Four answers to four questions (about risk communication)

摘要

As captured in the title The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, science was once seen as extending the knowledge sought by philosophy. As captured in Marx's well-known dictum, that knowledge is limited by philosophy's contentment with trying to understand the world, and not to change it. As argued in Kasperson's thoughtful reflection (2014), science can be judged by its ability to change the world. Such change not only rewards society for its investment in science, but also provides science with the reality check of whether its theories make clear, useful predictions. That connection requires philosophical insight, in order to map its theoretical abstractions onto complex, ambiguous, uncertain real-world situations.