Post-normal science in postnormal times

Post-normal science (PNS) was a herald of postnormal times. For Functowicz and Ravetz contemporary issues in which ‘facts are uncertain, values in dispute, stakes high and decisions urgent’ necessitate PNS. PNS deals with the postnormal character of contemporary challenges by bringing the contextualised insights of non-scientific stakeholders to bear through the formulation of ‘extended facts’. However, while the contextual content of ‘extended facts’ caters to the indeterminate character of postnormal issues this remains in tension with an implicit assumption that outcomes reflect the quality of the ‘facts’ informing them. This paper takes the claim that postnormal times involves ‘that we abandon…ideas of ‘control and management” seriously by arguing that science should be the servant of outcomes framed in, primarily, societal terms, rather than the other way around. This argument is illustrated using the example of fashioning an effective response to climate change.