ABSTRACT
The uncertainties against which we try to protect ourselves-such as illness, losing someone we love, being thrown out of work-seem to be in the nature of life: we try to understand them and take what precautions we can. But uncertainty is created by our own preconceptions, as well as given, because events only appear as uncertain in some context of purposes, and expectations of orderliness. What constitutes uncertainty depends on what we want to be able to predict, what we can predict, and what we might be able to do about it. A purely random event like the spin of a roulette wheel is passionately uncertain to the gambler, but predictable over the long run to the owner of the casino: while a disinterested observer might not even notice how the wheel spun. It is not just that we ignore uncertainties which are irrelevant; or that what is uncertain from one point of view becomes predictable from another. When events are entirely beyond our control we no longer face the responsibility of acting, with all its anxieties. We may then think of the outcome as our fate-something that was bound to happen because we could do nothing about it. Uncertainty depends on the possibilities of action as well as the meaning of events. As Mary Douglas and Aaron Wildavsky write,
Once the idea is accepted that people select their awareness of certain dangers to conform with a specific way of life, it follows that people who adhere to different forms of social organization are disposed to take (and avoid) different kinds of risk…. Questions about acceptable levels of risk can never be answered just by explaining how nature and technology interact. What needs to be explained is how people agree to ignore most of the potential dangers that surround them and interact so as to concentrate only on selected aspects.1
