nearly two years into a global pandemic, uncertainty has profoundly unsettled both our personal and political lives. Some of its sources are epistemic: When should schools reopen for in-person learning? How long will vaccine immunity last? Do rising prices threaten economic recovery? Others are sharply existential: How will I pay rent next month? Can I travel safely? Will I see my loved one again? At perhaps no other moment in the twenty-first century has there been such widespread unease about what the future holds.
What does this crisis of certainty mean for society? As enduring debates over pandemic policy have made clear, uncertainty is particularly consequential where it intersects with political power. Leading this issue’s forum, Sheila Jasanoff, pioneering scholar of science and technology studies, argues that public policy could benefit from a much more serious acknowledgment of uncertainty. Her essay begins with the striking failures of the U.S. pandemic response, despite decades of warning from public health experts that such a crisis was inevitable. The problem, Jasanoff contends, “was to overestimate the certainty of our predictions and our capacity for control.” In place of the hubris of technocratic expertise, Jasanoff calls for “technologies of humility”—institutional mechanisms, including greater citizen participation, for incorporating a wider range of experience and views in our schemes of democratic governance. Respondents to Jasanoff consider other causes of pandemic mismanagement and ask whether humility is the best response.