Beyond Normal
U of East Anglia Enviro Sciences Prof Michael Hulme, in the Guardian, points us to the dire need for post-normal science, when science as we know it is not enough to …
… save the human race from destroying itself!
Damn your eyes, man! Can you not see!
God, I love a good Charleton Heston moment. Here’s Mike on the failings of normal science and the need for post-normal science to help society cope when, for example, the sky is falling:
… Philosophers and practitioners of science have identified this particular mode of scientific activity as one that occurs where the stakes are high, uncertainties large and decisions urgent, and where values are embedded in the way science is done and spoken.
It has been labelled “post-normal” science. Climate change seems to fall in this category. Disputes in post-normal science focus as often on the process of science - who gets funded, who evaluates quality, who has the ear of policy - as on the facts of science.
… The danger of a “normal” reading of science is that it assumes science can first find truth, then speak truth to power, and that truth-based policy will then follow.
Reminds me a little of the 20th century, when post-normality as a guiding principle had not yet been adopted by science but was highly popular with social philosophers/activists such as Adolf Hitler, Mao Tse Tung, Joseph Stalin and others. Not everyone agreed with the need for dire action as they expressed it or their methods when they acted on it, but that’s the beauty of post-normality. It’s self-evidence is in the eye of the beholder. It speaks truth to power from the barrel of a gun, or the funding mechanism of a university, or the regulatory bodies of a government, what have you.
That was then, this is the 21st century. I don’t know about you, but I’ve been feeling post-normal for a while now. Post-normality is a can of worms that wriggles in many directions, but I’m ready to embrace it! Reality will be what I say it is. Let’s go!
major h/t tips to Melanie Phillips and Maggie’s Farm, where you’ll find more commentary.
Belmont gets his Pascal on here.
Dr Sanity dives deeper into the science of bullshit.
Blue Crab brings out the Big Lie.
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 10:16 am on Friday, March 16, 2007
3 Responses to “Beyond Normal”
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March 16th, 2007 at 1:45 pm
Post normal == predetermined outcome
March 16th, 2007 at 3:19 pm
It is good to know that there are still some people with enough courage and integrity to stand up for the truth, even when faced with rack and ruin.
Prof. Hulme displays his evil without a blush for the whole world to see–at least for those with enough surviving little gray cells to understand what they read. Given the work of the “progressive” educationists over the past hundred or so years, the number is now severely limited–the obvious prerequisite for this kind of evil.
Those who manage to come out of the systematic mangling of the mind perpetrated by those like Prof. Hulme are heroes in my book. (That includes you, Jules.)
March 17th, 2007 at 5:05 pm
[...] is so important that transcends the need for evidence or agreement with evidence. Hat tip goes to jules Crittenden for the [...]