My mind's been going again.  I'm back on my morning schedule, and that provides me with a precious few moments in the day as the sun rises to sit back with a fresh cup of tea and just enjoy the view for a bit.  A couple of times a week, I'll try to post a little thought here, just a postcard from my room of what's running through my mind.

Today, it's regarding a talk I am giving tomorrow, called 'governing the unknown knowns: a reply to Jerry Ravetz'.  Ravetz, a fellow at the James Martin Institute, gave a talk two weeks ago called 'Governing the science of the unknown unknowns' as part of the Institute's Governance of Science seminar series.  Pulling from Rumsfeld's famous 'unknown unknown' quote, Ravetz said that a way for keeping civilization from falling into some nasty ('wicked' is the technical term) scientific/social conundrums, like global warming, is to better prepare ourselves for when these 'UUs' pop into the 'known' area.  His argument is that once things that we don't know we don't know become known, the nature of how we know them is critical.  If the UU becomes a 'hard fact', and we know this 'fact', then it is a known known.  If we do not know the precise nature of the UU, but do know that it exists with some degree of certainty, it becomes a known unknown.  If, on the other hand (yes, I now have three hands!), the UU becomes known as a 'fact', but only to some and not to all, then it falls into the unknown known category.  This, Ravetz claims, is the worst possible outcome, because society is either rejecting the 'fact' or someone is concealing it from others.  We don't want unknown knowns, Ravetz argues.

 That is where I take issue. My reply is basically a statement that, in issues that are scientifically and socially complex, you will always have unknown knowns, because any way of framing the issue will necessarily favour some information ('facts') over others, thereby making the others 'unknown knowns'.  The goal shouldn't be to squash the unknown knowns, but rather to recognise that they will always exist and understand how to use them constructively.  

If you understand all of that, then you're one step ahead of me :-)  It's time for some coffee to see if I can pull together a 20 minute presentation ..