with it therefore always has to put uncertainty into context.

So, why the theme of uncertainty and why now? On a superficial level, at least part of the western world seems to have entered a phase in which uncertainty as an enduring feature of life is losing the allure of being mainly a carrier of opportunities. As the collective mood swings, not for the first time, uncertainty becomes associated with threat. Vague at first, it is linked to the anticipation of deterioration, or even decline, yet to come. Again, at a superficial level, one can hypothesize that the glorious decades of material plenty are definitely over. The financial markets with their excessive hubris have triggered a lasting economic crisis with global repercussions which exacerbate the widening income gap that had started to develop a long time ago. The split between the ‘real’ economy and the virtual one generated by and within financial markets is bound to lead to even greater volatility. Some major shake-up appears to be unavoidable and the spectre of social unrest looms on the horizon. These perceptions are framed and seem to be corroborated by major geopolitical shifts under way.

Seen in historical perspective, such moments of crisis are nothing new. They are part of cyclical movements that have been attributed to being an integral part of how capitalism works. One might object that this time it is no longer western-dominated capitalism alone, but the different varieties of global/local capitalisms that intersect and overlap, thereby aggravating the uncertainty they induce. Moreover, the perception of crisis in a general climate of uncertainty clouding the future horizon is bound to be very different among the members of the global elites than it is among the swelling ranks of younger people that now populate the new precariat. The middle class is said to be squeezed out. All these differences in context will have an impact on the meaning that uncertainty is given. It also affects the resources that people have at their disposal as to how they cope with the uncertainty they encounter and the strategies they can muster to feed their future aspirations. Obviously, the present notion of the future is undergoing yet another change, just as it has repeatedly in the past. At present, the future appears volatile and fragile. It has lost much of the coherence which held it together, at least seen in retrospect. Our present notion of the future has become a highly fragmented one.

Despite such and other musings of the Zeitgeist and the admittedly always momentous concentration of the perception of uncertainty in the present, even if it is pregnant with imaginations of the future, there is one remarkable continuity in how the future is perceived, approached and imagined. It thrives in a special contextual niche of uncertainty. It is the institutionalized and immensely powerful form in which the systematic production of new knowledge has found its home: science and technology. While the origins of modern science lie in Europe and the question of why in Europe is still debated among historians, it continues to spread unevenly ever since from a centre occupied by Europe, North America and Japan to a globally dispersed periphery. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, this extension has gained rapid momentum, with science and technology becoming a truly global phenomenon. For the first time, China's R&D intensity, which is considered the traceable marker of scientific and technological activities in economic terms, overtook the EU-28 in 2012. Estimates about future funding closely follow the prognostication of economic prowess of the two major economic superpowers. By 2022, both China and the USA are projected to spend €480 billion annually on research and development (Battelle 2014).

Such figures make it clear that governments consider science and technology the driving forces of economic growth. At the same time, they conceal the power that is inherent in curiosity when it pushes the boundaries of what is already known into the territory of the unknown. Faced with the enormous realm of what is not yet known, but eventually will be known, scientific curiosity continues the quest to discover and transform what it finds into a consolidated, yet open, flexible and always provisional body of knowledge. The process of knowledge production itself is inherently uncertain, although striving to ascertain new certainties. Moreover, every bit of newly produced knowledge − the procedures and methods through which it is gained, the instruments and research infrastructures that underpin it, the mathematics and other tools that help to acquire it – all lead to a vast number of new questions to ask about interconnections and mechanisms, about the regulation of mechanisms and how these insights can be usefully put into further practice and lead to further new research. This barely touches upon the next big challenge, namely how to bring society into science and let it take part, not only as consumers or presumed beneficiaries, but as producers of knowledge in the process of research itself.

The uncertainty of the research process is confronted by the inquisitive and curious mind of the individual researcher, but also shared as an institutionalized collective endeavour by the system of science. Research councils and other funding agencies, recruitment and promotion committees in universities, and various policy-making bodies have developed coping strategies for dealing with uncertainty, even if uncertainty comes in different guises for them. Under increasing pressure from governments, improving links with business and industry has become a policy priority which carries its own specific uncertainties. Contextualizing uncertainty reveals different meanings and allows for different questions to be asked. Why do research at all? Which kind and who sets the priorities? What about current career prospects? Who identifies talent and how? Which are the rewards and how can we sustain them? Throughout this highly structured and efficient system in pursuit of the generation of new knowledge, uncertainty is pervasive. In the lab and during the research process, the question is simply: does it work? However small the results, are they potential stepping stones for larger leading questions? Science is one of the few institutions with a genuine long-term vision. It is to extend scientific understanding of the world further into the unknown. To use the old but still valid metaphor, every member of the scientific community stands on the shoulders of giants in order to see further, in greater depth and with better understanding of the complexity of the revealed interconnections. Science as a system has to assure the optimal conditions for this to happen.

As a shared and highly interactive practice, research is never done for its own sake only. Societal expectations are too big and all-embracing, interwoven with government priorities and policies that effect modes of financing in increasingly tighter and more sophisticated ways. The transformation of uncertainties into certain knowledge, even if always only provisional, is followed by putting knowledge to practical use, once it has been certified by scientific peers. Research is about manipulation and intervention, not only in the lab, but it is expected even more to effect changes in the real world once it leaves the lab: to build bridges or the latest generation of military weaponry; to develop new GMOs or more environmentally friendly fertilizers; to develop a new vaccine in order to halt the next global epidemic; to provide continuously updated and sophisticated software for cyber-security; followed by a host of other uses without which modern life would be unthinkable. Nor are the social sciences exempt from expectations to provide knowledge which is deemed adequate to mitigate specified social problems and come up with solutions to what is to be done about them. Only the humanities believe – still – that they can escape the expectation of societal impact and so-called relevance, insisting on their intellectual significance and critical stance (Volkswagenstiftung 2014).

Paradoxically, the tighter coupling of impact expectations with the higher degree of certainty that knowledge is expected to have in order to meet the target leads to new uncertainties. Uncertainty switches gestalt. It shifts elsewhere. The uncertainty inherent in the research process that teases, excites and challenges the researcher to follow where it leads persists in a productive way. But following the arduous process of transforming scientific uncertainty into certainty is no longer sufficient. With governments and funding agencies increasingly insisting on ex ante assurances on what they will receive in return for (their) taxpayers' money, uncertainty is displaced. It now resides in the many intractable processes that may, but need not, lead to the desired or promised impact and outcomes. Will it unleash the desired innovation and do so sufficiently fast to be ahead of one's competitors? Will policy advice be taken up or remain inconsequentially on the sidelines? The future of the stipulated impact, which seemed so near and which has officially been marked by milestones with deadlines and deliveries with measurable outcomes, is by no means given. As Bertrand de Jouvenel had observed in 1967, knowledge of potential outcomes of future-creating actions is inescapably uncertain and hence ‘a contradiction in terms’. He suggests that we need to understand ‘emerging situations’ while they are still in flux, and therefore subject to influence before they become facts. A society's capacity for innovative change must be appreciated as ‘our knowledge of the future is inversely proportional to the rate of progress’. In the context of accelerating innovation, this implies that knowledge of the future is progressively moved closer to the present, while long-term futures recede ever further (Jouvenel 1967: 257; quoted in Adam and Groves 2007: 32−3).

This is one of the many unforeseen and unforeseeable instantiations where I see the cunning of uncertainty at work. It is not only hidden in the fact that knowing more brings with it the realization of what we do not yet know. The cunning of uncertainty tends to undermine subversively what is usually taken for granted. It is not the outcome of any careful calculation or design. It disturbs the linearity of planned design and yet achieves results more sophisticated than any calculated design could hope to come up with. It smiles at the arrogance of overconfidence. Sometimes it injects hard and often painful learning into individual biographical trajectories or collective histories. It makes room for the unexpected and lets the new enter through the...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Dedication
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Preface: It Could be Otherwise
• Acknowledgements
• 1: Craving for Certainty
• 2: The Odds for Tomorrow
• 3: The Cunning of Promises
• 4: Coping with Uncertainty
• 5: Embracing Uncertainty
• Epilogue
• References
• Index
• End User License Agreement