This report contains a description of environmental policy tools, gives an overview of post-Normal science (bridge between complex systems and environmental policy), ecological economics, the incommensurability principle, the mulitcriteria evaluation and the NAIDE method (fuzzy information).

To analyze the sometimes paradoxical features of contemporary science, I use the concept of ‘contradiction’, namely a problem that cannot be solved within the confines of the system in which it is set. I study such contradictions as knowledge and power, knowledge and ignorance, the True and...

Studies of ‘futures’ have hitherto focused on those that are predictable and ‘tame’, and on those that are unpredictable and ‘wild’. Here we consider a new class, the ‘feral’; which are expectations that things might be made worse by risk-based actions. The type case is the...

This paper is a structured dialogue between the four authors on the question “what might constitute wisdom for the future?” With each author exploring a distinct but related angle we first consider four aspects: The traditional view of wisdom linked to philosophy and the humanities and how...

The topic of uncertainty, risk and ignorance, and one may add probability, is controversial both across and within professions. While Frank Knight and Maynard Keynes both believed that risk and uncertainty are quite different objects, generations of Bayesian statisticians and economists have...

Increasing attention is being paid to scientific aspects of policy or administrative decisions taken at a European level. Certain features of the process including the potentially irreversible consequences of decisions, the uncertainties involved, and the pressure on scientists to produce a...