ABSTRACT
This chapter begins by explaining the notion of experimental strategies, positioning these within recent debates about a 'proactionary principle', a complementary viewpoint to the so-called precautionary principle that concludes that actions under situations of uncertainty and ignorance gaps should be postponed if not generally stopped. In contrast to approaches that externalize ignorance by analysing risk assessments or that sidestep it by using rhetorics of certainty, it suggests how the unexpected aspects of knowledge production can be described using the notion of experimentality. The chapter presents some conceptual framing about the experimental society in order to discuss two case studies: the restoration and sanitation of contaminated industrial sites as well as the search for new energy below the ground geothermal heat. It examines how, in a democratically organized society, real-world experiments can be a basis for benefits for as many people as possible so that proactionary strategies can be turned into a socially responsible and feasible imperative in the twenty-first century.
