New England Workshop on Science and Social Change

In environmental circles, uncertainty reigns supreme. Whereas science has traditionally been regarded as an authoritative tool for providing solutions to many knowledge-based problems, it has been less successful in the recent environmental context because of increasing competition from other interests.

scientific findings are married with local knowledges, community surveys, leaked documents, and investigative journalism, breeding more confusion and less consensus. It doesn't matter how many scientists stand up and say that we should be really, really concerned about global warming or mercury poisoning or the loss of biodiversity, we're still not acting.

If there is uncertainty in science, then scientists have an obligation to inform the public about these uncertainties when they influence their health, lives, and livelihoods.

It would appear we are a community of mostly like-minded people, who respect the scientific way of knowing, and exalt in the beauty and mystery of the world. We love questions more than answers, and distrust dogma wherever we find it, including, of course, in science.

"It's always been the case that maps have value because they show one subset of data and hide the rest," says David Weinberger, author of Everything Is Miscellaneous, a new book about the value of disorder in the information age. Given the infinite data that can be layered into Google Earth, however, we can now "include everything, then sort and draw the maps on the fly."