N.Castree, M. Hulme & J.

Proctor (eds): The Companion to Environmental Studies

(London & NYC, Routledge), forthcoming.

POST-NORMAL SCIENCE
Silvio Funtowicz & Jerome Ravetz

The term ‘post-normal science’ (PNS) was coined by science and technology
philosophers Silvio Funtowicz and Jerome Ravetz in the years around 1990. It was
developed in numerous publications in subsequent years, mainly in the journal
Futures (Funtowicz & Ravetz 1993). It’s now become an accepted, even mainstream,
term in many areas of discourse about science and technology, in particular in
relation to scientific advice for policy. It both defines the context in which science
and technology now exist, and recommends ways of making science and technology
responsive to that context.

What is post-normal science?

PNS can be expressed in a diagram, a ‘quadrant-rainbow’ with three zones. The two
axes are, respectively, Systems Uncertainties and Decision Stakes. The three
quarter-circular zones are, respectively, Applied Science, Professional Consultancy,
and Post-Normal Science. There’s a clear similarity of this diagram with those once
used to characterise technological and environmental risks faced by societies
(Funtowicz & Ravetz 1985), but in the previous context the axes referred to
(supposedly) quantifiable attributes like Probability and Harm. The PNS diagram
(Figure 1) accomplishes a subversion of the implicit message of the ‘standard
approach’ to such risk problems, which is that all relevant variables can be quantified.

Figure 1: Beyond ‘normal science’

If normal science typically occurs in university laboratories and is curiosity-driven, other forms of science
connect it to the wider world in different ways. In the diagram above, first devised by the authors, (Funtowicz &
Ravetz 1993), different forms of science correspond to different degrees of uncertainty in the behaviour of that
being studied and different societal and environmental stakes attending decisions made on the basis of scientific
knowledge.

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The other defining feature of the PNS idea is captured in a mantra, with a fourfold
challenge: ‘facts uncertain, values in dispute, stakes high and decisions urgent’. This
challenges the common assumptions about scientific knowledge, even when
employed in the policy process: scientific facts are by definition certain; scientific
knowledge is essentially value-free; and decision stakes and urgencies are irrelevant
to scientific knowledge, which is simply true. These assumptions define ‘normal
science’. In response to the challenge, some have denied that PNS is a special sort
of science, relegating it to the subjective world of policy formulation and
implementation.
The origins of PNS
PNS has many roots. The immediate precursor is NUSAP, a notational system for
the management and communication of uncertainty in science for policy, created by
Funtowicz and Ravetz (1990). It was an attempt to bring clarity and discipline to the
expression of uncertainty and quality in policy-relevant science (see, for instance, an
application at the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, discussed by
Petersen et al 2011). Attempts to quantify risk analysis, such as those seriously
challenged in the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant accident of 1979, provided a
backdrop to both of their endeavours.
Further back there is Ravetz’s somewhat visionary discussion of ‘critical science’ in
his 1971 foundational work Scientific Knowledge and its Social Problems (Ravetz 1996).
Early examples of anti-establishment science involving ‘housewife epidemiology’, as at
Love Canal and Woburn MA (in the 1970s in the USA), were an inspiration.

The name post-normal carries an obvious reference to the seminal work of Thomas
Kuhn, with his contrast between the limited, puzzle-solving ‘normal science’ and the
‘revolutionary science’ in which qualitative progress is made. On occasion this name
has caused confusion, since for many scientists 'normal' simply means 'accepted', and
the critique that is implied in the name PNS is lost, misinterpreted or confused,
leading to an identification of post-normal with ‘post-modern’.
A precursor to PNS was Alvin Weinberg’s ‘trans-science’ (Weinberg 1972), where
the inability of ‘normal science’ to solve policy-relevant problems was seen as a
quantitative, rather than a qualitative deficiency. Comparisons have been made to
‘mode 2’ science (Gibbons et al 1994) but that is better conceived as analogous to
professional consultancy, for in that theory there is no hint of an extension of the
peer community.
The growth of PNS
PNS has become far more common in contemporary societies. This reflects the fact
that science and technology are ever more intimately entwined in daily life, affecting
both people and the environment more profoundly as new inventions like synthetic
biology are applied on a large scale. There exists a growing class of policy issues
involving science in which the normal assumptions of certainty, objectivity, value-
neutrality, and (implicitly) expertise do not hold.
For resolving such issues there needs to be an extension of the peer community
who are responsible for quality control and governance in science and technology. It
can no longer be restricted to scientific experts or even accredited professionals, but
must include a multiplicity of actors, including what are now called grassroots ‘citizen

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scientists’. The full participation of an 'extended peer community' in the resolution of

a growing class of policy issues is necessary not only because of ethical or political
reasons, in its creation of an open space of democratic deliberation, but also because
it enhances the quality of the relevant scientific input. At the time of first
announcement, this extension of the peer community was indeed heretical, and
many commentators have substituted ‘extended peer review’ for community. This
response was unsurprising because it’s part of a tradition that is committed to the
reduction of all political/practical issues to techno-scientific problems.
Yet, contrary to this tradition, these ‘extended peers’ may use as evidence
‘extended-facts’, obtained through sources and methods other than the traditional
peer-reviewed literature authored by credentialed experts. PNS has legitimised the
use of facts that are, in many occasions, based on experiential, practical or ancestral
knowledge. Thanks to the emergence of an educated citizenry and of powerful and
ubiquitous Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) citizens (and among
them, ‘citizen scientists’) create useful and relevant knowledge on a massive scale.
And as they engage in scientific and policy debates, they show more systematic
attention to issues of quality than are frequently observed among ‘normal’ scientists.

PNS today
PNS has been maturing constantly in several respects. There is now a small but
flourishing presence in academe (see, for instance, the special issue in Science,
Technology and Human Values, edited by Turnpenny et al in 2011), with one vigorous
group, in the Centre for the Study of the Sciences and the Humanities at the
University of Bergen in Norway, teaching and researching along PNS lines. Another
sign of vitality and relevance is an effort by the PNS community to engage with the
present crisis in science’s governance and quality control (Benessia et al 2016). This
activity involves two other clusters of PNS scholarship and practice: the Joint
Research Centre of the European Commission (EC-JRC) and the Integrated
Assessment of Sociology, Technology and the Environment group at the Universitat
Autonoma de Barcelona (ICTA-UAB).
PNS continues to function as a path to a modest enlightenment for scientists in
policy-relevant fields whose professional training inhibits or even prohibits attention
to significant uncertainties or the fundamental role of values and context. To
discover that it’s really natural and all right for a science to lack genuine three-digit
precision in many of its findings and predictions can be a liberating insight. And in
their way, activists and grassroots citizen science groups derive validation from their
recognition and identification as extended peer communities.

A most significant development has been the adoption of PNS by some progressive
science policy advisors, notably Professor Sir Peter Gluckman in New
Zealand. From his experience, he has found that PNS can help to explain
why science advice is really not a case of simple ‘speaking truth to power’. In his
discussions, he places the extended peer community in the context of the
multiplicity of actors and channels by which science policy is now influenced
(Gluckman 2014). The politics of science is being transformed in ways that were not
imagined in the original formulation of PNS. But if the core insight of PNS remains

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sufficiently illuminating and empowering, these enrichments can be integrated today

into the conduct of science.

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