Uncertainty—its ontological status and relation to safety

Abstract

The concept of uncertainty is difficult to comprehend, even when we restrict our focus to safety science. In a world with various scientific philosophical stances, “uncertainty” is debated in various contexts. However, in an effort to go deeper into a more basic understanding of uncertainty our knowledge is quickly challenged. What exists? How do we know what exists? What can we know about it? Aiming these questions at uncertainty reveals that interpreting uncertainty as existing in any ontological sense is difficult to defend. Does this imply that uncertainty can only be understood in an epistemological sense or merely as a construct? Epistemological understandings of uncertainty encompass, in principle, the whole rationality spectrum from relativism to positivism, thus not excluding any form of analyses or understanding of uncertainty. However, we recognize the need for an increased understanding of which elements the uncertainty concept comprises, and possible consequences of an unreflective discarding of elements. Within the framework of a linear time concept consisting of the past, the present and not least the future, we claim that uncertainty’s ontological status exists on various levels. In the present uncertainty is a purely epistemological category, and in the past uncertainty has its meaning related to what has been observed, recognized and comprehended, thus a methodological challenge. In the futuristic perspective uncertainty exists and cannot be reduced.