Radical Uncertainty Research Articles

The Book of Job and the Role of Uncertainty in Religion and Law

The Book of Job depicts the radical uncertainty that results when people try to comprehend God. Job has had an extraordinary influence on philosophy and literature, and its message on the limits of human knowledge has even been echoed in the words of great scientists. Surprisingly, however, it has had little influence on the rhetoric or approach of lawyers and judges. The legal profession, which confronts uncertain outcomes daily, has reduced uncertainty to a mundane calculation of odds, while ignoring the more fundamental idea of the unknown because that idea would paralyze legal work.

The epistemology of modern finance

Modern finance is a social science where the complexity of mathematical models compares to that of physics. The aim of this paper is to provide a conceptual framework for the interpretation of mathematical models in finance, in order to determine the epistemological standards according to which financial theory must be assessed. The analysis enlightens the contrast between highly objective results and the radical uncertainty that governs the markets. The main contribution of the paper is to show that the reasons why finance models are relative and non-causal are deeply rooted in the nature of finance theory itself. An important consequence is that arbitrage-free model prices are reference prices and indicators of the economical features underlying mathematical models. As such, they can be used to structure and support final pricing and hedging decisions, but not to predict future market prices.

Community Schooling in Nepal: A Genealogy of Education Reform since 1990

Community participation in schooling is seen by policy makers and practitioners alike as essential for the achievement of efficient, accountable, and sustainable education. The shift in many developing countries to policies promoting decentralized provision is emerging increasingly in the form of programs in which parents and local groups play prominent roles in decisions about school finance, staffing, and overall educational “quality.” While scholars acknowledge the complex and contested nature of “community” and accept that participatory activities take many different forms (e.g., Bray 2001), there is also broad agreement that educational reform must engage stakeholders if it is to have any chance of overturning historic patterns of underinvestment, low relevance, and marginal usefulness. Whether participation is “genuine” (i.e., stakeholders play a significant role in decision making and governance) or “pseudo” (i.e., citizens are kept informed, often for the purposes of contributing resources), a guiding principle of the “post-Washington consensus” (Stiglitz 2002, 20) has been to encourage processes that deal concurrently with concerns for democracy, poverty alleviation, and sustainability. Recent developments in Nepal are no exception to the global trend of elevating the role of local communities in education. In 2003, as part of a renewed drive by the government to shift service delivery to the local level, the World Bank was invited to support project work to prepare the country for large-scale “transfer” of schools to local community stakeholders (World Bank 2003, 2). Known as the Community School Support Project (CSSP), the initiative aimed to elevate the role of parents on school management committees (SMCs) and empowered these organizations to appoint and supervise teachers locally. To encourage school transfer, a substantial initial incentive allowance/payment was provided. Unlike unaided or private community school models, however, the approach implemented in Nepal trans-

Scientists' virtues matter. More than ever

In his latest book “The scientific life. A moral history of a late modern vocation”, the social historian of science Steven Shapin addresses the public image of contemporary scientists, their virtues and vocations. Who are, and how they represent themselves, those scientists who work on the edge between industry and academy, and who are responsible for the radical uncertainty embedded in the contemporary production of scientific knowledge? If “people matter”, as Shapin states, the genealogy he provides should encourage us to dig more deeply in the main stage of the virtues and ethos of scientists: the mass media.

Feminist Practice Meets Feminist Theory

It is always welcome to have a smart, committed feminist engage seriously with big questions of social and political all the more so when her work takes the variety of writings considered feminist seriously enough to them a central part of her project without simultaneously limiting herself only to those works. Zerilli's Feminism and the Abyss of Freedom puts thinkers as different from one another as Hannah Arendt and the Milan Women's Bookstore Collective, Emmanuel Kant and Monique Wittig into the same paragraphs, if not the same sentences. Moreover, her argument also offers a Eurocentric impulse to push American feminists past the stale equality-difference debate and the anxiety about collective action by women that seems to accompany it here. As a person who works on European feminism, I especially appreciate this attention to feminist writings about collective action that have not received the attention in the United States that they merit. Finally, Zerilli deserves a third round of applause for taking the rhetorical work of claims-making as the serious political action that I also think it is. Rather than taking political arguments as merely theory, she considers them as efficacious in their own terms, as means of making political subjects and actions real-izable by opening up new spaces in which struggles can and do occur. To meaningfully grant her those three kudos, this essay outlines the sense of her argument for those who have not yet read the book, as well as evaluates some of her claims. To do so, I take up each of these three praiseworthy contributions in more detail. I then turn to ask a few questions about the limits of her arguments, particularly as they might apply to creating the actual spaces for action that she expects political claims to do. The first thing to note about the work of feminist theoretical reflection that Zerilli offers is the scope of the previous work that she draws into her frame of reference. What Zerilli actually means by the of freedom is the radical uncertainty about the outcomes of their actions that challenges all actors who seek to make a difference in the world. But a second abyss addressed by Zerilli is the gulf usually seen between the philosophical concerns and approaches with which she deals. On the one side, she anchors herself in two of the classic authors of nonfeminist political philosophy, Emmanuel Kant and Hannah Arendt. On the other side, she builds directly upon two classics of contemporary European feminist theory - Monique Wittig's Les Guerillieres (1969/1985) and the Milan Women's Bookstore Collective's manifesto (1987). This latter book was actually translated into English under the title of Sexual Difference (1990), but as Zerilli points out, would more properly have been called What's Wrong with Rights. Stretching herself across the vast gulf between the classic thinkers on politics and second-wave feminists who attempt to theorize from their political practices, Zerilli attempts to provide a bridge strong enough to support liberatory feminist political claims. To construct such a structure

The Scientific Life: A Moral History of a Late Modern Vocation

Who are scientists? What kind of people are they? What capacities and virtues are thought to stand behind their considerable authority? The Scientific Life is historian Steven Shapin's story about who scientists are, who we think they are, and why our sensibilities about such things matter. From the early twentieth-century origins of corporate research laboratories to the high-flying scientific entrepreneurship of the present, Shapin argues that the radical uncertainties of much contemporary science have made personal virtues more central to its practice than ever before, and he also reveals how radically novel aspects of late modern science have unexpectedly deep historical roots. His elegantly conceived history of the scientific career and character ultimately encourages us to reconsider the very nature of the technical and moral worlds in which we now live.

Community Schooling in Nepal: A Genealogy of Education Reform since 1990

Community Schooling in Nepal: A Genealogy of Education Reform since 1990

Radical Uncertainty in Scientific Discovery Work

Radical uncertainty is a concept currently debated, for example, in the economics literature to theorize the impossibility of foreseeing the outcomes of scientific and technological development work. The purpose of this study is to extend the concept to articulate and theorize the minute-to-minute transactions in scientific laboratories. Empirical materials resulting from five years of ethnographic work in one laboratory focusing on fish vision are used to show how scientists produce a material continuity between some natural phenomena and the way they are represented in scientific discourse. Because the outcomes of scientists' actions (i.e., observations) sometimes turn out to be uncertain, the material (practical) actions that produce this continuity themselves retroactively become uncertain. Scientists may at any one point determine that what they had done is not what they thought and said to have done. Actions and the objects they produce therefore stand in a dialectical relationship: they produce, mutually presuppose, and in their respective materiality, stabilize one another.

Uncertainty, power and trust

This paper suggests that personal trust is best understood as a discursively constructed social relation that arises when interaction between people is governed by the norm of reciprocity (according to which one good turn deserves another and that people should treat others as they themselves would like to be treated). It is argued that trust enables people to deal with their ignorance of the future and so act in a purposeful, goal-driven fashion even in the face of radical uncertainty. However, where there are imbalances of access to economic and cultural resources and to positions of authority, there may arise an imbalance of reciprocity, so that what appear to be relations of genuine trust may in fact be no more than a facade of trust that conceals a relationship of domination.

Knowledge management challenges in new business development: Case study observations

This paper's focus is on the knowledge management challenges that come along with technology-based new business development (NBD). NBD thrives upon the exploration of knowledge, under radical uncertainty. Furthermore, existing knowledge may both enable and constrain the radical innovation process. These characteristics make the dominant approach of knowledge management – focusing on codifying, collecting and distributing knowledge – unsuited for NBD. We suggest that knowledge management can enhance NBD by focusing on experimenting, monitoring and integrating knowledge. This is illustrated by case study observations of radical innovation processes.

The Evolutionary Policy Maker

(2007). The Evolutionary Policy Maker. Journal of Economic Issues: Vol. 41, Papers From The 2007 AFEE Meeting, pp. 351-358.

Public administration's final exam: a pragmatist restructuring of the profession and the discipline

Michael Harmon employs the literary conceit of a Final Exam, first written in the early 1930s, in a critique of the field's answers to the legitimacy question. Because the assumptions that underwrite the question preclude the possibility of a coherent answer, the exam should be canceled and its question rewritten. Envisaging a public administration no longer hostage to the legitimacy question, Harmon explains how the study and practice of public administration might proceed from adolescence to maturity. Drawing chiefly from pragmatist philosophy, he argues that despite the universal rejection of the politics/administration dichotomy on factual grounds, the pseudo-problem of legitimacy nonetheless persists in the guise of four related conceptual dualisms: values and facts; thinking and doing; ends and means; and, theory and practice. Collectively, these dualisms demand an impossible answer to the practical question of how we might live, and govern, together in a world of radical uncertainty and interdependence. Only by dissolving them can the legitimacy question (Woodrow Wilson's ghost) finally be banished, clearing away the theoretical debris that obscures a more vital and useful conception of governance.

Networks of knowledge: The distributed nature of medical innovation

Innovation in medicine is a complex process that unfolds unevenly in time and space. It is characterised by radical uncertainty and emerges from innovation systems that can hardly be comprehended within geographical, technological or institutional boundaries. These systems are instead highly distributed across countries, competences and organisations. This paper explores the nature, rate and direction of the growth and transformation of medical knowledge in two specific areas of research, interventional cardiology and glaucoma. We analyse two large datasets of bibliometric information extracted from ISI and adopt an empirical network approach to try to uncover the fine structure of the relevant micro-innovation systems and the mechanisms through which these evolve along trajectories of change shaped by the search for solutions to interdependent problems.

Insurance regarding radical uncertainty: approaches in France and in Germany for sewage sludge land spreading

Up to now, economic literature regarding the product safety has studied foreseeable risks that are known by producers. However, the literature has not analysed which liability rule and insurance schemes are efficient for radical uncertainty. This paper addresses this topic through insurance schemes in France and Germany for sewage sludge spreading. Section 1 gives an overview of economic literature regarding product safety and liability, and stresses the lack of research on radical uncertainty. Section 2 examines the content of the French and German guarantee funds. Both funds have been constituted by a contribution of sewage sludge producers. Section 3 examines to what extent the strict liability rule is efficient. If radical uncertainty has been dealt with a contribution of each sewage sludge producer, compensation is however limited. Moreover, strategic uncertainty (food industry bans of sewage sludge) and different levels of sewage sludge quality are not considered by these funds.

Settled Place, Contested Past: Reconciling George Percy’s “A Trewe Relacyon” with John Smith’s Generall Historie

Settled Place, Contested Past:Reconciling George Percy's "A Trewe Relacyon" with John Smith's Generall Historie Forrest K. Lehman (bio) John Smith's Generall Historie of Virginia, New-England, and the Summer Isles (1624) purports to be a comprehensive record of the early history of the Jamestown colony, but Philip Barbour describes the Generall Historie as "John Smith's Memoirs, his Apologia, and his Defense, rounded out with information from others bearing on what he considered his colonies" (Barbour, Three Worlds, 368). David Read concurs, describing it as "a profoundly unsettled work" and characterizing colonial literature as a generally unsettled genre: "The knowledge of the colonial world that Smith presents to us in his text," Read tells us, "is shot through with radical uncertainties" (430). One man who wrote in hopes of destabilizing Smith's Generall Historie is George Percy (1580–1632), the eighth son of the eighth Earl of Northumberland and the highest-ranking gentleman at Jamestown during his stay.1 Percy's "A Trewe Relacyon" (1625), one of two extant records of his Jamestown experiences,2 challenges the authority of Smith's Generall Historie: both texts directly witness events at Jamestown between August and October of 1609, when Sir Thomas Gates's failure to arrive with the new charter sparked a succession crisis. Percy's narrative of this politically charged period, however, often differs from Smith's. Percy's continuing account of events following Smith's departure in October until his own departure in April 1612, meanwhile, would seem to undermine the corresponding sections of the Generall Historie, which chronicle events Smith did not personally witness. I contend, however, that Percy's "Trewe Relacyon" fails to live up to its author's aspirations. Percy declares his intention to challenge Smith's narrative at the beginning of the "Trewe Relacyon," but he later finds himself corroborating Smith's version of events in order to excuse his own failings during his tenure as the colony's president. In the end, Percy, [End Page 235] anxious to undermine Smith's historical authority but also desperate to salvage his reputation, accomplishes neither goal. And while Mark Nicholls has recently argued that Percy developed his indisputable animus toward John Smith retrospectively rather than during his time at Jamestown, it seems to me that his opposition to Smith while at Jamestown was neither as cautious nor as ambiguous as Nicholls suggests.3 The apparent cautiousness and ambiguity attending Percy's criticisms in his "Trewe Relacyon" stem not from any mixed feelings toward John Smith on Percy's part while at Jamestown, but rather from Percy's rhetorical confusion as he abandons his attacks on Smith and instead begins to offer excuses for his failures while at Jamestown. In a prefatory note to his brother Henry, the ninth Earl of Northumberland, George Percy clearly posits his "Trewe Relacyon" manuscript as a response to Smith's critical account of the colony in his self-promoting Generall Historie of the previous year:4 many untrewthes concerneinge Theis p[ro]ceedeinges have bene formerly published, wherein The author hathe nott Spared to apropriate many desertts to him selfe w[hi]ch he never p[er]formed and stuffed his Relacyons w[i]th so many falseties and malicyous detractyons nott onely of this p[ar]t and Tyme w[hi]ch I have selected to Treate of, Butt of former ocurrentts also: so thatt I coulde nott contein my selfe butt expresse the Trewthe unto your Lordshipp concerninge Theis affayers. (242) Although Percy's note never mentions Smith by name, the account he describes could only be Smith's. Besides the ego that Smith and Percy's unnamed "author" appear to share, Percy likely employs the words "p[ro]ceedeinges" and "Relacyons" to reference Smith's Proceedings of the English Colony in Virginia (1612) and A True Relation (1608), respectively. Percy probably felt compelled to respond to Smith's slights because he, like Jamestown's other gentleman colonists, would have recognized himself as a target of Smith's anti-aristocratic ire. Smith believed, as J. A. Leo Lemay has so aptly observed, "that America provided the opportunity for an individual's standing in society to be determined...

Complementarities among Capability, Transaction and Scale-Scope Considerations in Determining Organizational Boundaries1

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the conditions under which capability, transaction and scale considerations interact in determining organizational boundaries. It is argued that this interaction contributes to explaining the individual firm's performance and growth whenever cognitive competence is limited, radical uncertainty is present, some inputs and processes are indivisible and complementary, and some relevant knowledge is tacit, non-transmittable and characterized by set-up processes with high fixed costs. Under the above conditions, which are becoming increasingly important with the spread of the knowledge-based economy, the growth of the firm can be regarded as a consequence of managerial ability to set a strategy that exploits the mutually reinforcing advantages provided by the organizational coordination of capabilities, transactions and scale of processes, while limiting counteracting forces deriving from errors of strategy that are due to cognitive inertia and myopia, unclear allocation of rights and responsibilities, errors in identifying aims, imprecision in performance measuring, difficulty in focusing incentives, influence activities and problems of internal communication.

Upping the ante: a conceptual framework for designing and evaluating participatory technology assessments

Radical uncertainty, political controversy and public distrust in emerging areas of science and technology is fuelling moves towards new forms of governance centred on ex ante or ‘upstream’ public and stakeholder engagement with policy. Yet how is such deliberation and inclusion to be achieved in contentious national policy processes? We present a contextual framework that seeks to understand this question better and use it to reflect on two high-profile UK examples of ‘new governance’ in genetic modification and radioactive waste management. In doing this, we argue for: better definition of who/what is represented in such processes; mixed methodologies both to integrate analytic-deliberative dimensions and address questions of representativeness; and more systematic evaluation of the outputs and outcomes of appraisal processes.

The Epistemic Problem Does Not Refute Consequentialism

Should radical uncertainty about the distant future dissuade us from judging options by referring to their consequences? I argue no. Some short-run benefits are sufficiently high that we should pursue them, even if our long-run estimates possess a very high variance. I discuss the relationship between the epistemic argument and ‘fuzzy’ rankings and also ‘arguments from infinity’. Furthermore, extant versions of the epistemic argument require the assumption that we have no idea about the major consequences of our acts. Even a slight idea about some major consequences will render the epistemic argument less plausible. In most applications of the epistemic argument, long-run uncertainty is not the relevant confounding variable; on close examination the epistemic argument tends to trade on other principles altogether.

In Search of the Next Enlightenment?

We live in a period when foundational givens of thought are on the move and when the cosmology that has framed experience in Western societies is unraveling. This is creating a shift in the understanding of reality so fundamental that it undermines many of the bedrock assumptions on which Western consciousness is based. As much of the world shifts to a postindustrial information age, where rapid change and unfathomable complexity become the normal cultural contexts in which life is conducted, radical uncertainty generates high levels of anxiety and places a heavy psychological burden on people. If one is to be at home in this new world, the means of socialization—in particular in education—must adapt or better still, lead the way. This will require profound change in pedagogy, epistemology, content, delivery models, and organization. This article identifies the significant gaps in today’s educational landscape and how it is failing the future, enumerates the adaptive changes that will be required in higher education, and suggests some future strategies for education for a global society.

States of uncertainty: governing the empire of biotechnology

The biotechnological revolution presents states and governments with a set of challenges that they have difficulty meeting. Part of the problem is associated with common perceptions of the speed, volume and the radical uncertainty of the new developments. Globalisation is also implicated, especially in relation to the development of the knowledge economy and the role of multinational actors. This in turn contributes to the apparent decline in the confidence of the public that national governments will be effective in addressing mounting concern about the dangers inherent in new techniques and products. Under these circumstances, ‘normal’ governance begins to look more like ‘failure’ governance. This article asks whether the effects of the biotechnological revolution on governance can adequately be explained by the critique of imperialism proposed by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, and whether the state is in danger of becoming implicated in sponsorship of modernist schemes to improve the human condition of the kind analysed by James E Scott. Biotechnology does appear to have imperial qualities, while there are strong reasons for states to see biotechnology as a feasible and desirable set of developments. For some critics of biotechnology, like Francis Fukuyama, this is a lethal combination, and the powers of the state should be used to stop biotechnological development. Others, by contrast and more pragmatically, propose a check on what the state will support by the application of precautionary principles. The article concludes that the association between the biotechnology empire and the state, combined with the inescapable duty of the state to be the risk manager of last resort, alerts us to the complexities of uncertainty at the same time as it renders a merely restrictive precautionary approach impracticable.