From Systems Complexity to Decisional Uncertainty

Abstract

Since the early eighteenth century, wits fond of aphorisms have said that there are only two certainties in life: death and taxes. We can add a third. Uncertainty is also a certainty. Most remarks in science are, or rest on, propositions expressed in terms of probabilities and are char-acterized by varying degrees of uncertainty. They are typically hedged in with qualifications and with admissions, perhaps self-serving, of the incompleteness of knowledge and the need for further research. None of this means that science has failed a crucial test. It is a normal feature of the scientific enterprise.