Imagine complexity: The past, present and future potential of complex thinking

Futures

Volumn 28, Issue 3, 1996, Pages 201-225

  Shackley, Simon ^a   Wynne, Brian ^a   Waterton, Claire ^a  

^a LANCASTER UNIVERSITY   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0001697434     PISSN: 00163287     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1016/0016-3287(96)00002-x     Document Type: Article

References (109)

1. See, for example, S Funtowicz and J Ravetz, 'Science for the post-normal age', Futures, 25(7), September 1993, pages 739-755;
2. and ibid, 'Three types of risk assessment and the emergence of post-normal science',
3. and S Rayner, 'Cultural theory and risk analysis', in S Krimsky and D Golding (editors), Social Theories of Risk (London, Praeger, 1992);
4. M Thompson, R Ellis and A Wildavsky, Cultural Theory (Oxford, Westview Press, 1990);
5. M Schwarz and M Thompson, Divided We Stand (Hemel Hempstead, Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1990);
6. T O'Riordan and S Rayner, 'Risk management for global environmental change', Global Environmental Change, 1, March 1991, pages 91-108.
7. In this essay we draw inspiration from many papers and books, whose influence on our thinking is difficult to trace to precise references. However, some sources which have inspired and illuminated our own efforts here include: P Feyerabend, Against Method (London, Verso, 1988 [1975])
8. and Science in a Free Society (London, New Left Books, 1978);
9. T Roszak, Where the Wasteland Ends (London, Yale University Press, 1990);
10. B Fay, Social Theory and Political Practice (London, George Allen and Unwin, 1975);
11. J Habermas, 'Science and technology as ideology', in B Barnes (editor), Sociology of Science (Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1972), pages 353-374.
12. M Waldrop, Complexity (New York, Simon and Schuster, 1992);
13. R Lewin, Complexity (London, Orion Books, 1993);
14. J Cohen and I Steward, The Collapse of Chaos (Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1994).
15. The writers we are referring to here include: A Trisoglio, 'Complexity: the challenges', Working Paper, Research Programme on Complexity, London School of Economics, 1995.
16. Also see special issues of Futures on complexity, 26(6), July/August 1994,
17. especially S Funtowicz and J Ravetz, 'Emergent complex systems', pages 568-582,
18. and M O'Connor, 'Complexity and coevolution: methodology for a positive treatment of indeterminacy', pages 610-615;
19. the special issues of Futures on 'The knowledge base of futures studies', 25(3), April 1993,
20. also contains relevant material. The transference of ideas about complexity and chaos from the natural sciences to the social sciences and humanities has been criticised by some writers, for example, P Gross and N Levitt, Higher Superstition (London, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994).
21. For example, see M Douglas, Risk Acceptability According to the Social Sciences (London, RKP, 1985);
22. P K Moser (editor), Rationality in Action: Contemporary Approaches (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1990).
23. It is assumed in cultural theory that social and natural science knowledge are strongly shaped by cultural commitments. Yet, at the same time, 'nature' is not perceived as being infinitely flexible. Its expression is rather limited to several dominant types or 'myths', which come to partially shape the sorts of social knowledge which are most resilient. Op cit, reference 1.
24. As we noted, the academic social science writers on complexity do not themselves suppose that a realist account, which leaves the research object and researcher as subject unchallenged, is by itself sufficient, but it is our contention that many non-social-science users of their ideas will tend to interpret their accounts as such.
25. For example, Bruno Latour, Science in Action (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1992 (1987]);
26. D Haraway, Primate Visions (London, Free Association Books, 1991).
27. See also, S Horigan, Nature and Culture in Western Discourses (London, Routledge, 1988);
28. and N Rose, Governing the Soul (London, Routledge, 1989). Funtowicz and Ravetz, as well as Thompson and other cultural theorists, seem to be pointing in a similar direction but we suspect that this could easily be lost on those (for example, from policy or the natural sciences) reading their work who are unfamiliar with its intellectual and social origins.
29. For a good review of this literature, see K Knorr-Cetina, 'Laboratory studies: the cultural approach to the study of science', in S Jasanoff, G Markle, J Petersen and T Pinch (editors), Handbook of Science and Technology Studies (London, Sage, 1995), pages 140-166.
30. Also, K Knorr-Cetina, The Manufacture of Knowledge (Oxford, Pergamon, 1981);
31. M Lynch, Art and Artifact in Laboratory Science (London, RKP, 1985);
32. H Collins, Changing Order (Beverley Hills, CA, Sage, 1985).
33. H Collins and T Pinch, The Golem (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1993).
34. Op cit, reference 9;
35. also, A Pickering (editor), Science as Practice and Culture (Chicago, Chicago University Press, 1992);
36. I Hacking, Representing and Intervening (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1983).
37. For example, see S Fuller, Social Epistemology (Bloomington, IN, Indiana University Press, 1988);
38. J Rouse, Knowledge and Power (London, Cornell University Press, 1987).
39. Latour, op cit, reference 8.
40. Collins, op cit, reference 9;
41. D Mackenzie, Inventing Accuracy (Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 1990).
42. J Ravetz, Scientific Knowledge and its Social Problems (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1971);
43. M Polanyi, Personal Knowledge (London, RKP, 1958).
44. B Wynne (editor), Risk Assessment and Hazardous Waste Management: Implementation and the Dialectics of Credibility (London, Springer-Verlag, 1987);
45. C Diver, 'A theory of regulatory enforcement', Public Policy, 28, 1980, pages 257-301.
46. CT Porter, Trust in Numbers (Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1995), has made a similar argument in relation to economics. Its simplification, achieved through 'leaving the real world out', is partly what accounts for its power in the real world. If economics were 'realistic' it would lose the power which emerges from its quantitative expression (the focus of Porter's argument).
47. T Gieryn, 'Boundaries of science', in S Jasanoff et al (editors), op cit, reference 9, pages 393-443;
48. S Jasanoff, 'Contested boundaries in policy-relevant science', Social Studies of Science, 17, 1987, pages 195-230.
49. Note, however, that according to our argument that management and control are integral to the project of policy makers, such divestments of responsibility can only ever be temporary or within one part of a bureaucracy.
50. On one occasion, an expert on complexity stated that the new methods were only 1% different from the past methodologies and that difference was emphasized in most contexts in order to distinguish what was new about complexity theory.
51. Empirical research would be needed to determine whether policy makers have indeed used ideas about complexity in the ways suggested. Note, also, that the opportunistic use of complexity may nevertheless end up committing policy makers to some future use, or at least invocation, of such knowledge.
52. A key presupposition here is that scientific and technical knowledge and practices are integral to the construction and stability of the social realm. As Bruno Latour puts it: 'In our modern societies, most of the really fresh power comes from science - no matter which - and not from the classical political process', from The Pasteurisation of France (London, Harvard University Press, 1988).
53. See, also, Latour, op cit, reference 8;
54. P Taylor, 'Building on construction', Perspectives on Science, 3(1), 1995, pages 66-97;
55. and 'Co-construction and process', Social Studies of Science, 25, 1995, pages 348-359. In our view, many writers on complexity are implicitly making a somewhat similar argument. However, to the extent that they do so, it is not clearly articulated as such and drawn on somewhat sporadically.
56. For a case-study of the climate change domain, see S Shackley and B Wynne, 'Representing uncertainty in global climate change science: boundary-ordering devices and authority', Science, Technology and Human Values, Summer 1996, forthcoming.
57. This has been a dominant theme of much science studies, for example, S Shapin and S Schaffer, Leviathan and the Air-Pump (Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1985);
58. S Woolgar, 'Configuring the user', in J Law (editor), A Sociology of Monsters (London, Routledge, 1991);
59. and in social theory more generally, for example, A Giddens, The Constitution of Society (Cambridge, Polity Press, 1984)
60. and The Consequences of Modernity (Cambridge, Polity Press, 1990).
61. To use Shapin and Schaffer's (1985) term, op cit, reference 24, new forms of 'public witnessing' of scientific knowledge are now being demanded as more socially dispersed questioning of scientific knowledge challenges its automatic social acceptance. Uncertainty, hence complexity, prevails as previous forms of public witnessing - such as those based on class, coercion or quantification - cease to be convincing.
62. Such tensions between scientific institutions and other social institutions, practices and specific communities and social movements have become especially pronounced in recent years. See, for example, the exchanges in New Scientist following publication of B Wynne and S Mayer's article 'How science fails the environment', 1876, 1993, pages 33-35.
63. Also, see the feature in the Times Higher Education Supplement, 30 September 1994, pages 17-19 and letters 21 October, page 15.
64. For commentary, see S Shackley et al, 'Designating the spokespersons for science and its social standing', Technoscience, February 1995, pages 17-19;
65. and the various contributions to May 1995's edition of Social Studies of Science, 25, pages 285-347.
66. Of course, it could be argued that the source of these new tensions is precisely located in the past failure of knowledge to reflect natural and social realities. Our analysis is compatible with this to the extent that it problematizes what we mean by 'social reality', ie points to the multivalent, and hugely ambiguous, character of that reality. The source of such new awareness, fascinating though that question is, is beyond the scope of this article.
67. Clearly, many social science writers, such as Ravetz, Funtowicz and Thompson, share similar views to ours about the need to go beyond the prior management paradigm. However, we believe that, unless their mixture of realist and contextualist arguments is subject to reflexive analysis, it may be misinterpreted by some as lending support to the argument that more sophisticated methods and tools are the main policy consequence of complexity.
68. B Wynne, Rationality and Ritual (Chalfont St Giles, British Society for the History of Science, 1982).
69. The following account is based on contributions to ) Foster (editor), Environmental Economics: A Critique of Orthodox Policy (London, Routledge, forthcoming, 1996).
70. See also, R Norgaard, 'Three dilemmas of environmental accounting', Ecological Economics, 1, 1989, pages 301-319;
71. J Bowers, 'Cost-benefit analysis in theory and practice: agricultural land drainage projects', in R Kerry Turner (editor), Sustainable Environmental Management (Belhaven, London, 1988), pages 265-289;
72. B Wynne, 'Building public concern into risk management', in J Brown (editor), Environmental Threats (London, Belhaven, 1989), pages 119-132.
73. For example, J Robinson, 'Loaded questions: new approaches to utility forecasting', Energy Policy, 16, 1988, pages 56-68;
74. B Keepin, 'A technical appraisal of the IIASA energy scenarios', Policy Sciences, 17(3), November 1984, pages 199-275.
75. P Taylor, 'Re-constructing socioecologies: system dynamics modeling of nomadic pastoralists in subSaharan Africa', in A Clarke and J Fujimura (editors), The Right Tools for the Job (Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1992), pages 115-148.
76. Ibid.
77. Work on the use of scientific knowledge in policy institutions confirms this pattern, for example, G Majone, Evidence, Argument and Persuasion in the Policy Process (London, Yale University Press, 1989);
78. E Albaek, 'Between knowledge and power: utilization of social science in public policy making', Policy Sciences, 28, 1995, pages 79-100;
79. O Renn, 'Styles of using scientific expertise: a comparative framework', Science and Public Policy, 22(3), June 1995, pages 147-156.
80. The opening up of potential indeterminacy and multifactorial complexity has often coincided with the recognition of variable social and institutional factors affecting 'natural' or 'technical' variables, as in the two above examples. However, there is no intrinsic or exclusive connection between indeterminacy and the social, or determinacy and the natural. Indeed, part of our point is to raise the intrinsic ambiguities and constructed character of just these distinctions. This has frequently been used to justify a 'natural-science' first approach, so giving the impression that such supposedly more certain knowledge can stand alone. For an application of the argument to the climate change field, see S Shackley and B Wynne, 'Integrating knowledges for climate change: pyramids, nets and uncertainties', Global Environmental Change, 5(2), May 1995, pages 113-126.
81. See, for example, J Potter and M Wetherell, Discourse and Social Psychology (London, Sage, 1987);
82. M Billig, Arguing and Thinking (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1987);
83. P Macnaghten, 'Public attitudes to countryside leisure: a case study on ambivalence', Journal of Rural Studies, 11(2), 1995, pages 135-147.
84. ICM, 'Attitudes towards Nirex proposals: Sellafield, Cumbrian residents', prepared for Cumbria County Council, September 1992;
85. B Wynne, C Waterton and R Grove-White, 'Public perceptions and the nuclear industry in West Cumbria', prepared for Cumbria County Council, CSEC, Lancaster University.
86. This critique of surveys is made most often, as here, in relation to understanding the perceptions of the 'lay public'. However, it applies in principle with equal force to perceptions of policy actors such as industry, government, international organizations, non-governmental organizations and scientists. It may be less apparent in those cases because agency is that much greater. Hence the views expressed may reflect the relative empowerment of those actors, rather than their greater objective knowledge.
87. E Goffmann, Stigma (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, Prentice-Hall, 1963).
88. S Shackley and B Wynne, op cit, reference 23.
89. As a further example, some modellers have developed data-based but 'physically simple' models for the predicton and control of environmental systems, such as water management and flood control. They are often castigated by more physically minded scientists, incredulous that a model can be robust if it does not involve detailed physical, mechanistic and theoretical understanding. (Personal communication with Professor Peter Young, Centre for Research into Environmental Systems and Statistics, Lancaster University.) When the limited predictive capability of complex, physically based models is pointed out to the latter, they often fall back on the improved understanding provided by their models as nevertheless justifying their work, so further illustrating the ambiguous identity of models.
90. V Singleton and M Michael, 'Actor-networks and ambivalence: general practitioners in the UK cervical screening programme', Social Studies of Science, 23, 1993, pages 227-264.
91. Note that this ambiguity is associated in the above examples with complex, physically based tools, as if only a complex model or knowledge-system could contain the necessary leeway for multiple interpretations of its function. Yet this particular rhetorical distinction between the simple and complex is increasingly challenged by advocates of simpler models, who argue that better understanding may also emerge from simpler models, sometimes during attempts to predict and control systems. (S Shackley, S Parkinson, P Young and B Wynne, 'Uncertainty, complexity and concepts of "good science" in climate change modelling: are GCMs the best tools?', submitted, June 1995.) Other pressures also act on the mutual construction of complex models and policy management practices; in particular the apparently diverging trends of new demands from the funding side for research to be more 'policy-useful' and user-oriented (and less towards theory development and testing) and the frequent rationale for developing complex models for the purpose of improving theoretical understanding.
92. See, M Gibbons, C Limoges, H Nowotny, S Schwartzmann, P Scott and M Trow, The New Production of Knowledge (London, Sage, 1994).
93. Schwarz and Thompson, op cit, reference 1, page 77.
94. Written communication from Michael Thompson, 12 May 1995.
95. Many other authors have made a similar argument. For a small selection, see R Paehlke and D Torgerson (editors), Managing Leviathan: Environmental Politics and the Administrative State (Peterborough, Broadview Press, 1990);
96. R Healy and W Ascher, 'Knowledge in the policy process: incorporating new environmental information in natural resources policy making', Policy Sciences, 28, 1995, pages 1-19;
97. J Robinson, 'Risks, predictions and other optical illusions', Policy Sciences, 25(3), August 1992, pages 237-254;
98. F Fischer, Technocracy and the Politics of Expertise (London, Sage, 1990);
99. L Dobuzinskis, 'Modern and postmodernist metaphors of the policy process: control and stability vs chaos and reflexive understanding', Policy Sciences, 26, 1993, pages 165-187;
100. O Renn, T Webler, H Rakel, P Dienel and B Johnson, 'Public participation in decision-making: a three-step procedure', Policy Sciences, 26, 1993, pages 189-214.
101. Funtowicz and Ravetz, op cit, references 1 and 4.
102. For example, see F Bretherton, 'Perspectives on policy', Ambio, XXIII(1), February 1994, pages 96-97, for the case of global environmental change. CT is also being more widely used by social scientists, for example by political scientists, students of the policy process and in survey research of public perceptions.
103. This is not to deny that cultural theorists have sometimes improved the intelligence of the policy process by introducing more diverse cultural perspectives. A comprehensive bibliography of cultural theory up to 1990 is included in Schwarz and Thompson, op cit, reference 1.
104. M van Asselt and J Rotmans, 'Uncertainty in global modelling: a cultural perspective-based approach', RIVM Report 461502009, Bilthoven, The Netherlands;
105. 2-emission rights: quantifying cultural perspectives', Ecological Economics, 13, 1995, pages 65-79.
106. As science becomes more oriented to simulation modelling, new forms of 'public witnessing' will be required for such knowledge to become seen as credible. The conflicts surrounding the validity and trustworthiness of modelling (for example see N Oreskes, K Schrader-Frechette and K Belitz, 'Verification, validation and confirmation of numerical models in the earth sciences', Science, 263, 4 February 1994, pages 641-646) are a reflection of this new uncertainty over validation of such knowledge claims. Hence, there is a stress on systematic intercomparison of models, perhaps as a substitute for replicability, and new institutional forms for rating and legitimating models, such as represented by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
107. We would argue that these attempts fail to recognise the breadth of the necessary validation network, which implies quite different sorts of institutional forms (such as the focus groups and citizen panels used in past research programmes, for example, op cit, reference 45). Future research on such approaches includes the EC-funded 'Urban lifestyles, sustainability and integrated environmental assessment' (ULYSSES) project coordinated from Darmstadt University, Germany, by Professor Carlo Jaeger.
108. Porter, op cit, reference 17.
109. B Latour, We Have Never Been Modern (Hemel Hempstead, Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993).