Silvio Oscar Funtowicz | |
---|---|
Born | Buenos Aires, Argentina |
Era | 20th-century philosophy |
Region | Western Philosophy |
School | Post-normal |
Main interests | Philosophy of science |
Notable ideas | NUSAP Post-normal science Knowledge Assessment |
Silvio O. Funtowicz is a philosopher of science active in the field of science and technology studies. He created the NUSAP, a notational system for characterising uncertainty and quality in quantitative expressions, and together with Jerome R. Ravetz he introduced the concept of post-normal science. He is currently a guest researcher at the Centre for the Study of the Sciences and the Humanities (SVT), University of Bergen (Norway).
Silvio Funtowicz began his career teaching mathematics, logic and research methodology in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He left Argentina during the military dictatorship, and moved to England where, during the 1980s he was a Research Fellow at the University of Leeds, where started his cooperation with Jerome Ravetz. [1] Until his retirement in 2011, he was a scientific officer at the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission (EC-JRC). In 2012 he became a professor at the Centre for the Study of the Sciences and the Humanities (SVT) at the University of Bergen, Norway, and since 2021 he has been a guest researcher there.
Silvio Funtowicz' work with Jerome R. Ravetz Uncertainty and Quality in Science for Policy [2] started a series of reflections on the quality of science used for policy, mostly in connection with environmental and technological risks and policy-related research, introducing NUSAP a notational system for the management and communication of uncertainty in science for policy. NUSAP's applications to different settings were spearheaded in the Netherlands by Jeroen van der Sluijs et al. 2005. [3] Based on this ground work the concept of post-normal science was introduced in a series of papers published in the early nineties. [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9]
The article ‘Science for the post-normal age’ [6] is presently the most cited [10] paper in the journal Futures. Another paper of note is 'The worth of a songbird:ecological economics as a post-normal science' [11] in Ecological Economics.
Today post-normal science (PNS) is intended as applicable to most instances where the use of evidence is contested due to different norms and values. For Peter Gluckman (2014), chief science advisor to the Prime Minister of New Zealand, post-normal science approaches are today appropriate for a host of problems including “eradication of exogenous pests […], offshore oil prospecting, legalization of recreational psychotropic drugs, water quality, family violence, obesity, teenage morbidity and suicide, the ageing population, the prioritization of early-childhood education, reduction of agricultural greenhouse gases, and balancing economic growth and environmental sustainability”. [12]
For Carrozza [9] PNS can be “framed in terms of a call for the ‘democratization of expertise’”, and as a “reaction against long-term trends of ‘scientization’ of politics—the tendency towards assigning to experts a critical role in policymaking while marginalizing laypeople”.
Funtowicz’ most recent work – with Roger Strand - has touched upon the issue of agency at times of change, arguing that a risk centred vision based on prediction and control in front of global and emerging threats should be replaced by one based on commitment: “rather than believing that contemporary global challenges will be sufficiently met by being responsible under risk, we will ask how to stay committed in times of change.” [13] Together with Ângela Guimarães Pereira he curated a volume for Oxford University Press ‘Science for Policy: New Challenges, New Opportunities’, [14] and another with Routledge on the End of the Cartesian Dream [15] which represent an important collective effort gathering three generations of scholars active in the field of PNS, followed a year later by a multi-authors book by the same community on the reproducibility and quality control crisis of science. [16] Together with Andrea Saltelli and others, he developed the concept of sensitivity auditing, an extension of sensitivity analysis for statistical and mathematical models used as input to policy design and appraisal. [17] He has authored with Alice Benessia a series of works on innovations and technoscience. These are critical essays on what it means for a society to be ‘smart’ and ‘sustainable’. [18] [19] With Jerome R. Ravetz he recently contributed two original voices to the Encyclopaedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences (Oxford) on ‘Peer Review and Quality Control’ and on ‘New Forms of Science. [20] [21] Since the nineties he has worked with Bruna De Marchi and others on risk governance and public participation. [22] [23]
In the 1990s, Silvio Funtowicz collaborated with the late James J. Kay and other members of what some have called the "Dirk Gently Gang" [24] (including Mario Giampietro [25] and David Waltner-Toews) on the Ecosystem Approach. [26] This work, linking complexity theory, thermodynamics, and post-normal science, explored implications of this "new science" for environmental management and human well-being. Another scholar Silvio Funtowicz cooperates with is Martin O’Connor. [27] His most recent work focuses on the crisis in the quality control of science, [28] its impact on science's social functions, [29] the possible flaring of old and new science wars, [30] and the COVID-19 pandemic. [31]
Agroecology is an academic discipline that studies ecological processes applied to agricultural production systems. Bringing ecological principles to bear can suggest new management approaches in agroecosystems. The term can refer to a science, a movement, or an agricultural practice. Agroecologists study a variety of agroecosystems. The field of agroecology is not associated with any one particular method of farming, whether it be organic, regenerative, integrated, or industrial, intensive or extensive, although some use the name specifically for alternative agriculture.
The ecological footprint measures human demand on natural capital, i.e. the quantity of nature it takes to support people and their economies. It tracks human demand on nature through an ecological accounting system. The accounts contrast the biologically productive area people use to satisfy their consumption to the biologically productive area available within a region, nation, or the world (biocapacity). Biocapacity is the productive area that can regenerate what people demand from nature. Therefore, the metric is a measure of human impact on the environment. As Ecological Footprint accounts measure to what extent human activities operate within the means of our planet, they are a central metric for sustainability.
Public awareness of science (PAwS) is everything relating to the awareness, attitudes, behaviors, opinions, and activities that comprise the relations between the general public or lay society as a whole to scientific knowledge and organization. This concept is also known as public understanding of science (PUS), or more recently, public engagement with science and technology (PEST). It is a comparatively new approach to the task of exploring the multitude of relations and linkages science, technology, and innovation have among the general public. While early work in the discipline focused on increasing or augmenting the public's knowledge of scientific topics, in line with the information deficit model of science communication, the deficit model has largely been abandoned by science communication researchers. Instead, there is an increasing emphasis on understanding how the public chooses to use scientific knowledge and on the development of interfaces to mediate between expert and lay understandings of an issue. Newer frameworks of communicating science include the dialogue and the participation models. The dialogue model aims to create spaces for conversations between scientists and non-scientists to occur while the participation model aims to include non-scientists in the process of science.
Post-normal science (PNS) was developed in the 1990s by Silvio Funtowicz and Jerome R. Ravetz. It is a problem-solving strategy appropriate when "facts [are] uncertain, values in dispute, stakes high and decisions urgent", conditions often present in policy-relevant research. In those situations, PNS recommends suspending temporarily the traditional scientific ideal of truth, concentrating on quality as assessed by internal and extended peer communities.
Health ecology is an emerging field that studies the impact of ecosystems on human health. It examines alterations in the biological, physical, social, and economic environments to understand how these changes affect mental and physical human health. Health ecology focuses on a transdisciplinary approach to understanding all the factors which influence an individual's physiological, social, and emotional well-being.
James J. Kay was an ecological scientist and policy-maker. He was a respected physicist best known for his theoretical work on complexity and thermodynamics.
David Waltner-Toews is a Canadian epidemiologist, essayist, poet, fiction writer, veterinarian, and a specialist in the epidemiology of food and waterborne diseases, zoonoses and ecosystem health. He is best known for his work on animal and human infectious diseases in relation to complexity. He lives in Kitchener, Ontario.
Jerome (Jerry) Ravetz is a philosopher of science. He is best known for his books analysing scientific knowledge from a social and ethical perspective, focussing on issues of quality. He is the co-author of the NUSAP notational system and of Post-normal science. He is currently an Associate Fellow at the Institute for Science, Innovation and Society, University of Oxford.
Iulie Margrethe Nicolaysen Aslaksen is a Norwegian economist and Senior Researcher at Statistics Norway. She was a member of the Petroleum Price Board from 1990 to 2000. She is an expert on energy and environmental economics, including petroleum economics, climate policy and economics and sustainable development. She is cand.oecon. from the University of Oslo in 1981 and dr.polit. from 1990. She has been a visiting researcher and Fulbright Fellow at Harvard University and the University of California, Berkeley, and Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Oslo. She was a member of the government commissions resulting in the Norwegian Official Report 1988:21 Norsk økonomi i forandring and the Norwegian Official Report 1999:11 Analyse av investeringsutviklingen på kontinentalsokkelen.
Sensitivity auditing is an extension of sensitivity analysis for use in policy-relevant modelling studies. Its use is recommended - i.a. in the European Commission Impact assessment guidelines and by the European Science Academies- when a sensitivity analysis (SA) of a model-based study is meant to demonstrate the robustness of the evidence provided by the model in the context whereby the inference feeds into a policy or decision-making process.
The Merger of Knowledge with Power: Essays in Critical Science is a book written in 1990 by Jerome Ravetz.
NUSAP is a notational system for the management and communication of uncertainty in science for policy, based on five categories for characterizing any quantitative statement: Numeral, Unit, Spread, Assessment and Pedigree. NUSAP was introduced by Silvio Funtowicz and Jerome Ravetz in the 1990 book Uncertainty and Quality in Science for Policy. See also van der Sluijs et al. 2005.
Uncertainty and Quality in Science for Policy is a 1990 book by Silvio Funtowicz and Jerome Ravetz, in which the authors explain the notational system NUSAP and applies it to several examples from the environmental sciences. The work is considered foundational to the development of post-normal science.
Science on the verge is a book written in 2016 by group of eight scholars working in the tradition of Post-normal science. The book analyzes the main features and possible causes of the present science's crisis.
The No Nonsense Guide to Science is a 2006 book on Post-normal science (PNS). It was written by American born British historian and philosopher of science Jerome Ravetz.
Quantitative storytelling (QST) is a systematic approach to exploring the many frames potentially legitimate in a scientific study or controversy. QST assumes that, in an interconnected society, multiple frameworks and worldviews are legitimately upheld by different entities and social actors. QST looks critically at models used in evidence-based policy. Such models are often reductionist in that tractability is achieved at the expense of suppressing available evidence. QST suggests corrective approaches to this practice.
Sensitivity analysis studies the relation between the uncertainty in a model-based the inference and the uncertainties in the model assumptions. Sensitivity analysis can play an important role in epidemiology, for example in assessing the influence of the unmeasured confounding on the causal conclusions of a study. It is also important in all mathematical modelling studies of epidemics.
Sensitivity analysis studies the relationship between the output of a model and its input variables or assumptions. Historically, the need for a role of sensitivity analysis in modelling, and many applications of sensitivity analysis have originated from environmental science and ecology.
Andrea Saltelli is an Italian scholar specializing in quantification using statistical and sociological tools. He has extended the theory of sensitivity analysis to sensitivity auditing, focusing on physical chemistry, environmental statistics, impact assessment and science for policy. He is currently Counsellor at the UPF Barcelona School of Management.
The concept of Extended peer community belongs to the field of Sociology of science, and in particular the use of science in the solution of social, political or ecological problems. It was first introduced by in the 1990s by Silvio Funtowicz and Jerome R. Ravetz. in the context of what would become Post-normal science. An Extended peer community is intended by these authors as a space where both credentialed experts from different disciplines and lay stakeholders can discuss and deliberate.
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