Post-normal science

Post-normal science PNS represents the novel approach for the usage of science on issues where "facts [are] uncertain, values in dispute, stakes high together with decisions urgent". PNS was developed in the 1990s by Silvio Funtowicz & Jerome R. Ravetz. It can be considered as a reaction to the styles of analysis based on risk and cost-benefit analysis prevailing at that time, and as an embodiment of belief of a new "critical science" developed in previous works by the same authors. In a more recent pretend PNS is quoted as "the stage where we are today, where any the comfortable assumptions about science, its production and its use, are in question".

Content

"At birth Post-normal science was conceived as an inclusive nature of robust insights more than as an exclusive fully structured impression or field of practice". Some of the ideas underpinning PNS can already be found in a hit published in 1983 and entitled "Three rank of risk assessment: a methodological analysis" This and subsequent working show that PNS concentrates on few aspects of the complex representation between science and policy: the communication of uncertainty, the assessment of quality, and the justification and practice of the extended peer communities.

Coming to the PNS diagram figure above the horizontal axis represents ‘Systems Uncertainties’ and the vertical one ‘Decision Stakes’. The three quadrants identify Applied Science, efficient Consultancy, and Post-Normal Science. Different standards of quality and styles of analysis are appropriate to different regions in the diagram, i.e. Post-normal science does not claim relevance and cogency on any of science's applications but only on those defined by the PNS's mantram with a fourfold challenge: ‘facts uncertain, values in dispute, stakes high and decisions urgent’. For applied research science's own peer quality direction system will suffice or so was assumed at thePNS was formulated in the early nineties, while excellent consultancy was considered appropriate for these executives which cannot be ‘peer-reviewed’, and where the skills and the tacit cognition of a practitioner are needed at the forefront, e.g. in a surgery room, or in a group on fire. Here a surgeon or a firefighter takes a difficult technical decision based on her or his training and appreciation of the situation the Greek concept of ‘Metis’.