Power and knowledge

Abstract

The future of democratic societies is at stake in the manner we articulate the legitimacy of their decisions and the cognitive competence with which those decisions are taken. Nowadays this requirement clashes with the drawback that there is an indomitable dimension of ignorance that cannot be eliminated but rather needs to be managed. The experts’ advice increasingly takes on board these ‘unknown unknowns’, whereby the relationship between science and politics has become just as necessary as it is complex.